IT’S like going to Narnia’ is how garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith described his first visit to Encombe, hidden away on the coast of Dorset’s Isle of Purbeck. The combination of complete seclusion and a breathtaking natural setting have for centuries given Encombe a fabled reputation that successive owners have embellished, not least James and Arabella Gaggero, who bought the estate in 2009—and became only the sixth family to own the property in 1,100 years.
The estate goes back to 948, when it was given to the Abbess of Shaftesbury by King Eadred. It was dissolved by Henry VIII and eventually passed into the hands of the Culliford family. In 1734, the story of modern Encombe began, when the estate was bought by George Pitt. He gave the property to his son John, who pulled down the existing house and replaced it with a new one of his own Classical design, which survives today. Built of local Purbeck
