Understanding historic park designs - HELM

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The landscape park (1730s–1800) From the early 18th century onward there developed a distinct English landscape aesthetic gradually overtaking the more formal aesthetic of the previous century. The key features of the English landscape style developed under Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown from the mid-18th century onward, although Brown often incorporated elements of mature formal planting in his designs rather than ‘sweeping’ it away. The whole was designed to give the impression of a natural landscape that could be appreciated particularly through the carefully composed series of views encountered during movement through the parkland on the main approach and the ridings. Considerable ingenuity and earth-moving went into Brown’s designs to create naturalistic vistas and to hide unwelcome features, such as the surface of the approach in views from the house. Many of these compositions are vulnerable to erosion by neglect or subsequent planting so that expert analysis is often required to identify them correctly. Principal features • Informal clumps of trees, single trees and woodland • Perimeter belts and rides • Irregular, natural-looking water bodies • Entrance drives and carefully contrived drives and rides • Informal but composed views from the main approach, from ridings around the park and from the house’s principal rooms and entrance • Designed views to eyecatchers such as a purpose-built structure or folly within the park, a clump of trees planted on a distant hill top or a neighbouring building • Ridings often extended outside the park into the surrounding estate to include views of farmland and more distant beauty spots • Ideally the house appeared to rise directly from the landscape park, but more often than not shrubbery walks or other discreet garden areas continued to be valued in the near neighbourhood of the house with kitchen gardens hidden out of sight • Tree planting in parkland largely used a restricted palette of predominantly native trees, such as oak, lime, beech and sweet chestnut, with only occasional use of exotics such as Cedar of Lebanon – specialist plantations of American and other exotic trees became increasingly popular towards the end of the 18th century • Plantations grown for timber, with oak extremely popular for its economic and symbolic value 3
• Perimeter planting mixed fast-growing species such as scots pine with the slower growing hardwoods • Sporting use of the park dictated the need for game-cover, with laurel, box, and broom frequently planted as an understorey in woodland. Fig 2 Stowe, Buckinghamshire, a highly influential landscape park. The ferme ornée (1740s–90s) The ferme ornée was a notable variation on the landscape park, affording landscape park features on a small scale and combining landscape compositions with a working farm. Most purely ornamental features and planting would be located around the perimeter route. Principal features • A perimeter ride or walk partly or wholly within a belt of planting of shrubs and trees • Views inwards from the perimeter across mixed agricultural land, featuring hedges and agricultural buildings such as barns and byres, sometimes ornamented or combined with ornamental structures. 4
Page 1 and 2: Golf in historic parks and landscap
Page 3: Fig 1 Deer grazing at Bushy Park, W
Page 7 and 8: Fig 3 Ashridge, Hertfordshire, gard
Page 9: Fig 4 A typical feature of a public

Understanding historic park designs - HELM

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