In the garden at Levens Hall there are more than a hundred pieces of clipped yew, some of them over three hundred years old, arranged as geometric shapes, abstract figures, chess pieces and crowns. They are cut by hand shears every August and September. The Guinness World Records recognises it as the oldest topiary garden in the world, and standing among it the effect is fairly surreal — a village on the southern edge of the Lake District that happens to keep a three-century-old set of green chess pieces in trim.
The village sits in the Kent Valley, about five miles south of Kendal and ten from Windermere, with the Lyth Valley running north and the limestone edge of Scout Scar to the east. The River Kent runs through the grounds of the Hall itself.
The pub is the Hare & Hounds Inn, a 16th-century coaching inn run by Ash and Becky Dewar since 2013. The menu is long — pizzas hand-rolled to order, eight kinds of burger, fish and chips, pot pies, grilled dishes. There are five cask ales plus craft ales from local Cumbrian breweries, and it is CAMRA-listed. One review sums up the door policy: "Everyone welcome — kids, muddy boots and dogs." Given the walking around here, the muddy boots are not a hypothetical.
For provisions there's the kitchen café and farm shop at Levens Hall, open when the house is.
The walking starts more or less at the Hall. The River Kent gives you riverside paths through the grounds and south toward Heversham. Three miles off is Scout Scar, a limestone ridge above the Lyth Valley with views to the Lakeland fells and out to Morecambe Bay. The valley floor below is damson country — the orchards are what the Lyth Valley is known for, and there's a Damson Day held every April at Crosthwaite.
The Hall began as a pele tower, built around 1350 by the Redman family as a defence against Scottish raids. James Bellingham extended it around 1580 into the Elizabethan mansion that stands now, with its original panelling, plasterwork and carved chimney pieces still inside.
The garden came later, and by a strange route. In 1688 Colonel James Grahme — Keeper of the Privy Purse to James II — bought Levens and brought in Guillaume Beaumont to lay it out in 1694. Beaumont had been gardener to James II and had a hand in the gardens at Hampton Court, and was reputedly a pupil of the man who designed Versailles. Topiary went out of fashion in the following century, and grand houses across England tore theirs up for landscaped parkland. Levens simply never did.
On bank holidays the grounds also show a collection of working steam models, including a steam-powered fairground.
Getting here is straightforward: the A590 and A6 south of Kendal, with M6 Junction 36 about four miles east. The nearest stations are Oxenholme on the West Coast Main Line, roughly four miles away, or Arnside on the Cumbrian Coast Line to the west.
The hedges get their annual haircut at the end of every summer, one pair of shears at a time.
