Unlike most gardens, Hanham Court comes into its own in midwinter, with astonishing yew and box topiary ON A WINTER’S DAY, HANHAM COURT IS coldly imposing. A church presses against the house, and four frosted yew pillars stand sentinel in gravel amid lines of box. Yet, when the door in the Court’s great wooden gate opens, you enter a different world. If the sun is shining, you are half-dazzled as you walk on to a long and wide south-facing lawn, which rolls away towards the River Avon, Somerset, and a distant view of Keynsham on the far ridge. “It is like stepping into Alice’s Wonderland,” says Julia Boissevain, owner, with her husband, Richard, of this historic house since February 2015.
Everything about Hanham Court is surprising. Its location, for one,…
