The wonderful site of Wood Hall was always occupied by a dwelling of some sort. Present records show that Henricus, a Saxon nobleman, "had a dais in the hall of his house for reception and entertainment of his guests" in the year 859. He baptised his children in a stream of water which ran through the premises into the river Derwent. The stream of water runs underneath the present house in a culvert and is full of lime, which deposits and makes tufa over moss. In 1544 a descendant of Henricus, Henry Tolson, obtained a grant from Henry VIII to Wood hall for the sum of £337 16s 9d. His descendants lived at Wood Hall until the early 19th century.

The Fisher family bought the site and built a new Hall in 1821. It burnt down in the 1870's and Edward Tyson, a solicitor at Carlisle and Lord Lieutenant of the County of Cumberland, bought the site, building the house left on the old site in the 1870's. This picture was taken in 1920 after Edward Tyson had engaged Thomas Mawson, an international Landscape Architect, to design a garden suitable for his house.

The garden was completed in 1920, and Mawson's plan for the garden, taken from the third edition of his book 'The Art and Craft of Garden-Making' is shown below. The old Hall was taken down in 1946, after the lime-laden stream overflowed its confines and rotted the structure. The garden decayed into ruin.

The present owners bought the ruined site of 5.5 acres in 1969, making a home of the stables and barn, rebuilding and restoring the garden walls and making a garden of peace and beauty. The site of the old Hall is no more than an outline in stone, but two stone summerhouses remain, and the lines of Mawson's design are strong and compelling. The view from the house was loved by Turner, and used as a subject several times.

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