WEST YORK, U.K.- Scientists from Leeds University are currently conducting tests using ground-penetrating radar to determine whether it will be possible to restore a complex 17th century water garden at Bramham Park, near Wetherby, West York, once described as the Versailles of the North. The garden was the inspiration of Robert Benson, first Lord Bingley, who commissioned designs in 1698 after visiting water gardens in 1698. It is believed the gardens only worked briefly before falling into disrepair. Inspiration for the design of the garden at Bramham was French and formal, but the manner in which it was adapted to the natural landscape is relaxed and entirely English. It is still completely original, perhaps the only large-scale formal garden to survive virtually unchanged from the early eighteenth century.

Bramham is a garden of walks and vistas, architectural features and reflecting water. Its main axis runs from north to south across the house front, not centred squarely on the house in the French manner. As you walk around the garden, you experience a growing feeling of anticipation - what will I see around the next corner?

Leaving the house, the elegant double flight of steps from the Long Gallery is a copy of one at Fontainebleau. Ahead is the rose garden, and at the northern end of the walk is the Chapel, originally an orangery built in the 1750s.