Description:
Hackfall is a 42 hectare historic landscape garden, set within ancient semi-natural woodland in a rocky gorge along the River Ure, just north of Ripon, North Yorkshire. Laid out in the mid-18th century by William Aislabie (who also owned nearby Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal – a World Heritage Site), Hackfall became a well-known visitor attraction in the late 18th and 19th centuries; the woodland setting providing the perfect background for a series of paths and vistas, which led to numerous romantic follies and breathtaking water features throughout a steep-sided river valley. However, by the early 20th century, Hackfall lay forgotten, and many trees were felled for timber. Although the woodland re-grew and many ancient woodland species survived, ponds, weirs, follies and paths had become badly damaged and views and vistas obscured.In 2002 the Hackfall Trust initiated a project, completed in May 2010, to restore this Grade I listed garden. A team of landscape architects, historians, ecologists and hydrologists set about revealing Aislabie's romantic vision of dramatic vistas, restoring follies to their structurally sound but ruinous state, reinstating paths and bringing back to life lost ponds, cascades and weirs, including a beautiful gravity-fed water jet in Fountain Pond.