page_title: Bartley Lodge
section_title: Early residents
hierarchical_section_title: Bartley Lodge / Early residents
caption_attribution_description: English: Emily Shore, diarist, 1838
context_page_description: Bartley Lodge is a country house near Cadnam in Hampshire, England, within the boundaries of the New Forest National Park. It was built in the 18th century to take advantage of the hunting offered in the surrounding New Forest. Most famously, the eminent geologist Sir Charles Lyell spent his childhood here. The building is now a hotel.
context_section_description: Edward Gilbert, the Deputy Surveyor General of his Majesty's Woods and Forests, and large landowner appears to have built the house in about 1770. At this time it was called “Lamb’s Corner”. In his memoirs the Reverend Richard Warner remembers visiting Edward's son Vincent Hawkins Gilbert at this property and says “Mr Gilbert’s father had built a very pleasant mansion on his property at “Lamb’s Corner” but died just previous to its completion”. Edward died in the 1770s so it is about this time that the Lodge was constructed.
  Edward Gilbert was born in 1718. In 1752 he married Mary Hawkins who was the daughter of Vincent Hawkins, the owner of land in Lyndhurst. In 1856 he was appointed Deputy Surveyor General of his Majesty's Woods and Forests. He acquired a considerable amount of property in the New Forest area including his wife's inherited estate in Lyndhurst. The couple had only one son Vincent Hawkins Gilbert (1752-1798) who was the first Master of the New Forest Foxhounds. There is a portrait of him by Daniel Gardner with Sir William Heathcote and his son. 
  He died in 1798 and left Bartley Lodge to his son Major Edward Gilbert (1784-1868). It was shortly after his father's death that Major Gilbert let the property to the Charles Lyell (1767–1849) who was a notable botanist who stayed there with his family for the next 28 years. Their family seat was Kinnordy House, Angus, Scotland.
  Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875), the famous geologist, was a member of this family and spent most of his childhood there. He wrote an autobiography in which he frequently mentions Bartley Lodge. He said
  "We lived at Bartley and walked out among that beautiful wild forest with the nurses...Bartley belonged to a Major Gilbert, and consisted of eighty English acres, seventy of which was laid down in grass, and produced hay, which was celebrated as the best in the county for the hunters — for Lyndhurst was only two miles off where the New Forest hounds were kept. The hay harvest, therefore, was a great concern at Bartley, and when we returned home for each summer holiday the mowing was always just beginning. We (Tom and I) used to attend the mowers all day, and learnt to mow a little, and used to tumble about with Marianne and Fanny in the haycocks, and ride in the loaded wagons to the haystack. It lasted the greater part of our five or six weeks' holidays, as part of the land was always three weeks later in being cut. I have always since thought haymaking the most delightful of sights. We always had our small rakes and forks, and used to try how much we could glean after the wagon. As the whole of this grass land was unenclosed, and surrounded the house, it made a good-sized park, and was full of fine old oaks."
  Major Edward Gilbert married Jane Ludlow in 1828 and for some years they lived at Bartley lodge but they often rented it to wealthy tenants for long periods. In 1837 he rented it for a year to the Shore family. Their eldest daughter Emily Shore wrote a diary which is highly regarded today. A whole section of the diary tells of her time at Bartley Lodge. She describes the drawing room and two of the bedrooms in the following terms.
  "The first is a large lofty room, twenty-four feet long. I like it better than that at Woodbury. It has a pretty light paper, a very handsome, old- fashioned, carved chimney-piece, and two windows. Mamma's room is just the same size. Mine I quite love. It is at the back of the house, and has two windows looking out into the garden and forest beyond."
  She describes part of the front of the house as follows.
  ""I sat out of doors for an hour or two in the afternoon, in a little sheltered spot in front of the house, before the eastern wing, which recedes a few feet back. It is a very small piece of grass, between rhododendrons on one side, and laurustinus on the other, with the wall of the house covered with jessamines behind. In front is the park and forest so that altogether it is a sweet little spot, and I enjoyed sitting here very much. It was a calm, delicious day, the forest bathed in sunlight, the sky a pu
caption: Emily Shore
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