Many have been the triumphs of Capability Brown’s tercentenary
Tag: Sherborne Castle
I have occasionally observed that after a dram or two, some men display a memory of astonishing acuity, correcting the smallest faults in a narrative with a pedantry entirely at odds with their slurred speech and loosely buttoned waistcoats.
Forgive me if in this note I resume my happy task of setting out the progress of enlightened thought in pursuit of that snappy salesman, the gardener, Capability Brown, through a consideration of Dr Sarah Rutherford’s new book Capability Brown and his landscape gardens.
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.
Fair enough Mr M, you have been locked in a cupboard somewhere in Dorset, you are not free to say where, and you will not be released until you have written a vibrant guide to the work carried out in that country by that wunderkind Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.
A plan for Sandleford Priory said to have been copied from Spyers
Many correspondents have returned to the question of mapping, the accuracy of maps, the date of maps where no date is provided, and the inconvenient tendency to overwrite maps, so one scarcely knows who has done what when.
Hornby Castle
Having been away on business I was sorry to come late to a communication from Dr L G of Hackney. It is always a pleasure to catch the good doctor’s lean figure through the frosted glass at the chemist’s, easily recognised by the tented chapeau that he wears when it rains for fear, as he puts it, that water may interfere with the working of his magnificent mind. He now wishes to put his considerable talents to the creation of a menagerie garden in the style of that great original, Capability Brown.
Preparing to wharf at Langley
I have read a note from Dr E of Fife asking how lakes can work as any kind of a boundary in a deer park, since deer can swim. Dear Dr E, it’s all in the way the lake edge is constructed – wharfed or beached.
A newly planted quick hedge or single oxter, having a fence down one side
I have received a note from Mr H. of Bromsgrove, a man whose opinions I greatly admire. Mr H. has read my notes on Croome, and having recently visited himself, he asks for my comments on the thorn hedges