Belsay is an oddity among our Gothic Gardens. The usual strategy of Gothic Gardeners was to spot a landscape with potential, scatter it with follies and ruins if no genuine ones were available, and lend the hand of nature a discreet touch of support to bring out the melancholy implications of the topography. Belsay has no follies - unless you count Belsay Old Castle on the edge of the estate - and only acquired its Gothic landscape by accident. Belsay had been home to the Middleton family since the 13th century. Sir William Middleton employed Capability Brown to do a spot of landscaping and had added a Gothick eyecatcher to the hilltop in the later 1700s, but that didn't amount to Gothic re-engineering of the house's surroundings. Then Sir William's third son Sir Charles inherited the estate (he took the surname Monck to secure another legacy) and while on his honeymoon in Greece acquired an infatuation with all things Classical. He built in severe Athenian style perhaps the ugliest stately I have ever seen, and on Christmas Day 1817 moved his family out of the old Castle and into the new Hall. The photo below is quite good, because it shows very little of it.

The Hall had been constructed from stone excavated from the hillside immediately to the west, leaving a quarry scarring its way through the earth. It seems that Sir Charles, for all his Classical enthusiasms, had had the idea in mind all along - the quarry is no mere hole in the ground, but a tall-sided, narrow canyon with alcoves, winding paths, and dramatic overhangs. The cliffs were planted with pines and yews to make them seem even higher and more gloomy.

The gardens closer to the house eventually contained a remarkable variety of exotic plants, while the quarry itself was planted with native ferns and mosses. Sir Charles's successor and grandson, Sir Arthur, extended the quarry to the west, which is if anything even darker and more grim.

'The Grotto', in the upper quarry, the nastiest, dankest spot in the whole garden.

... and a smaller stone one to the west quarry.

A great hewn arch leads to the Quarry Garden ...

You didn't think rhododendrons could be sinister? Think again.

The Old Castle is not really part of the arrangement at Belsay - you simply emerge from the Quarry Garden and discover it, so it doesn't count as a proper folly. However, there's something surreally eerie about the aeronautic fireplaces you find there.

However, the horrible Hall has a Gothic experience of its own in store. Part of the deal in its being passed to the care of English Heritage was that there should be no reconstructed room-sets made up from furniture and fittings brought in from elsewhere, the Middletons' own gear long having been dispersed. So the building remains an eerie, empty shell. The restored parts occasionally house art exhibitions; the rest doesn't even have plaster on the walls. Oddly, this means its history weighs even more heavily in the echoing rooms.

More details, though not many,  of Belsay here.