The site is a grass-covered terrace following a serpentine course across the side of a wooded escarpment overlooking the ruins of the abbey.

It was then granted to Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland and it passed from him to the George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

His desire was to complement, and perhaps even surpass, the more formal terrace and temples laid out in about 1730 by his father at Duncombe Park house a mile away.

At the south-east end of the terrace is the domed Doric or Tuscan Temple, thought to be a scaled-down version of the mausoleum at Castle Howard a few miles away.

The basement housed the kitchen and living quarters and nowadays it holds an exhibition on English landscape design in the 18th century.