For centuries, English garden-makers have had a fascination with the Renaissance gardens of Italy and have attempted to transport their magical qualities home. They have done so with varying success and the best have been where the Italian inspiration and mastery of scale and architecture are embedded in an intrinsically English setting. Nowhere has this been better done than at Renishaw Hall, where, from the late 1880s to the inter-war period, Sir George Sitwell created a memorable garden around his historic family home.
Renishaw lies in the far north-east corner of Derbyshire, close to Sheffield, and surrounded by countryside that was for cen- turies dominated by coal and iron — the foundations of the Sitwell family’s wealth. The house was originally built of ashlar stone in the 1620s and extended with wings at the end of the 18th century, giving it the unforgettable broad, castellated south-facing façade. This would become the backcloth for Sir George’s garden, the foundations of which were terracing dating from the 17th century, the topography of the landscape dropping away from the terraces southward allowing for the creation of views, and woodlands flanking the terraces (in the style of the ‘bosco’ so integral to Italian gardens).
George was born in 1860. Two years later, he inherited the family baronetcy and when aged four is reputed to have announced to his fellow passengers on a train: ‘I am Sir George Sitwell, the youngest baronet in England.’ In his youth, the family estates were managed expertly by his mother, Lady Louisa. As a result, Sir George inherited with the resources to carry out the restoration of his house and the development of its garden, on which he embarked shortly after coming of age in 1881.
The fine collection of statues, like the garden itself, was inspired by those trips to Italy.
Oxford University introduced the young Sitwell to the Arts-and-Crafts Movement and this, together with the late-19th-century fashion for formal gardens championed by the architect-designer Sir Reginald Blomfield, guided his work at Renishaw. Blomfield’s book The Formal Garden in England, published in 1892, was illustrated by another architect designer, Francis Inigo Thomas, who was Sir George’s cousin. Correspondence in the family archives (expertly researched by Renishaw’s archivist, Christine Beever, recently) between Thomas, Sir George and his estate manager William Hollingworth confirms Thomas’s involvement at Renishaw.
Sir George was meticulous in the planning and execution of his garden. His son, Osbert — who, with his siblings Edith and Sacheverell, were largely responsible in their writings for their father’s not always flattering reputation — wrote that Sir George would stand at an upstairs window with a megaphone and shout instructions to his butler Henry Moat, who would move wooden marking posts and towers into position to ensure the precise levels and vistas he required. Supervision of the landscaping work was carried out by Henry Milner, one of the most successful landscape architects of the period.
By 1938, when Country Life visited Renishaw Hall, the gardens were in a state that would be instantly recognisable to a visitor today.
The importance of his garden being not only an entity in its own right, but inextricably uniting the house and surrounding landscape was confirmed in the early 1890s when two lakes were dug, incorporating ancient fishponds at the foot of the slope beyond the terraces. Later, Sir George was to write: ‘The garden must be considered not as a thing in itself, but as a gallery of foregrounds designed to set off the soft hues of the distance, it is Nature which should call the tune and the melody is to be found in the distant prospect of blue hill or shimmering lake.’
It is a measure of the reputation that Sir George’s garden gained within fashionable architecture and gardening circles that, only three years after the foundation of Country Life in 1897, Renishaw was one of the first gardens to be featured. The author’s admiration was evident: ‘What is the character that we find here? That of spaciousness and yet enclosure in the first place, of broad terrace levels with fine descents, excellent in architectural fitness, of floral wealth, of a great outlook, and, above all, of splendid trees.’
Ironically, it was ill health that first took Sir George to Italy, which would become the passion of the second half of his life and which inspired him to give the finishing touches to his garden. His annual visits to Italy between 1903 and 1921 are meticulously documented in a series of notebooks. Most significantly, his trips produced a selection of outstanding statues and other architectural features that were shipped home and positioned strategically in the garden at Renishaw. Perhaps more than anything, it is the two pairs of stone statues, Diana and Neptune towards the centre and the Two Giants on the central axis on the lowest level, all gazing out to the landscape beyond, that give Renishaw its stamp of real quality as an Anglo-Italian garden.
There are still places of quiet magic in the garden, which is looked after by Alexandra Sitwell with the help of David Kesteven, head gardener at Renishaw for 30 years.
Sir George’s visits to Italy also produced one of the small classics of garden literature, his book, On The Making of Gardens, published in 1909. In his work, which mainly describes the gardens in Italy that so inspired him, one passage hints at what he had aspired to evoke at Renishaw: ‘Much there is of mystery in the garden, of subtle magic, of strange, elusive charm which must be felt but cannot wholly be understood.’
In 1921, Sir George left England to live at Montegufoni, the castle in Tuscany that he had bought as a ruin a decade earlier. He died in 1943 (by which time he had moved to Switzerland) and was succeeded by the eldest of his three children, Sir Osbert, who wrote about life at Renishaw in his celebrated five-volume autobiography Left Hand, Right Hand!. Failing health led Sir Osbert to hand over to his nephew Sir Reresby in 1965 and, in recent decades, the gardens have enjoyed periods of energising and adventurous renaissance under both Sir Reresby and his wife, Penelope, and their daughter, Alexandra, who took over in 2011.
One of the flower borders flanking the main lawn, which has been redesigned by Arne Maynard.
The extent to which Sir George incorporated flower borders was confirmed in a series of delightful watercolours of his garden by George Elgood. Also, it is documented that no lesser figure than Gertrude Jekyll (probably introduced by Edwin Lutyens, who worked on the house) supplied planting plans. It is this heritage that has inspired the new planting schemes carried out in recent decades, mostly devised by members of the family with their head gardener of 30 years, David Kesteven.
In 2015, renowned designer and plantsman Arne Maynard was invited to replant the middle borders that flank the garden’s main central lawn. He had never been to Renishaw before and when I spoke to him he recalled the overriding impression from his first visit: ‘More than anything, it was an amazing sense of place that I had not witnessed before, created by the way the terraces, and the statues looking out, lead you out into the landscape.’
Mr Kesteven has overseen all of the recent work in the Renisham garden. When we spoke, he told me of the thing that satisfied him most: ‘If Sir George was to come back and visit the garden today, about 100 years after he left, I know that he would immediately recognise it and find his way around.’
Today, the garden is enlivened with exemplary planting throughout the seasons, all appreciated by the thousands of visitors who come every year, but it remains, at heart, the garden created by Sir George and probably the most distinguished Italianate garden in England.
Visit Renishaw Hall's website for opening times.
This feature originally appeared in the July 15, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.