Grantley Hall (listed Grade II*) is thought to have late C17 origins, but was greatly enlarged, initially by Fletcher Norton (1717-1784), with further enlargements and alterations by his descendants. Although Norton took the title Lord Grantley when made a hereditary peer in 1782, Grantley Hall was never a principal residence, but was mainly used for hunting parties and other entertainments. In 1900 the estate was sold by the 5th Lord Grantley to Sir Christopher Furness (a shipping industrialist from Hartlepool) who was raised to the peerage as Baron Furness of Grantley in 1910. Sir Christopher is thought to have extensively remodelled the house and grounds, with the Japanese Garden probably created under the direction of Lady Furness sometime around 1910, certainly after 1908. Grantley was bought in 1925 by another industrialist Sir William Aykroyd, but the estate was broken up after his death in 1947, with the hall becoming a council-owned adult education college.
The Ordnance Survey 1:10560 maps surveyed in 1849, 1891 and 1908 shed light on the evolving nature of Grantley’s formal park and gardens. The first map suggests that the formal park had shrunk from its C18 extent, and that it had evolved via general piecemeal estate management rather than being the product of a deliberate overall landscape design. There is no known landscape designer associated with Grantley, although John Carr of York is thought to have worked on the house. The current landscape is considered to be largely a product of renovations and alterations made by Sir Furness, incorporating earlier elements dating to the C19 and C18.
The Japanese Garden at Grantley post-dates the 1908 survey by the Ordnance Survey. It was almost certainly the product of a skilled designer, but their identity is currently unknown. The suggestion that it was designed by the influential writer on rock gardening, Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), is considered unlikely. An alternative suggestion is that it was the work of Backhouses of York, although this is not substantiated. Interest in Japanese gardens in England developed in the Edwardian period following the publication of Josiah Conder’s ‘Landscape Gardening in Japan’ in 1893. Although many gardens merely imported the odd Japanese feature, many were more authentic, some being the work of designers from Japan. The Japan- British Exhibition at White City, London, which was visited by over 8 million people over six months in 1910, promoted further interest in Japanese gardens and may have prompted the creation of the example at Grantley.
The Japanese Garden at Grantley was well established when it was photographed in 1919 as part of sales particulars for the estate. In form it is a naturalistic stroll garden that clearly alludes to Brimham Rocks, a striking natural landscape five miles SW of the hall which was part of the wider estate in the early C20 and is thought to have been the source of the stone used for the garden. Analysis of the garden, particularly of the rockwork, suggests that the outer bund to the N and parts to the W were later additions or modifications, possibly after ownership passed to North Yorkshire County Council after 1974. The bridge across the northern pond certainly dates to this period, being a late C20 replacement of an original bridge which paintings and photographs show was a red lacquered timber bridge reminiscent of the red bridge at Nikko, Japan. Early illustrations also indicate that a tall stone lantern adjacent to the central pond has been lost and that the boardwalk bridge at the northern end of the stream ravine was originally a low arched bridge which had informal, low growing planted borders rather than parapets.