FUNDS have been granted to document more that 200 years of history in Herriard.

As part of ongoing projects by the Hampshire Archives Trust (HAT), £3,000 has been allocated to aid with the research and publication of a book looking at the celebrated landscape gardener Humphry Repton.

The Humphry Repton at Herriard Park publication will draw on a mass of material about the village of Herriard which is held at the Hampshire Record Office and explores the 18th-century plans the celebrated landscape gardener had for the grand estate.

Now housing small businesses, Herriard Park was the pride and glory of a family of landowners - the Jervoises.

Members of the family have owned Herriard and administered its huge estates in Hampshire and elsewhere for more than 400 years.

The garden was built more than 200 years ago by George Purefroy Jervoise to plans by celebrated landscape gardener Humphry Repton, who was widely regarded as the natural successor to the renowned Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Although Repton had more than 250 commissions throughout the country, Herriard was only one of two he carried out in Hampshire.

Last year was the bicentenary of Repton’s death and Herriard came to the attention of the Hampshire Gardens Trust, a pioneering charity with a major interest in garden history.

In the new publication, Humphry Repton at Herriard Park: ‘Improving the Premises’, a small team of researchers led by Sally Miller, a trustee and chair of the research group, have been able to recover many details of the plans that Repton laid out.

Mrs Miller said: “I and three other experienced researchers worked on the papers for the period 1793-1800. Bundles of Repton’s letters revealed how he worked and tell the story of the project. On one occasion, for example, he was at Reading but wrote that with ‘a forced march’ he could reach Herriard.

“We found all the bills for the construction, and also the bills for all the planting – trees, shrubs, fruit trees, and vegetable seeds. It is most unusual to find complete bills for such a scheme and by transcribing and analysing them we have been able to recreate what was done.”

The book is being published by the Hampshire Gardens Trust with the aid of a grant from the Hampshire Archives Trust.