by Jane Brown
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Also by Jane Brown
List of Illustrations
Family Trees
Map of Lancelot’s England
Title Page
Prologue
1. Northern Perspective
2. Cherchez la Femme, or Lancelot’s Bride
3. The Kingdom of Stowe
4. Surveying His Future – Lancelot’s Great Ride
5. Hammersmith, a Stage for Mr Brown
6. Lancelot and ‘The Great Commoner’
7. ‘The One Great Argument of the Landscape Gardener’
8. The King’s Master Gardener at Hampton Court
9. Brownifications! (Hampton Court 1765–7)
10. Return to the North
11. ‘All Over Estates and Diamonds’
12. Treading the Enchanted Ground
13. The Omnipotent Magician
Afterpiece
Picture Section
Notes and Sources
Index
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Author
Jane Brown is a well-known garden writer. Her books include studies of Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West; Tales of the Rose Tree, a history of the rhododendron; and the much-praised The Pursuit of Paradise: A Social History of Gardens and Gardening. She lives in Huntingdonshire.
Also by Jane Brown
Gardens of a Golden Afternoon
Vita’s Other World
Sissinghurst
Eminent Gardeners
Lutyens & the Edwardians
The Garden at Buckingham Palace
Tales of the Rose Tree
The Modern Garden
A Garden and Three Houses
Spirits of Place
The Pursuit of Paradise
My Darling Heriott
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate section 1
1. Lord Cobham of Stowe, by Jean Baptiste van Loo, 1740. Stowe School
2. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, by William Hoare, c.1754 © National Portrait Gallery, London
3. George Lucy of Charlecote, by Pompeo Batoni, 1758. National Trust
4. George William, 6th Earl of Coventry, by Allan Ramsay, c.1765. Croome Estate Trust
5. Extract from Roque’s Middlesex. Cambridge University Library
6. Wakefield Lawn by Paul Sandby, 1767. Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection NA 7328.526 1777
7. Petworth, Dewy Morning by J.M.W Turner, 1810 © Tate, London 2010
8. Landscape with Hagar and the Angel by Claude, 1646. National Gallery
9. Croome Court by Richard Wilson, 1758. Croome Estate Trust
10. Burghley House, by Frederick Mackenzie, 1819, engraved and published by Robert Havell. Private collection/The Stapleton Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
11. Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter, by Thomas Hudson. The Burghley House Collection
12. Lancelot Brown by Nathaniel Dance, c.1769 © National Portrait Gallery, London
13. Elizabeth, Duchess of Northumberland, by Joshua Reynolds. Alnwick Castle
14. Alnwick Castle from the Gardens, by J. Vilet. Laing Art Gallery, Tyne and Wear Museums
Plate section 2
15. Syon Park, sketch by Robert Adam and Lancelot Brown. Private Collection
16. Thomas Percy, later bishop of Dromore, mezzotint by William Dickinson, after Joshua Reynolds, 1775 © National Portrait Gallery, London
17. Hampton Court from the South, by J. Kip and L. Knyff, 1702–14. The Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
18. A View of Hampton House and Garden with Garrick Writing, 1762, by Johann Zoffany. Yale Centre for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection B1981.25.731
19. Blenheim, Oxfordshire by J.M.W Turner, 1830–1. Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
20. Labourers by George Stubbs, 1779. National Trust
21. Hannah More by Frances Reynolds, c. 1780. Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery/The Bridgeman Art Library
22. The new lake at Kirkharle, watercolour sketch by Nick Owen. Author’s collection/Nick Owen
23. Abelard and Eloisa, caricature of Revd. Mason and Elizabeth Montagu, coloured mezzotint, 1775–8. The British Museum
Illustrations in the text
1. St Wilfrid’s Church, Kirkharle, from Hodgson’s Northumberland, 1827
2. Sketch of Kirkharle demesne. Author’s collection
3. Langley’s ‘General Directions’, from New Principles of Gardening, 1728
4. Switzer’s rural garden. Author’s collection
5. Boston, from Armstrong’s Lincolnshire, 1779. Cambridge University Library
6. Mareham le Fen, from Armstrong’s Lincolnshire, 1718. Cambridge University Library
7. Stowe, Bridgeman’s plan of 1739. Stowe School
8. Stowe, sketch layout 1742. Stowe School
9. Stowe, Gibbs’s Gothic Temple, from Bickham’s Beauties of Stowe, 1750. Stowe School
10. Stowe, Boycott Pavilions, 1750. Stowe School
11. Stowe, the Grecian Valley, 1750. Stowe School
12. Stowe, Lord Cobham’s Monument, 1749. Stowe School
13. Angerstein’s sketch of Gibside column, 1753. Science Museum, London
14. Sanderson Miller’s Edge Hill Tower. Jones, Follies and Grottoes
15. Sanderson Miller’s Egge cottage. Jones, Follies and Grottoes
16. J.Oliphant, view of Hammersmith, c. 1750. Author’s collection
17. Cedar of Lebanon. Author’s collection
18. Croome Court, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
19. Petworth, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
20. Belhus, from Chapman & Andre’s Essex, 1777. Essex Record Office
21. Syon, from Roque’s plan of Richmond c.1765. The British Library
22. Richings, Lady Hertford’s garden. Author’s collection
23. Chatsworth, from Britannia Illustrata, 1707, drawn and engraved by Knyff and Kip c.1699. Cambridge University Library
24. Charlecote, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
25. Corsham Court, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
26. Queen’s House, Lancelot’s plan for the garden, c.1762. The Royal Collection
27. Blenheim, Colonel Armstrong’s canal. Blenheim Archives
28. A page from Lancelot’s Account Book. Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library
29. Audley End, Lancelot’s plan of 1763. English Heritage
30. Burton Pynsent Column. Jones, Follies & Grottoes
31. Extract from Lancelot’s Account Book. Royal Horticultural Society, Lindley Library
32. Burghley House, plan of Lancelot’s work. Author’s collection
33. Extract from Richardson’s survey of Kew and Richmond. John Harris
34. Burton Constable, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
35. Richard Cosway, self portrait with Lancelot and others. Author’s collection
36. Claremont, Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. Claremont Fan Court School
37. Berrington Hall. The National Trust
38. Milton Abbas, ‘lawyer’s plan’. Author’s collection
39. Milton Abbas, the new village, 1770. Dovecote Press
40. Sherborne Castle, plan of Lancelot’s works. Author’s collection
41. Lancelot’s letter ‘he can have the sea’, c.1779. The British Library
42. Henry Holland by John Opie. Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library
43. Bridget Holland, c.1775. Author’s collection
LANCELOT’S ENGLAND showing the
most important places in his life approximately in the order he encountered them: and giving some idea of his endless journeyings
Kirkharle, Wallington (NT), Cambo and Rothley
Boston, home of Bridget Wayet
Kiddington, Oxfordshire, his first lake
Stowe (NT) and Wakefield Lawn
Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire
Stoke Park, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
Compton Verney, close to Radway and Edge Hill
Charlecote Park (NT)
Warwick Castle (open daily)
Packington Hall
Croome Court (NT) and Pirton demesne
Kirtlington Park
Hammersmith, the Brown family home 1751–64
Petworth Park (NT)
Belhus (Country Park)
Moor Park, Hertfordshire (part public)
Burghley House (open regularly)
Chatsworth (open regularly)
Wrest Park (English Heritage) and Ampthill Park (public)
Syon House (open regularly), Kew, Richmond Park
Hampton Court (home 1764–83) and Hampton
Stratfield Saye (open regularly)
Blenheim (open regularly)
Luton Hoo (Hotel) and Luton Walled Garden
Beechwood, Hertfordshire
Ashridge, Hertfordshire, (Golden Valley NT woodlands)
Madingley Hall and Cambridge (St John’s College wilderness)
Audley End (English Heritage) and Shortgrove
Longleat, Wiltshire (open regularly)
Corsham Court (open regularly)
Bowood (open regularly)
Queen’s House, now Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park
Gatton Park
Trentham, Staffordshire (open regularly)
Milton Abbas, Dorset (Milton Abbey School
Sherborne Castle, Dorset (open regularly)
Kimberley, Norfolk
Melton Constable, Norfolk
Euston Hall, Suffolk (open as advertised)
Redgrave, Suffolk
Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire (open as advertised)
Caversham Park, Reading
Castle Ashby, Northants (open as advertised, lakes public access)
Broadlands, Hampshire (open as advertised)
Paultons Park, Hampshire (amusements park)
North Stoneham (public park)
Ugbrooke and Mamhead, Devon
Burton Pynsent, Somerset
Tottenham Park, Wiltshire
Wimbledon Park (part public park)
Ingestre, Tixall and Shugborough
Weston Park, Tong and Chillington
Patshull Park
Fenstanton and Hilton, Huntingdonshire
Wimpole Hall (NT)
Eaton Hall, Cheshire
Alnwick Castle (open regularly)
Sandbeck Hall and Roche Abbey (abbey English Heritage)
Harewood, Yorkshire (open regularly)
Temple Newsam, Leeds (open regularly)
Brocklesby, Lincolnshire
Burton Constable, Yorkshire East Riding (open as advertised)
Sledmere (open as advertised)
Sandleford Park near Newbury (St Gabriel’s School)
Nuneham Courtenay
Coombe Abbey (Country Park)
Claremont (School has house and park)
Berrington Hall (NT)
Moccas Court
Wynnstay
Old Wardour Castle, Wiltshire
Dinefwr. Llandeilo Dyfed (NT)
Heveningham, Suffolk
Ashburnham, Sussex
Woodchester Park, Gloucestershire (NT)
Highclere Castle, Hampshire
Langley Park, Buckinghamshire
Clandon Park, Surrey (NT)
Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight (English Heritage
Author’s note. A list of commissions complied by John Phibbs will be found in Roger Turner’s Capability Brown and the Eighteenth Century English Landscape, 1999 or the reader is referred to the most recent county volumes of The Buildings of England www.pevsner.co.uk
LANCELOT ‘CAPABILITY’ BROWN
The Omnipotent Magician, 1716-1783
JANE BROWN
A note on currency values. The National Archives Currency Converter website gives equivalents, (a) in 1750 Lancelot’s £25 per annum equalled £2,129; (b) in 1770 his accounting sums of £1,000 equalled £63,690. Thus multiplying the sums given throughout the book by 60 will give the reader a fair match for modern money.
A note on dates. Until 1752 the new year began on 25th March. As the point of change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian in September 1752 was approximately in the middle of Lancelot Brown’s life, I have corrected the dates to New Style from the start, taking the New Year as 1st January.
PROLOGUE
LANCELOT BROWN AND HIS works entered my life a long time ago; as a ten-year-old I was taken to Longleat for a day of unbelievable wonders after the privations of wartime. The view from Heaven’s Gate (sadly, no longer the approach road) seemed just that, down into the huge, dipping bowl of green set with magnificent old trees, and in the centre a domed and pinnacled palace, such as I had never seen before. The house smelt strongly of a musky scent, and the portraits of Elizabethan children with dolls’ faces haunted me. I still have the antiquated guide book written by the Marchioness of Bath, signed with a magisterial ‘Bath’ in pencil by the 6th Marquess, which I read from cover to cover, and found that in the ‘splendid and extravagant days’ of the 1750s Lord Weymouth had called on ‘the services of Lancelot Brown, nick-named “Capability” because of his habit of optimistically telling prospective employers that the scene held “great capabilities”. William Cowper’s The Task was then quoted – ‘Lo! He comes, The omnipotent magician, Brown appears’ – and Cowper’s satirical intent was waved away, as it has been many times since. I certainly believed in the ‘omnipotent magician Brown’ as someone on a par with Merlin and the Fairy Godmother. The view from Heaven’s Gate and the idea that a man, or even a woman, might do wondrous things with parks and woods and fields dozed in a far corner of my brain, and it was a long time before it was awakened.
In 1970 I was a mother of two young children and wanted to write, but my desired subject – ‘the landscape’ – was elusive and difficult. The gods were kind, for that year two great books were published that gave me abundant pointers, Brenda Colvin’s Land and Landscape and Nan Fairbrother’s New Lives, New Landscapes. Colvin’s battle-cry for the ‘new’ profession of landscape design had first sounded in the meagre post-war air of 1947, but the 1970 edition was respectably weighty, and the challenges crowded every page. Colvin is gloriously lucid and grandly angry: ‘We know … that man can ruin his surroundings and make them unsuitable for future generations … but we continue to act as if we did not know it’; ‘we should think of this planet, Earth,1 as a single organism, in which humanity is involved. The sense of superior individuality which we enjoy is illusory’; ‘the visual degradation2 of the landscape is a warning of peril not to be disregarded’. Nan Fairbrother is more grounded, though passionately so, in the solutions for our everyday landscapes; she courageously takes head-on that great British bugbear, nostalgia: ‘The choice then3 is not between the old and new but between good landscape and bad. But it is a choice, and even though it is sad that the old must go (as it always has been), the true tragedy is not that the old must go but that the new should be bad.’
Colvin and Fairbrother found common cause in the necessity of learning from the good landscapes of the past, the polishing of ancient skills and understandings adapted for the present; thus landscape history was essentially a component of modern landscape architecture. For both my heroines the eighteenth century was the golden age, not in any nostalgic way, but simply because the lessons to be learned there were of greatest value. Colvin writes:
It was in the eighteenth century,4 in England, that garden and landscape first came together and were seen to be in relationship. The idea of
designing gardens as part of the wider landscape, and the wider landscape as a garden, was new, and was not fully grasped even in the eighteenth century. Now that we become aware of the need for conscious design on a far broader scale than ever before, the history of landscape and of gardens may be seen as two entwined threads of one theme.
‘The idea of designing gardens as part of the wider landscape, and the wider landscape as a garden’ (of essential use in the design of housing and recreational landscapes, schools, workplaces, farmland and forestry), was both professionally and popularly embodied in the works of my old friend, Mr Brown. After his death in 1783 he had been eclipsed by Repton, Loudon, Paxton and the great Victorian gardeners, and it was only in 1940 that Dorothy Stroud began collecting material on him, ‘whose name was5 frequently turning up in writings on houses and gardens, but only in the vaguest way’, as she explained in her foreword to Capability Brown. Her book, held up by the war, was first published in 1950 and sailed on through several editions; Stroud resurrected Brown, and none of the hundreds of thousands of words that have followed – including mine – could have been written without her. (Is it mischievous to suggest that the architectural historians, the big guns that surrounded her, like Sir John Summerson and Christopher Hussey, happily let a woman deal with the gardener? If so, she turned the tables and triumphed.) My only regret is that she (or her publishers) used the title Capability Brown, for I have found no use of the term ‘Capability’ during his lifetime: the nickname has inspired ridicule, and was not given as a compliment, and I will call him by his baptismal name, Lancelot.
In the summer of 1983 the bicentenary of his death was marked by the opening of a small but notable exhibition, Capability Brown and the Northern Landscape at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle (which I reported on for Building Design). This exhibition evoked vivid and tangible connections to his life’s work, but all too soon afterwards his reputation tumbled again. He was assailed by detractors, and by the champions of his newly revealed rivals, accused of destroying old gardens and living villages and, worse, of being a ‘contractor’ who systematically larded the face of England with his ‘boring’ lakes, clumps and plantations. On the other hand, the places where he was proved to have worked multiplied into the hundreds – just a sampling will include Stowe, Charlecote, Burghley, Longleat, Croome Court, Milton Abbas, Petworth, Broadlands, Bowood, Corsham Court, Sherborne Castle, Syon, Claremont, Sledmere, Harewood, Alnwick Castle, Audley End and Chatsworth, to name, as they say, but few. At the least, he made a considerable part of the heritage that our tourist industry relies upon; at best, he held up a mirror to the English landscape, cannily persuading his aristocratic clients to pay for lessons in the remaking of England that would fit her for modern times. In either case, and both, the question remains: how did he do it? This is the motivation for this book.
