Capability Brown

Lancelot "Capability" Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783) was an English gardener and landscape architect, a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style.

Unlike other architects including William Kent, he was a hands-on gardener and provided his clients with a full turnkey service, designing the gardens and park, and then managing their landscaping and planting. He is most famous for the landscaped parks of English country houses, many of which have survived reasonably intact. However, he also included in his plans "pleasure gardens" with flower gardens and the new shrubberies, usually placed where they would not obstruct the views across the park of and from the main facades of the house. Few of his plantings of "pleasure gardens" have survived later changes. He also submitted plans for much smaller urban projects, for example the college gardens along The Backs at Cambridge.

Criticism of his style, both in his own day and subsequently, mostly centres on the claim that "he created 'identikit' landscapes with the main house in a sea of turf, some water, albeit often an impressive feature, and trees in clumps and shelterbelts", giving "a uniformity equating to authoritarianism" and showing a lack of imagination and even taste on the part of his patrons.

He designed more than 170 parks, many of which survive to this day. He was nicknamed "Capability" because he would tell his clients that their property had "capability" for improvement. His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's champion Horace Walpole allowed that Kent "was succeeded by a very able master".

Early life and Stowe

Lancelot Brown was the fifth child of a land agent and a chambermaid, born in the village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at a school in Cambo until he was 16. Brown's father, William Brown, had been Sir William Loraine’s land agent and his mother, Ursula (née Hall), had been in service at Kirkharle Hall. His eldest brother, John, became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. His older brother George became a mason-architect.

After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall until he was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south to the port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Then he moved further inland, where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire. He moved to Wotton Underwood House, Buckinghamshire, seat of Sir Richard Grenville.

thumb|upright=1.4|left|[[Ha-ha (the hidden ditch in the foreground) and house at Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, Brown's last big project, a new-build designed by his son-in-law, placed to exploit views in two directions.]]

In 1741 Brown joined Lord Cobham's gardening staff as undergardener at Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire, He made the Grecian Valley at Stowe under William Kent's supervision. It is an abstract composition of landform and woodland. Lord Cobham let Brown take freelance work from his aristocratic friends, thus making him well known as a landscape gardener. As a proponent of the new English style, Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families. By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle:

<blockquote>The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the River Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote.</blockquote>

By the 1760s he was earning on average £6,000 () a year, usually £500 () for one commission. As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, taking only an hour or so on horseback to survey an estate and rough out an entire design. In 1764, Brown was appointed George III's Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, succeeding John Greening and residing at the Wilderness House.

Landscape gardens

It is estimated that Brown was responsible for more than 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work endures at Belvoir Castle, Croome Court (where he also designed the house), Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Chatsworth, Highclere Castle, Appuldurcombe House, Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village), Marden Park (now Woldingham School) and in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations.

thumb|left|280px|[[Badminton House in Gloucestershire: features of the Brownian landscape at full maturity in the 19th century]]

thumb|upright=1.25|Brown's Pond at [[Sandleford, Berkshire. One of a string of former priory fish ponds adapted by Brown who was at Sandleford on behalf of Elizabeth Montagu from 1781.]]

At Hampton Court Brown encountered Hannah More in 1782 and she described his "grammatical" manner in her literary terms: Now <em>there</em>' said he, pointing his finger, 'I make a comma, and there' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject. Brown's patrons saw the idealised landscapes he was creating for them in terms of the Italian landscape painters they admired and collected, as Kenneth Woodbridge first observed in the landscape at Stourhead, a "Brownian" landscape (with an un-Brownian circuit walk) in which Brown himself was not involved.thumb|upright=1.25|At [[Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Brown dammed the paltry stream flowing under Vanbrugh's Grand Bridge, drowning half the structure with improved results]]

Criticism

Perhaps Brown's sternest critic was his contemporary Uvedale Price, who likened Brown's clumps of trees to "so many puddings turned out of one common mould." Russell Page, who began his career in the Brownian landscape of Longleat but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes."

Richard Owen Cambridge, the English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'." This deftness of touch was recognised in his own day; one anonymous obituary writer opined: "Such, however, was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered; so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken." In 1772, Sir William Chambers (though he did not mention Brown by name) complained that the "new manner" of gardens "differ very little from common fields, so closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them."

Architecture

Capability Brown produced more than 100 architectural drawings, and his work in the field of architecture was a natural outgrowth of his unified picture of the English country house in its setting:

<blockquote>"In Brown's hands the house, which before had dominated the estate, became an integral part of a carefully composed landscape intended to be seen through the eye of a painter, and its design could not be divorced from that of the garden" but Brown's work as an architect is overshadowed by his great reputation as a designer of landscapes. Repton was bound to add: "he was inferior to none in what related to the comfort, convenience, taste and propriety of design, in the several mansions and other buildings which he planned". Brown's first country house project was the remodelling of Croome Court, Worcestershire, (1751–52) for the 6th Earl of Coventry, in which instance he was likely following sketches by the gentleman amateur Sanderson Miller. but during the twentieth century his reputation rose again. Tom Turner has suggested that the latter resulted from a favourable account of his talent in Marie-Luise Gothein's History of Garden Art which predated Christopher Hussey's positive account of Brown in The Picturesque (1927). Dorothy Stroud wrote the first full monograph on Capability Brown, fleshing out the generic attributions with documentation from country house estate offices.

Later landscape architects like William Sawrey Gilpin would opine that Brown's 'natural curves' were as artificial as the straight lines that were common in French gardens. Brown's portrait by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1773, is conserved in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His work has often been favourably compared and contrasted ("the antithesis") to the œuvre of André Le Nôtre, the French jardin à la française landscape architect. He became both "rich and honoured and had 'improved' a greater acreage of ground than any landscape architect" who preceded him. published a large amount of new research on Brown's work and held over 500 events across Britain as part of the celebrations. Royal Mail issued a series of Landscape Stamps in his honour in August 2016.

The Gardens Trust with support from Historic England, published Vulnerability Brown: Capability Brown landscapes at risk in October 2017 to review the issues facing the survival of these landscapes as well as suggested solutions.

A commemorative fountain in Westminster Abbey’s cloister garth was dedicated for Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown after Evensong on Tuesday 29 May 2018 by the Dean of Westminster, Dr John Hall. The fountain sits over an old monastic well in the garth. It was designed by Ptolemy Dean, the Abbey's Surveyor of the Fabric, and was developed with the assistance of gardener Alan Titchmarsh. The fountain was made in lead by sculptor Brian Turner.

Personal life

thumb|The grave of Capability Brown in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul, [[Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire]]

On 22 November 1744 he married Bridget Wayet (affectionately called Biddy) from Boston, Lincolnshire, in Stowe parish church. Her father was an alderman and landowner while her family had surveyors and engineers among its members. They had eight children: Bridget in 1746, Lancelot (known as Lance), William (who died young), John in 1751, a son in 1754 who died shortly afterwards, Anne who was born and died in 1756, Margaret (known as Peggy) in 1758 and Thomas in 1761.

In 1768 he purchased the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire in East Anglia for £13,000 () from Lord Northampton. This came with two manor houses, two villages and 2,668 acres of land. The property stayed in the family until it was sold in lots in 1870s and 1880s. Ownership of the property allowed him to stand for and serve as High sheriff of Huntingdonshire from 1770 to 1771. He continued to work and travel until his sudden collapse and death on 6 February 1783, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget Holland's house, at 6 Hertford Street, London while returning after a night out at Lord Coventry's.

Horace Walpole wrote to Lady Ossory: "Your dryads must go into black gloves, Madam, their father-in-law, Lady Nature’s second husband, is dead!". Brown was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, the parish church of Brown's small estate at Fenstanton Manor. He left an estate of approximately £40,000 (), which included property in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire. His eldest daughter Bridget married the architect Henry Holland. Brown sent two of his sons to Eton. One of them, Lancelot Brown the younger, became the MP for Huntingdon. His son John joined the Royal Navy and rose to become an admiral.

Gardens and parks

Many of Capability Brown's parks and gardens may still be visited today. A partial list of the landscapes he designed or worked on includes:

Adderbury House, Oxfordshire (designs not thought to be implemented)
Addington Place, Croydon
Alnwick Castle, Northumberland
Althorp, Northamptonshire
Ampthill Park, Ampthill, Bedfordshire
Ancaster House, Richmond, Surrey
Appuldurcombe House, Isle of Wight
Ashburnham Place, East Sussex
Ashridge House, Hertfordshire
Aske Hall, North Yorkshire
Astrop Park, Northamptonshire
Audley End, Essex
Aynhoe Park, Northamptonshire
The Backs, Cambridge
Badminton House, Gloucestershire
Ballyfin House, Ireland
Basildon Park, Berkshire
Battle Abbey, East Sussex
Beaudesert, Staffordshire
Beechwood, Bedfordshire
Belhus, Essex
Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire
Benham, Berkshire
Benwell Tower, near Newcastle upon Tyne
Berrington Hall, Herefordshire
Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire
Bowood House, Wiltshire
Branches Park, Cowlinge, Suffolk
Brentford, Ealing
Brightling Park, East Sussex
Broadlands, Hampshire
Brocklesby Hall, Lincolnshire
Burghley House, Lincolnshire
Burton Constable Hall, East Riding of Yorkshire
Burton Park, West Sussex
Burton Pynsent House, Somerset
Byram, West Yorkshire
Cadland, Hampshire
Capheaton Hall, Northumberland
Chillingham Castle, Northumberland
Cardiff Castle, Cardiff
Castle Ashby House, Northamptonshire
Caversham Park, Berkshire
Chalfont House, Buckinghamshire
Charlecote, Warwickshire
Charlton, Wiltshire
Chatsworth, Derbyshire
Chilham Castle, Kent
Chillington Hall, West Midlands
Church Stretton Old Rectory, Shropshire
Clandon Park, Surrey
Claremont, Surrey
Clumber Park, Nottinghamshire
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
Coombe Abbey, Coventry
Corsham Court, Wiltshire
Croome Park, Worcestershire
Dodington Park, Gloucestershire
Danson Park, Bexley Borough of London
Darley Abbey Park, Derby
Ditchingham Hall, Ditchingham, Norfolk
Euston Hall, Suffolk
Farnborough Hall, Warwickshire
Fawley Court, Oxfordshire
Gatton Park, Surrey
Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire
Hampton Court Palace, Surrey
Kirtlington, Oxfordshire
Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool
Kyre Park, Herefordshire
Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire
Laleham Abbey, Surrey
Langley, Berkshire
Langley Park, Buckinghamshire
Langley Park, Norfolk
Latimer Park, Amersham, Buckinghamshire
Leeds Abbey, Kent
Littlegrove, Barnet, London
Lleweni Hall, Clwyd
Longford Castle, Wiltshire
Longleat, Wiltshire
Lowther, Cumbria
Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire
Madingley Hall, Cambridgeshire
Maiden Earley, Berkshire
Mamhead House, Devon
Melton Constable Hall, Norfolk
Milton Abbey, Dorset
Moccas Court, Herefordshire
Moor Park, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire
Mount Clare, Roehampton, South West London
Navestock Hall, Essex
Newnham Paddox, Warwickshire
Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Somerset
New Wardour Castle, Wiltshire
North Cray Place, near Sidcup, Bexley, London
North Stoneham Park, Eastleigh, Hampshire
Nuneham House, Nuneham Courtney, Oxfordshire
Oakley, Shropshire
Packington Park, Warwickshire
Paddenswick Manor, West London
Patshull Hall, Staffordshire
Paultons Park, Hampshire
Peper Harow House, Surrey
Peterborough House, Hammersmith, London
Petworth House, West Sussex
Pishiobury, Hertfordshire
Porter's Park, Hertfordshire
Prior Park, Somerset
Ragley Hall, Warwickshire
Redgrave Park, Suffolk
Roche Abbey, South Yorkshire
Sandleford, Berkshire
Savernake Forest, Wiltshire
Schloss Richmond (Richmond Palace) in Braunschweig, Germany
Scampston Hall, North Yorkshire
Sheffield Park, East Sussex
Sherborne Castle, Dorset
Sledmere House, East Riding of Yorkshire
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
South Stoneham House, Southampton, Hampshire
Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire
Stowe Landscape Garden
Syon House, West London
Temple Newsam, Leeds
Thorndon Hall, Essex
Trentham Gardens, Staffordshire
Ugbrooke Park, Devon
Wallington, Northumberland
Warwick Castle, Warwick
Wentworth Castle, South Yorkshire
West Hill, Putney, South London
Weston Park, Staffordshire
Whitehall, London
Whitley Beaumont, West Yorkshire
Widdicombe Park, near Slapton, Devon
Wimbledon House, South West London
Wimbledon Park, South West London
Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire
Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
Wolterton Hall, Norfolk
Woodchester, Gloucestershire
Woodside, Berkshire
Wootton Place Rectory, Oxfordshire
Wotton, Buckinghamshire
Wrest Park, Bedfordshire
Wrotham Park, Hertfordshire
Wycombe Abbey, Buckinghamshire
Wynnstay, Clwyd, Wales
Youngsbury, Hertfordshire

More than 30 of the gardens are open to the public.

Notes

References

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2nd edition, Phillimore, Chichester (1999) , .
Wickham, Louise, Gardens in History: A Political Perspective, 2012, Windgather Press, ISBN 1905119437, Amazon preview

External links

‘The Account Book of Lancelot Brown ‘Capability’ Brown’. Digitised copy on the RHS Digital Collections website
FT review of Compton Verney 2011 exhibition
Capability Brown's unfinished garden