Studland Bay House
and Gardens

Guests staying at Knoll House Hotel are welcome to use the gardens of Studland Bay House at any time. In May the azaleas and rhododendrons are in flower.

Studland, indeed much of unspoilt Dorset, owes its present state to the policy of successive heads of the Bankes family to build houses where appropriate but hardly ever to sell property or land: seven year leases almost throughout. In 1897, Mr W R Bankes was no exception, but the Hon. Eustace Fiennes, M P (of the Twistleton-Wykeham-Fiennes family, the premier UK Barony of Saye and Sele and grand-father of the explorer Sir Ranulph) was a member of the same London club. He managed, with the help of the finest port to persuade Mr Bankes to sell him the freehold to build the house, originally named Kyalami. To salvage the family policy Mr Bankes instructed his agent to sell no garden space at all. The site was pegged out accordingly but before it could be accurately surveyed the pegs were moved out several paces in the dead of night. (This tale about the originally disproportionate small holding in relation to the size of the house was explained with great gusto to the present owners by the father of the present Lord Saye and Sele who were regular visitors to Knoll House until their deaths.)

In 1906, the Bankes Estate (currently the Kingston Lacy and Corfe Castle Estates and bequeathed to the National trust in 1981) sold enough extra land to provide a more reasonable garden as seen by the fence bordering the inner garden. The rest of the garden has always been leasehold and was wild heathland until 1930.

In 1921 the house was bought by a Mr G A C Shenley who was said to have made his fortune in the US liquor trade during prohibition. He was American, a pioneer wireless enthusiast and a friend of Marconi. He had a huge aerial for communication with Marconi's transmitter on the Isle of Wight and his own yacht. A marble chimney-piece in the house was shipped from Italy aboard this boat.

In 1930 the house was sold to a Mr J M Macmillan (no relation to the late PM) and according to his son, a transmitter was secreted in the roof space from where the bay could be surveyed in the event of an invasion. The house was little used during the war; the whole Studland Bay peninsular was evacuated as a battle training area and the interior of the house was undesirable as headquarters because so many fixtures had been removed for safe keeping. Likewise Knoll House, although Winston Churchill and Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery watched final rehearsals for the Normandy beach assault from its terrace.

In the 1930's Mr Macmillan spent huge sums taming the `wild garden' as it is still known and creating the adjoining cricket ground now with an all-weather wicket and still the best view of any cricket ground in England. Tons of peat were used to enrich the sandy soil and a rudimentary drainage system was laid.

In 1949 Mr Macmillan sold Studland Bay House to Knoll House Hotel who had been maintaining the gardens in return for access for hotel guests. The present owners, the Ferguson family, acquired the hotel and house in 1959. The 39 steps were built by the late Colonel Kenneth du B Ferguson, DSO, TD, DL, a former High Sheriff of Dorset and the cedar there was kindly planted by hotel guests in his memory.

The gardens slope gently down towards the sea in a N E direction. The site is on the borderline of the London clay and Bagshot beds which are composed of a series of sands with irregular seams of pipe clay. Even after a shower the clay layer and sparse topsoil drain slowly and an extensive drainage system was laid in 1990. Enforced neglect during the war was responsible for much intergrowth between the fine trees and shrubs planted by Macmillan. Rabbits and deer roam freely, hence the unsightly protection round the younger shrubs and trees - a constant struggle to defend them from damage.

The garden was severely damaged by the storms of 1987 and 1990. Many large trees were lost and a major drainage and replanting programme was undertaken in the summer and autumn of 1990. The red ironstone commemorates these storms and the work that was undertaken as a consequence. It comes from Woodhouse Hill, Studland where the 10 pillars at Knoll House Hotel were quarried.

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