Bartley Lodge

Bartley Lodge is a country house near Cadnam in Hampshire, England, within the boundaries of the New Forest National Park.

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.

[1] 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”.

He acquired a considerable amount of property in the New Forest area including his wife's inherited estate in Lyndhurst.

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[5] who stayed there with his family for the next 28 years.

He said Major Edward Gilbert married Jane Ludlow in 1828[7] and for some years they lived at Bartley lodge but they often rented it to wealthy tenants for long periods.

""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.

It was a calm, delicious day, the forest bathed in sunlight, the sky a pure pale blue.

A pied wagtail with his cheerful "chippeet" alighted on the roof of the house above me a lark flew across the park, uttering his pretty plaintive cry.

The Bartley Green road is now a gated Forestry Commission track and the former drive from there to the house is disused and heavily overgrown.

Major Dalrymple was a keen horticulturalist and in 1899 he and his head gardener formed the Bartley Horticultural Society.

During the First World War he served as a captain in the Royal Field Artillery and was awarded the Military Cross.