WOODLAND at a Great Witley tourist attraction is to be revamped as part of a £1.5 million English Heritage scheme.

A shortlist of five garden and landscape designers has been drawn up to compete for the rights to redesign the Wilderness at Witley Court - an "atmospheric" area of sycamore woodland with glades and paths.

Work on the winning design will begin in the autumn as part of the Contemporary Heritage Gardens scheme.

The £1.5 million English Heritage programme was launched in 1999 with the aim of creating "10 contemporary gardens in historic settings".

Witley Court and Portland Castle in Dorset will be the third and fourth sites to benefit from the scheme since its launch.

English Heritage head of gardens and landscape John Watkins said: "The programme is giving today's garden and landscape designers a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate their crafts and skills in a significant part of the nation's historic estate.

"The properties for this stage of the initiative were chosen because English Heritage believes that the landscape setting is vital to the presentation of each estate."

He added: "In the 1880s, when Witley Court was a playground for royalty and the rich, the Wilderness was a romantic and naturalistic landscape surrounding the Front Pool.

"Now a secondary sycamore woodland with glades and paths with a sparse undergrowth of natural regeneration, it provides an atmospheric setting for pieces of contemporary sculpture.

"They were placed there through a joint initiative between English Heritage and the Jerwood Foundation."