Cactus and Succulent Glasshouse (Display House), Capel Manor Gardens

The Capel Manor estate has medieval origins: in 1275 the land belonged to Ellis of Honeyland, and in 1486 Sir William Capel became the owner of the first manor house. In 1745 Robert Jacomb demolished that house and built a new one; a second house, raised in 1750, is today's Capel Manor, which later passed to Rawson Hart Boddam and then, from 1840, to the Warren family, before being bought in 1932 by Colonel Sydney Medcalf, the last private owner, who was devoted to horticulture and Clydesdale horses. When he died in 1958 the estate was left in trust to the Incorporated Society of Accountants and its gardens declined. The local horticulturist Frances Perry campaigned for it to become a horticultural college with public gardens: the first students arrived in 1968.

The walled-garden glasshouses belong to this second life. The official timeline records that in 1981 "Victorian glasshouses" were restored, which made the college more self-sufficient in plant production; a 2026 article on Enfield's historic gardens links those glasshouses, restored in 1981, to the cactus and pelargonium collections of the walled garden. The Display House is now presented together with the Lea Valley Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society, and the estate holds a cactus and succulent show every year at the end of May.

The walled garden, east of the house, is a red-brick enclosure, its walls of varying height and very tall in places. A gardener's house follows the angle of the west wall, and the nineteenth-century stable and coach-house courtyard closes the eastern end, with a clock tower.

The glasshouses stand inside this enclosure. One of them, called the Display House on the official website and a "cactus and succulent hothouse" in the description of a photograph on Wikimedia Commons, is a glasshouse the public can walk through. The website speaks of Victorian glasshouses restored in 1981. The Display House should be distinguished from the Victorian-style greenhouse in Mr Fothergill's display garden, a different building on the estate, and from the Alpine House, where the website points to dwarf bulbs in spring.

The Display House holds a collection of cacti and succulents that the official website calls impressive. Around it the walled garden brings together other collections: the website invites visitors to look out for its scented pelargoniums and its coleus collection with colourful leaves, and the heritage source mentions a pelargonium collection in the glasshouses. The walled garden also produces fruit, vegetables and cut flowers for the manor house.

Each year at the end of May the estate holds a cactus and succulent show: exhibitors and visitors can talk, and a wide selection of plants is on sale; the 2026 edition ran from 23 to 25 May, with entry included in the gardens ticket.

The Display House lies in the walled garden, east of the manor house; the website recommends walking through it to see the cacti and succulents. A garden guide allows one to two hours for the whole estate, which has more than forty themed gardens, the holly maze designed by Adrian Fisher, a mini zoo of over 75 species, the Old Manor House Garden opened in 2010 by Queen Elizabeth II, and a café. Opening arrangements vary with the season. Forty Hall and Myddelton House, in the same Forty Hill historic area, are close neighbours.