One is never entirely alone in the metropolis that is Harrogate. True it is Yorkshire, but this is not the Yorkshire we are familiar with, a place of crags and craggy visages, of whinstone and wind-swept moors, here the cream of society meets at Betty’s and barely a seat to be had, even on a Wednesday.
Tag: Moccas (Page 1 of 2)
The outworks of the Danish Camp at Ugbrooke might easily be mistaken for the pale of a mediaeval deer park.
The question that exercises my good friends from Devonshire, on the other hand, is ‘where the deer were at Ugbrooke?’ ‘Did they wander freely over all the extensive parkland, or were they contained in smaller paddocks?’
In my last (note 213), I offered to my companions at the Tatler’s Waste-bin a list of all those landscapes of that fine man and lord-lieutenant of Huntingdon, Capability Brown, for which I had records of an active deer park.
This apple tree, growing from a rootstock in the pleasure ground at Langley, Bucks., is something of a rarity
Arising from certain lucubrations last evening, the Brown Advisor recognises that overmuch time has been devoted to the very specific questions of a very insistent few. The Advisor therefore dedicates the next notes to continuing our account of particular plants and their place in landscape (notes 92-95, 100, 107, 110, 111, 137, 146, et al.).
300 frequently asked questions about Brown, your queries answered, copyright The Brown Advisor.
I have in hand a response to my note 98, naturally concerning the landscapes of that non-pareil Capability Brown. The excellent Professor M of the Home Counties, close-shaven himself, takes the view that these were altogether smooth and had no wildness in them.
Monsieur B of Orléans has been in touch again, this time with a question about Copper Beech – did Capability Brown use it, and if so in what circumstances?
The estimable Mr W, currently employed as the hermit on the Wardour estate, asks me to forgive him for unburdening himself on me. He saw glimpses of Capability Brown’s ‘absolutely astonishing’ yet relatively little known, nay ‘anonymous’, proposal to address the asymmetries of Belvoir Castle on the television and wonders if a collection of photographs of his plans has been made, for comparative purposes.
Moccas Court from the church
Mr L of Muddiford has written to question Capability Brown’s role in the landscaping of Moccas Court. It is not that there is any doubt that he was paid for drawing up plans, but Mr L argues that Brown and his plans had no influence on the place.
One would expect parkland walks to be gravelled only if the wet could not be controlled in any other way. Grass was always softer to walk on.
I have been wondering how much progress we have made with the walks laid out by that joker and jester, the gardener Capability Brown, in his landscapes?
M. de Braun (no relation) writes from Paris to point out that besides Versailles, André Le Nôtre laid out the Champs Elysée.