by Jane Brown
38 ‘50,000 acres’: Thynn, pp.26–7
39 ‘debt and disrepair’: Thynn, p.34
40 ‘the gardens are no more!’: Mary Delany, quoted in Ruth Hayden, Mrs Delany and her flower collages, 1992 edn, p.81; see also David Burnett, Longleat, The Story of an English Country House, Wimborne Minster, 2009
41 ‘catamaran’: for the Petty fortune, see P. G. Dale, Sir W.P. of Romsey, Romsey, 1987
42 displaced locals: see The Independent online, 20 July 2007, on the mystery of Mannings Hill and local press reports about the underwater archaeology of the Bowood lake, blaming Lancelot (of course) for drowning a ‘lost city’, although only remnants of one garden or field wall were found!
43 ‘What wou’d you give’: Hinde, p.85, quoting the Earl of Kerry, ‘Bowood Park’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, XLII, December 1924
44 ‘I am persuaded’: ibid., see also Stroud, p.90
45 ‘Making the great Walks’: Stroud, p.87, from Corsham Archives
46 ‘My health’: ibid.
47 ‘exceeding great tumble’: Hinde, p.83
48 Charlotte’s arrival, etc.: see Claire Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession, 1995, pp.12–14
49 ‘only three CROWNS’: Brown, 2004, p.13. The Yale Center for British Art, Dept of Prints and Drawings, has a plan of the scheme for St James’s Park, B 1975.2.485
50 election to Society of Arts, etc.: recorded in Ms Subscription Book 1754–63 in the library of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), John Adam Street, London
51 Colonel Clive: Diary of a Duchess, ed. James Greig, 1926, Tuesday 15th July 1760
52 ‘for mezzotints’: see Minute book 1759–60, f. 142, RSA Library
53 ‘an unimaginative schoolmaster’: J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III, Oxford History, England, 1960, p.96
54 Marlborough, 29th June 1763: BL Add. Mss. 69795 f.4
55 ‘the chief is Thamisis’: The Compleat Angler op. cit., p.208
56 Aynho papers: Northamptonshire Record Office, Aynho C(A) 6273 and 6274, and ML 1310, Accounts of Francis Burton 1758–70
57 ‘a truly monumental structure’: David Green, ‘Blenheim: The Palace and Gardens under Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Wise’, in Blenheim, Landscape for a Palace, ed. Bond and Tiller, 1995, pp.76–7
58 ‘Mr Vanbrugh my enemy’: ibid., p.3; Bond and Tiller, p.77
59 constant disputes: Vanbrugh v. the Duchess Sarah is documented by David Green op. cit.; see also Lawrence Whistler, The Imagination of Vanbrugh and his Fellow Artists, 1954, p.122ff.; Frances Harris, A Passion for Government, the Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 1991; and Ophelia Field, The Favourite, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 2002
60 ‘Survey … before Mr Brown’s works’: this is discussed in David W. Booth, ‘Blenheim Park on the eve of Mr Brown’s improvement’, Journal of Garden History, 15:2, Summer 1995, pp.107ff. The drawing is in the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Acc. no. DR 1985:0416.
61 ‘he was an old man’: Green, p.101ff.
62 ‘colossal polygon’: ibid., see also Brown, 1999, chapter on the Military Garden, pp.93–4
63 ‘ranks of rifle green’: Green, pp.101ff.
64 ‘cascade/swans & all such sort’: David Green, Blenheim Park & Gardens, 1972, p.10.
65 Stukeley sketch: reproduced in Booth, Journal of Garden History op. cit.; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Top. Gen. D. 14, f.14
66 ‘The minnows’: David Green, Blenheim Palace, 1950, p.3
67 1961 aerial survey: in Bond and Tiller, p.83
68 ‘On Lord Holland’s Seat’: Mack, pp.588–9; Barbara Jones, Follies & Grottoes, p.351; see also Hugh Honour, ‘An Epic in Ruin Building’, Country Life, 10th December 1953
69 ‘had Bute been true’: Bute and Shelburne were Lancelot’s clients, but Richard Rigby was not; John Calcraft, possibly Fox’s natural son, lived a colourful life and a prosperous one, but ‘defected’ to be Pitt’s right-hand man; Lancelot visited Calcraft at Ingress Abbey, dramatically sited on the Thames at Greenhithe, between Dartford and Gravesend, and he also went to see Leeds Abbey, in the village of Leeds near Leeds Castle, which Calcraft bought shortly before his death. He died at Ingress on 23 rd August 1772, before anything was done in either place. For Ingress, see Anthea Taigel, ‘Obituary for Ingress’, in The London Gardener, Vol. 4, 1998–9.
8 The King’s Master Gardener at Hampton Court
It has always been assumed that the Duke of Newcastle arranged Lancelot’s royal appointment, but an odd reference led to the location of Lancelot’s letter of June 1764 in the Grenville Papers: the Duke was a Thomas Greening man, with little time for Lancelot, and he must have rolled in his tomb when Lancelot came to rebuild his beloved Claremont for Robert Clive. On the other hand, George Grenville, Pitt’s brother-in-law, stepped into the role of Lancelot’s benefactor during his timely elevation as First Lord of the Treasury from April 1763 until July 1765. Otherwise, I confess to a certain breathlessness in this chapter in trying to keep up with Lancelot’s phenomenal pace of work and travelling: for my reader’s sake, jobs have to be accomplished in one or two continuous passages, whereas in reality he was dodging backwards and forwards across England, spending half a day here, then two hours there, in a chaotic progress that was often in complete disregard of geography.
1 ‘But your Great artist’: now known to be by Sidney Swinney and addressed to Viscount Irwin in 1767, quoted in Hedley, Capability Brown and the Northern Landscape, 1983, p.32 (West Yorkshire Archives, Temple Newsam Mss)
2 ‘You, I am sure’: Supplement to the Grenville Papers, BL Add. Mss. 57822–57828, f.155, 22nd June 1764
3 ‘raising pineapples’ etc.: Stroud, 1984, p.122
4 ‘supplying Horse Dung’: Green, p.62
5 ‘The whole project’: BL Add. Mss. 57822, f.155
6 ‘every contiguous spot’: Jane Roberts, Royal Landscape, 1997, p.61
7 Pitt on Eton: Ayling, p.23
8 ‘Capey’: The Eton College Register 1753–90, ed. R.A. Austen-Leigh, 1921, notes Lance’s entry on 7th September 1761, fee two guineas, boarding with Mrs Mary Young at the Manor House, Eton; Lance left in 1765 for Trinity College, Oxford; Jack apparently entered Eton College in 1762, leaving in 1765 for the navy.
9 ‘afflicted with an Asthma’: Heath, p.86
10 ‘rich and brilliant glaze’: Berg, pp.132–3
11 ‘grace and favour’: Thurley, p.317ff.
12 Great Fountain Garden: Green, p.72
13 Evelyn ‘near perfected’: Green, p.62
14 ‘planting all ye trees’: Green, p.63
15 ‘Grate Avenew’: ibid.
16 ‘Chestnut Sunday’: ibid.
17 The account book: this is in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library in Vincent Square, London
18 James Wood at Huntingdon: see John Drake, Wood & Ingram: A Huntingdon Nursery 1742–1950, 2008; these unique nursery records (yet to be fully analysed) show orders for Burghley and Wimpole whilst Lancelot was working there, and further vividly illustrate the gardening enthusiasms of the countryside around Huntingdon and Fenstanton, which perhaps attracted him to purchase the Manor of Fenstanton
19 ‘your Lordship has taken William Ireland’: Stroud, 1984, pp.133–4, quoting a letter of 11th March 1767 to Lord Bute, BL Add. Mss. 5726, f.72. The landscape architect David Brown has researched the foremen, see ‘Lancelot Brown and his Associates’, Garden History, 29:1, Summer 2001, pp.2–11; see also David Brown, ‘Nathaniel Richmond, one of the first Ornamental Gardeners, and the London Network in the mid-Georgian period’, The London Gardener, 1998–9, No. 4, pp.37–9
20 ‘Milliken I sent for you’: Stroud, pp.126–8
21 ‘by whose attention’/‘keeping them’: BL Add. Mss. 69795, f.13
22 Princess of Wales’s garden: 11th March 1767, BL Add. Mss. 5726, f.72
23 ‘very fine beeches’: Young, Vol. 1 (of 4), 1771, pp.24–5
24 ‘morning air’: Switzer, quoted in Susan Campbell, Charleston Ked
ding, A History of Kitchen Gardening, 1996, p.49, etc. Further descriptions from ‘A Brief History of the Luton Hoo Walled Garden’ (which is being restored), see: www.lutonhoowalledgarden.org.uk
25 ‘unspoiled old English land’: Williams, p.154
26 ‘Kew Cart’: see M. Baxter Brown, History of the Royal Deer Park, 1985, p.110
27 Audley End: this is beautifully put into context in Littlebury, A Parish History, 2005, for the History Group of the Parish of Littlebury Millennium Society; see also English Heritage, Audley End guide
28 ‘the common brick bridge’: in Littlebury, p.102
29 contract details: Turner, p.97
30 ‘was very backward’: Hinde, p.90
31 ‘by a gentleman’s agreement’: I have tried to calm the heated descriptions of the Audley End affair by gathering evidence from several sources, including Lancelot’s account records, Littlebury, Dorothy Stroud (1984) and Thomas Hinde (who gives the fairest treatment). The arguments pale into insignificance at Audley End itself, an exquisite Brownian miniature.
32 ‘none so blind’: Hinde, p.92
33 ‘whole incident is a strange one’: ibid.
34 ‘Mrs Serle’: Stroud, 1984, p.242. The Serle family, merchants of Leghorn, had owned Testwood since 1695 and there are fine memorials in Eling church. They were also connected to Weston Corbett near Basingstoke and to Chilworth near Southampton, so Lancelot perhaps had hopes of their patronage. However, they seem to have been extraordinarily warm-hearted people – he would have loved the Test waterscape around Testwood – although no work materialised.
35 ‘water house’/‘the Mold and Soyle’: Fiennes, p.73
36 ‘giving away’: Stroud, 1984, p.137
37 ‘only settled the plans’: Turner, p. 108
38 Middleton, Exeter and Totnes: contemporary descriptions of the industries of these towns are given in R. R. Angerstein’s Illustrated Travel Diary 1753–55, translated by T. and P. Berg, 2001
39 ‘’Tis yours, My Lord’: Turner, p.148
40 ‘russet-coloured’ hair: Foreman, p.7
41 John Spencer’s marriage: Charles Spencer, The Spencer Family, 1999, p.111
42 Althorp: on 24th January 1780 the Countess Spencer wrote, ‘Mr Brown has been giving some very excellent advice about this place … and I think all his ideas are good. He is against removing your Barns’ (probably the dominant Roger Morris stables of 1732–3), see Stroud, 1984, p.214. Henry Holland extended and reorganized the house for £20,257, but Lancelot never worked there. It was Althorp’s great loss, for the gardens and the Round Oval pool were laid out by W M. Teulon in the 1860s and are very disappointing.
43 ‘stood close’: Stroud, 1984, p.135. The survey plan by an unknown hand for the work done at Wimbledon by Lancelot shows 1,200 acres of the park with paths, belts of trees, clumps, water courses and the dam for the large lake; the house and village church are on the south of the site, with an older kitchen garden, and roads and neighbouring properties neatly labelled. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Acc. no. DR 1985:0415
9 Brownifications! (Hampton Court 1765–7)
‘Brownifications’ is a term invented by Viscountess Irwin for Lancelot’s doings at Temple Newsam; a great deal of mud was usually involved. His work pace was still frenetic; it is worth noting that he had no secretary or assistant at home to manage his expeditions, and occasionally he wrote ahead to make appointments or sometimes made a date verbally when meeting his client in London. More often he just turned up, and his sudden appearances became the mark of his celebrity. In his early days he approached via the walled kitchen garden, the gardeners’ entrance, but as the King’s Master Gardener he would have called at the Estate Office, and gradually – as his fame increased – at some houses he would have been received at the front door!
1 ‘While from the Thames’: Sidney Swinney, quoted in Gill Hedley, Capability Brown and the Northern Landscape, 1983, p.32
2 ‘real mortification’: 6 March 1765, Tottenham correspondence for Brown’s work; Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Ailesbury Papers, 1300/1910 quoted in Hinde, p.108.
3 ‘in a storm of snow’: ibid., p.110
4 ‘a miniature Holkham’: see Harris, 1994, p.87ff
5 ‘tolerably favourable’/‘alter my route’: Tottenham correspondence op. cit.
6 ‘Brown was’/‘Canal Age’: Hal Moggridge, ‘“Capability” Brown at Blenheim’, Ch. 8 in Bond and Tiller, pp.90–114, offers a brilliant analysis of his technical achievements
7 ‘Park Farm’: ibid., p.104
8 Fawsley in Northamptonshire: the survey by George Nunns, 1741 (a hand-painted masterpiece of cartography), is in the County Archives, ref. Map 853. Maurice Beresford, History on the Ground, 1984, identifies Fawsley’s deserted village, and led the vilification of Lancelot with such sentences as: ‘The church’s setting in the deer park makes it perhaps the most scenic of all the Midland deserted villages for those who like their landscape tamed in the Capability Brown manner’, even though he affirms that depopulation took place ‘just before 1485’ (p.111), and Nunns’s survey confirms the shape of the landscape prior to Lancelot’s work. In Beresford’s The Lost Villages of England, 1998 edn, many more Brown parks are ‘targeted’ – Stowe, Burton Constable, Wotton Underwood, Harewood, Wimpole, Nuneham Courtenay, Milton Abbas, Coombe, Compton Verney among them; in many cases Professor Beresford confirms a much earlier date for depopulation, but merely by association he has provided ammunition for Lancelot’s detractors. Some cases I have been able to defend, but the ‘lost village’ literature is now so vast that it would need another book to state the positions properly. I hope to have shown enough of Lancelot’s character to make it clear that he would never have evicted a family from their cottage, unless giving them a better one, for he understood too well what hardship that caused.
9 ‘Mr Brown’: Stroud, 1984, p.91
10 ‘nearer to every day’: ibid.
11 ‘in perfect order’/‘satisfy yourself’: Tottenham correspondence op. cit.
12 ‘how the passion’: Ayling, pp.333–4
13 ‘of his demands’: ibid.
14 ‘I called at’: Chatham Papers, PRO/30/8/24/ f.137, 10th September 1765
15 ‘I have been’/‘very unpleasant’: Tottenham correspondence op. cit.
16 ‘Mr Brown complained’/‘narrow avenue’: ibid.
17 ‘In Lancashire’/‘greater connection’: in Anthony Burton, The Canal Builders, 1972, pp.24–5
18 Ashridge: see Kay N. Sanecki, Ashridge: A Living History, 1996
19 Shugborough: see Corinne Daniela Caddy, Shugborough, The Complete Working Historic, Estate guide, 2008
20 Ingestre pavilion: this is a Landmark Trust property available for holiday lets, and a few days spent there enable exploration of this quiet countryside: see www.landmarktrust.org. There is probably a book in Lancelot’s adventures at Shugborough, Ingestre and Tixall and their connections, if only the evidence could be found!
21 ‘occhilor survey’: Uglow, p.109
22 ‘He knew Water’: James Brindley, online Wikipedia entry
23 ‘one line of grace’: Saunders, p.94
24 ‘Trent, so called’: The Compleat Angler op. cit., p.209, also quoting Michael Drayton’s, Idea’s Mirrour, 1594
25 ‘lowering the hill’: Stroud, 1984, pp.148–9
26 ‘confessedly one’: Stroud, 1984, p.147, quoting James Paine in Plans of Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Houses, 1767
27 ‘Brownifications’: ‘you will find us very dirty for we are over head and heels in Brownifications, and a little rain with a good many carts makes mires but a great deal which we have had lately makes a quagmire’; Frances, Viscountess Irwin, to Susan Countess Gower, Granville Mss, PRO 30/29/4/2 corres., f.25
28 ‘We have had a long continuance’: ibid., 7th October 1765
29 ‘good-looking’/‘deeply smitten’: James Lomax, ‘Temple Newsam: A Woman’s Domain’, in Maids & Mistresses, Celebrating 300 Years of Women and t
he Yorkshire Country House, ed. Ruth M. Larsen, York, 2004, pp.89–105; see also Adrian Budge, ‘Temple Newsam and the Good Shepheards’, Leeds Arts Calendar 98, 1986
30 ‘the most expeditious way’: Stroud, p.116
31 Sidney Swinney: quoted in Hedley op. cit.
32 ‘I am out of doors’: Francis Irwin, PRO 30/29/4/2 f.20, 8th April 1766
33 ‘a deal has been done: ibid., f.21, 26th July 1766
34 Brownifying: ibid., 5th February 1767
35 ‘my little Horsham business’: Lomax op. cit., p.99, quoting PRO, undated letter 1780
36 ‘with my girls’: ibid., p.98, quoting PRO, undated letter
37 Swinney’s verse: quoted in Hedley op. cit.
38 ‘I apply myself’: Lomax op. cit., pp.98–9
39 ‘to extricate’: Ayling, pp.349–50. Was the relationship between George III and Pitt coloured by the remembrance that Pitt had witnessed George’s marriage to Hannah Lightfoot at St Anne’s Chapel in Kew in April 1759 and there were three children from the ‘marriage’? See David Blomfield, Kew Past, 1994, p.40.
40 ‘of advanced taste’: see Batoni’s portrait of the young 7th Earl in Edgar P. Bowron and Peter B. Kerber, Pompeo Batoni, Prince of Painters in Eighteenth-century Rome, Houston and London, 2008, p.61
41 ‘that you and Mr Drummond’: Hinde, p.137ff., which deals with Castle Ashby in detail
42 ‘I had the pleasure’/‘in perfect union’: letter to Lady Chatham, Chatham Papers, PRO/30/8/24, f.139, 10th April 1767
43 ‘given me your answer’: Hinde, p.137
44 ‘defer my journey’: ibid.
45 ‘his health to mention’: Chatham Papers, PRO/30/8/24, f.142, 7th June 1767
46 ‘mentally shipwrecked’: Ayling, p.368
47 ‘up into his head’: ibid.
48 ‘enfeebled state’: Ayling, p.369
49 ‘devoted to Lord Chatham’: in Chatham Papers, PRO/30/8/24, f.143, 7th August 1767
50 ‘bewildered’: Ayling, pp.368–72, gives a detailed account of Pitt’s collapse
51 ‘much out of order’: Hinde, p.138, who was able to research in the Compton Archives at Castle Ashby, which are no longer accessible. The catalogue of the Compton Documents, Vol. V, in Northamptonshire Record Office, gives a general description and details of plans.
