Landscape Parks and Country House Gardens from the Mid-Eighteenth Century
Informal garden design and the abandonment of geometrical and symmetrical lines within ornamental parkland was first pioneered by William Kent (d.1748) but Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was England’s most influential and best-known designer of informal ‘landscape parks’ from about 1750 to 1783.
Landscapes around houses were transformed or laid out from scratch in an idealised ‘natural’ manner with pasture ground running uninterrupted from the house and animals being kept at a distance by an unseen ha-ha (a sunken wall and ditch). This parkland comprised gently undulating grounds studded with clumps of trees and the world beyond was screened by plantation belts around the park edge. The key feature of interest was usually a lake in the middle distance, ideally contrived to resemble a great river curving through the park. Whilst buildings and temples were included within the landscape to add variety and interest, they were employed more sparingly than they had been in slightly earlier designed landscapes such as Stowe.
Typically, in a Brownian landscape the house was approached by a sweeping, curvilinear drive – such parks were meant to be experienced in motion – which wound through the extensive parkland, allowing the carriage-borne visitor to catch varied glimpses of the lake and house between the parkland clumps and plantations. Landscape parks are reckoned among England’s most important contributions to European civilization.
Edward Burke had a major influence on the aesthetic theories of the later C18. In ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’ (1757), he stated that ‘our gardens, if nothing else, declare ... that mathematical ideas are not the true measure of beauty’. He found the basic aesthetic categories to be the Beautiful and the Sublime. Capability Brown’s serpentine lines and aesthetic objectives were essentially ‘Beautiful’ in Burke’s sense. The Sublime was associated with terror, darkness, greatness of size and irregularity of line. Towards the end of the C18 more of these qualities were introduced into gardens after theorists such as Sir Uvedale Price had identified an intermediate aesthetic category, known as the Picturesque, between the Beautiful and the Sublime.
The true pioneer of the Picturesque was William Gilpin (1724 -1804) whose publications linked the enjoyment of pictures and the appreciation of scenery by setting out a way of viewing landscapes and deciding on their capability of being formed into pictures. His essentially practical ideas were later developed by Uvedale Price (d.1829) and Richard Payne Knight (d.1824) who argued that sweeping lawns, serpentine lakes and parkland clumps were too contrived to appear natural. Instead, influenced by their home surroundings - Foxley and Downton Gorge in Herefordshire - they promoted landscapes which were wild, rugged and varied.
Another strand contributing to C18 landscape design was the concept of the ferme ornée, first described by Stephen Switzer in 1715, but which influenced gardens created in the mid C18 and later. Important examples included the Leasowes in the West Midlands, Enville in Staffordshire and Woburn Farm in Surrey. Typical features were walks beyond the pleasure grounds, ‘garden arms’ extending into the countryside and ornamental buildings. In its small scale and use of ephemeral garden artefacts, the ferme ornée has some affinity with the concept of the early-mid C18 ‘Rococo Garden’.
By the end of the C18, landscape parks were attracting criticism on the grounds that they lacked interest around the house. Humphry Repton (1752-1818), famous for his before-and-after ‘Red Book’ proposals, re-introduced raised terraces around the house to separate it from the grounds beyond. Sometimes these terraces were decorated with elaborate flower urns.
From the early C19, pleasure grounds comprising flower beds, lawns, shrubberies and walks, sometimes with edged pools, summer houses, statuary and other architectural features, again became commonplace between the house and park in a style which became known as the ‘Gardenesque’. This term was coined in 1832 by the highly influential horticulturalist John Claudius Loudon.
As a result of increased plant availability, planting schemes became more ambitious in the Mid-Victorian period, including elaborate formal bedding schemes. From around the 1840s historically-inspired revivalist gardens became ever-more popular, with W.A. Nesfield (d.1881) being the most influential designer. Complex French-style parterres with box and coloured gravels were laid out alongside the main garden fronts of houses, often combined with Italianate terraces, balustrading and stairways. Trentham (Staffordshire; registered Grade II*) of the 1830s and Osborne (Isle of Wight; registered Grade II*) of the 1850s were among the most ambitious of many large-scale schemes.
On the Isle of Wight, the fashion for informal landscape parks was adopted by local gentry in the later C18 in line with the rest of the country and the Island was also influenced by the other fashions in garden design described above.
The largest and most significant landscape park to be created on the Island in the late C18 was at Appuldurcombe where the landscape was redesigned on a grand scale by Sir Richard Worsley from 1772. There is evidence that Capability Brown provided a plan which influenced the later stages of the design.
Appuldurcombe provided a large canvas on which Sir Richard Worsley could execute his landscape designs. The house lay on gently sloping land enfolded by the steep slopes and high ground of the South Wight Downland to the west. This block of downland provided magnificent views across the Island and beyond and was an obvious place for Sir Richard to site an obelisk in memory of his great-uncle. The designed landscape stretched eastward beyond the confines of the park to take in St Martin’s Down where a folly known as Cook’s Castle was erected.
Appuldurcombe Park was approached from the north through the monumental structure of the Freemantle Gate, possibly by James Wyatt (LB II*). A serpentine drive approached the house indirectly before winding up onto Appuldurcombe Down behind the house. Unusually, this downland was incorporated within the park and encircled by a stone wall covering a large area.
The landscape design at Appuldurcombe was modified in the early C19 in line with contemporary taste when a raised inner park enclosed with a ha-ha and railing (LB II) was created around the house.
Much of the framework of Appuldurcombe’s designed landscape (NHL II) survives today and can be viewed from public footpaths, including features such as the Freemantle Gate (SM, LB II*), lodges (some listed), the remains of the obelisk on Appuldurcombe Down (LB II), stretches of the deer park wall (LB II) and the walled kitchen garden sited some distance away from the house. Sadly, the folly of Cook’s Castle does not survive. The house at Appuldurcombe (LB I, SM), in English Heritage Guardianship, is unoccupied and only partially roofed.
At Nunwell (NHL II) a concern to create a unified designed landscape was apparent as early as 1735 when the east wing of the house (LB II*) was rebuilt to face the C17 garden.
By 1768 the present east facade, with its full-height canted bay, had been added to overlook the newly created park. An estate map of 1773 confirms that Sir John Oglander’s C17 garden had been swept away and that the landscape park now came right up to the east side of the house.
The park was considerably extended to the north-east and north-west of the house by Sir William Oglander and reached its greatest extent in 1815. By 1823 a formal space beside the house had been delineated by a ha-ha although the present formal east garden, enclosed by a balustrade surmounting the ha-ha, appears to date from the late C19. This garden provided views out over the parkland and beyond towards the Solent and Brading Haven.
Today, the pleasure gardens at Nunwell survive as does a walled kitchen garden of late C18 date (LB II) and parkland with scattered trees to the east of the house. The wider estate also retains a parkland appearance although in agricultural use.
At two of the Island’s country houses, Northcourt and Priory Bay, there were small landscape parks which formed only one element within late C18 landscape designs strongly influenced by the Picturesque movement.
The grounds of Northcourt at Shorwell (NHL II) were originally laid out in the C17 (see Section 12.4). They were remodelled from 1795 by Elizabeth Bull. Her design contained elements typical of a ferme ornée such as an ornamental dairy and a circuit walk beyond the pleasure grounds. Other elements such as the bath house, the stream fed by a chalk spring, the rustic alpine bridge, a summer house with knucklebone floor and the ‘temple of the sun’ reflected the picturesque garden style pioneered by Richard Payne Knight at Downton Gorge. The garden at Northcourt is well-described in early C19 accounts.
A walled garden at Northcourt (LB II) is indicated on the 1769 Andrews map and the 1793 OS shows three walled enclosures to the northwest of the house which roughly corresponds with the site of the kitchen gardens in the C19 and today.
Today, the historical design layers of several different periods still survive within the garden at Northcourt although not all recorded elements survive to the present day.
Northcourt is of particular significance in providing perhaps the only example on the Island of a large inland country house garden influenced by the Picturesque movement.
The Priory (LB II), on the coast between Seaview and St Helens, was improved by Sir Nash Grose from 1776. There are many late C18 and early C19 descriptions and illustrations of the property which emphasise its winding cliff-edge woodland walks, sea views and ‘ancient watch tower’. The framework of the design still exists including the area of the modestly-sized landscape park.
The value of the designed landscape (LL) is enhanced by published letters of the Grose family detailing improvement to the house and grounds from 1776 and by the many late18th century/early 19th century descriptions and illustrations of the property. The aesthetic quality of the garden design was explicitly assessed by late 18th century writers.
The nationally important landscape designer Humphry Repton (1752-1818) is known to have worked on the Isle of Wight even though no ‘red books’ have survived for any of his Island commissions. He was in partnership with the architect John Nash from 1795 to 1800. This is of particular interest in connection with the Isle of Wight since Nash was involved in designing a variety of local buildings and built himself a country house at East Cowes Castle.
At St John’s, Ryde, Repton was involved in remodelling the grounds from about 1797.
The land from which St John’s Estate was created was originally called Troublefield. In 1769 Colonel Amherst had a house built on the land and changed the name to St John’s. In 1796 the estate was sold to Edward Simeon.
Repton’s work at St John’s included the removal of hedge boundaries to create a parkland setting, the creation of paths and seating to take advantage of the sea vistas and the creation of a new approach through ornamental plantations to the house and then on to connect to Appley Road.
At the entrance to this new drive (which today is the junction between St John’s Wood Road and St John’s Hill) he built two clematis-covered stone thatched cottages with rustic wooden supports which are now lost. These cottages are described by Repton in his book on Theory and Practice published in 1803.
Not all commentators viewed Repton’s self-consciously picturesque cottages with approval. A contemporary diarist, the Rev. William Norris, recorded ‘there is too much ornament and Finery in these Cottages to render them pleasing or harmonious’.
Repton was responsible for the extension of the turnpike road to the ‘Marina’, this being a specially built structure for bathing and admiring the seascape. The building is shown in an engraving used as the frontispiece to Cooke’s 1808 ‘New Picture of the Isle of Wight’ where it is described as ‘the pretty Gothic, or Moorish Castle called the Marina’. This building no longer survives.
A plan of 1803 held at the Isle of Wight County Record Office provides detailed information on the St John’s Estate at this period. The Estate is divided into three sections, the first being St John’s House, pleasure grounds and meadows (169 acres); and the second and third being Preston and Westridge (137 acres). The whole estate is recorded as being 307 acres. The plan shows a deer park fence separating the ‘pleasure grounds’ around St John’s House from the ‘meadow’ to the north.
In the mid C19 the St John’s estate was split up and various new properties and developments with attached grounds were created. These included remodelled pleasure grounds around St John’s House itself, the private but communal St John’s Park serving local villas and the Apley Tower (later Appley Towers) estate.
Much of the St John’s estate as it existed in the late C18 has now been built over and most of Repton’s landscaping has disappeared. However the house (LB II), now a school, still survives as do the grounds around the house. Some original parkland tree planting from the St John’s estate may still exist within the former golf course of Appley Park.
At Norris Castle, East Cowes, a castellated gothic-style mansion with views of the Solent (LB I) was built in 1799 for Lord Henry Seymour. Humphfry Repton is thought to have been involved in designing the grounds.
Norris Castle is located at the northernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. The south- western half of the site occupies level ground which falls north-eastwards, gently at first and then precipitously to the Solent. The woodland and meadowland of the estate merge with that of the neighbouring Osborne estate.
The framework of the parkland survives (NHL II) and provides a spacious setting for the dramatic, castellated main building designed by the architect James Wyatt. The enclosing walls of a remarkable ferme ornée and walled kitchen garden designed as a Norman castle by James Wyatt also survive (LB I).
Norris Castle is of particular significance on the Isle of Wight as being possibly the only local designed landscape where significant physical evidence for Repton’s work appears to survive although Swainston may also provide some evidence.
East Cowes Castle was built by the architect John Nash as his Island residence in 1798. Repton was Nash’s business partner at this time and is likely to have been involved in designing the grounds. At a later date William Aiton, the Royal Gardener, sent exotic plants from Kew for the garden which may have had ornamental shrubberies in the Regency style. East Cowes Castle was demolished in the 1960s and its grounds were subsequently developed.
John Nash also had a country estate at Hamstead on the northern coast near Shalfleet. His house was demolished in World War II (although there is a late C19 property and garden at nearby Hamstead Grange) but the estate has not been fully investigated for surviving designed elements.
Humphfry Repton was consulted about the landscape at Swainston (NHL II) in c.1811 and it has been suggested that the parkland to the south of the Swainston House (LB II*) - including a small lake and bridge (LB II) - may have been his work although the area of parkland to the north of the house incorporates some earlier elements (see Section 12.5). An ornamental temple (LB II) is located to the south of Swainston House on a steep downland slope against a backdrop of woodland and would originally have been visible from the main house as well as providing views towards the Solent. This temple may be the work of Repton since he published an illustration of the building in the 1809 edition of Peacock’s Polite Repository. Today, Swainston retains its parkland, woodland, lake and bridge as well as the temple facade although parts of the site are farmland.
New landowners came to the Island at the end of the C18 and created designed landscapes from scratch. Elsewhere, landscape parks were created, enlarged or modified to complement existing properties.
At Northwood Park, in West Cowes, a new house was built for the financier George Ward in 1799 on the site of an earlier house called Belle Vue. Pleasure grounds and parkland encompassing 216 acres were developed from about 1800 - 1818 and this development can be traced in contemporary documents and maps. Ornamental lodges and a toll house were built in and around the park (of which Debourne Lodge, Church Lodge and the Round House still survive). These were designed by George Repton, son of Humphfry, who worked in the office of John Nash and by Nash himself. Nash also carried out other work at Northwood House and rebuilt the Church of St Mary beside the park where Nash’s tower still survives.
Northwood House (LB II*) was rebuilt in the 1830s and 1840s and the remodeled pleasure grounds were planted with non-native trees including cedars, cork oaks, other semi-deciduous oaks and holm oaks, possibly influenced by the planting at Osborne. The outer park was developed in the C20 but the pleasure grounds survive as a park (LL) owned by the Northwood House Charitable Trust and open to the public.
There was a house on the site of Fernhill, near Wootton from at least 1769 but the landscape park seems to have been created by Thomas Orde Powlett, 1st Baron Bolton and Governor of the Isle of Wight from 1791. The grounds were alleged to be ‘amongst the finest in the Island’ with notable plantations and contained a folly described as a ‘Druid’s temple’ Fernhill House was destroyed by fire in the C20 and only fragmentary remains of the designed landscape survive, including a wooded drive, icehouse and the remains of a circular walled garden.
A hunting box built at Westover, near Calbourne, in the 1760s or 1770s was located on the northern edge of the West Wight Chalk Downland. The 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawings show a small park.
In the early C19 the house at Westover (LB II*) was rebuilt by John Nash. At this time the pleasure grounds were remodelled and extended, as was the parkland beyond.
The designed landscape extended beyond the south edge of the park as far as Westover Plantation on the north slope of the downland ridge. Several thatched cottages ornés were erected as lodges around the edge of the park, one being located beside the main entrance (LB II) where an ornamental bridge (LB II) carried the drive past a small ornamental lake. A walled kitchen garden (LB II) was also built in the early C19 within the pleasure grounds.
The pleasure grounds, walled kitchen garden and the framework of the park survive at Westover (NHL) although some of the parkland is in agricultural use.
At Gatcombe Park, to the south of Carisbrooke, the 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawing indicates a much larger area of parkland than existed in 1843 when an estate map depicts a somewhat remodelled landscape with the public highway moved further to the east to give greater privacy within a consolidated area of parkland.
Today, Gatcombe House (LB II*) with its associated parkland containing a small lake (LL) form a picturesque composition close to the parish church and backed by woodland.
At Brook House (visited by Henry VII in 1499) the 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawing shows gardens and a small landscape park surrounding the house, which lay close to Brook village between Brook Down and the south-west coast. The park was expanded after the Seely family purchased the estate in 1850. A heart-shaped earthwork surrounding the garden to the south of the house is shown on the 1st edition 25 inch Ordnance Survey of 1863-74, and perhaps defined the original pleasure grounds of the manor house. Today, Brook House (LB II) is in divided ownership, but some remains of the park and gardens (LL) survive in various ownerships, including an enclosing earthwork (surmounted in places by a stone wall) and a walled kitchen garden. A late C19 - early C20 water feature also survives.
Afton Manor in Freshwater Parish was another long-established West Wight estate. John Andrews’ map of 1769 shows a walled kitchen garden but parkland to the south of the house was created in the C19, as were ornamental lakes to the NE of the house . In the late C20 parkland trees were lost to Dutch Elm Disease and other causes. Today, Afton Manor House survives (LB II*) but much of the parkland is in agricultural use although the enclosing shelter belt survives. The walled kitchen garden (LBII) and lakes are also extant.
In the mid C19 the Island’s popularity was enhanced when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert purchased Osborne, just outside East Cowes. The estate overlooks Osborne Bay and there is a long vista from the house through parkland to the Solent.
Osborne had been landscaped by Robert Pope Blachford in the 1770s but after Osborne was purchased by the royal family in 1845 the grounds were greatly extended and completely remodelled whilst the house (LB I) was rebuilt.
Prince Albert was closely involved in the design of Osborne House, the layout of the pleasure grounds and parkland and the running of the wider estate.
The gardens close to the house at Osborne exemplified Victorian formality in garden design with Italianate terraces, balustrading and stairways and formal bedding schemes.
The use of exotic specimen trees was a typical element of Victorian design. Many memorial or commemorative trees, mainly exotic species and conifers, were planted at Osborne in the pleasure grounds by royal visitors or dignitaries. A full list of these memorial plantings exists and many survive to the present day.
The landscape park at Osborne, greatly enlarged after 1845, was more traditional in style than the pleasure grounds, containing mainly native tree species.
The late C18 walled kitchen garden at Osborne was retained but with a heightened east wall and the portico from the C18 house (LB II) was re- positioned to provide a gateway into the garden. This garden was for ‘display’ and also provided cut flowers for the house. It never grew common vegetables, which were provided either by train from royal estates and other sources on the mainland or from the increasing, surrounding farm estate on the Isle of Wight.
Osborne is of high national significance as a designed landscape (NHL II*), both exemplifying contemporary trends in garden design but also reinforcing these trends due to the influence of the royal family.
The designed landscape at Osborne is conserved and managed to a very high standard by English Heritage. At a national level, it represents an unusually complete example of a large Victorian country house garden with associated parkland.
Barton Manor, adjacent to Osborne, was purchased by Victoria and Albert and its Jacobean manor house (LB II) was partially rebuilt. The ‘pleasure grounds and wilderness’ shown in a Winchester College survey of 1776 were remodeled to include a terraced garden, ornamental ponds and a cork oak plantation but the C18 walled kitchen garden was retained. Today the main elements of the Victorian designed landscape survive with some later overlays (LL).
The royal family built up a large farming estate outside the landscaped grounds of Osborne. The houses on the estate, if not the gardens, show a strong royal influence in design.
The Island has several examples of landscape parks of relatively late date which were first created in the C19.
Parkland was first laid out at Farringford in Freshwater Parish before it became the home of Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1853 .
William Henry Dawes remodelled an existing house at Wydcombe in 1856 and created a landscape park (LL) from farmland. Wydcombe lies in Niton & Whitwell Parish in the south of the Island and the estate is enfolded by the lower slopes of St Catherine’s Down to the west and Head Down to the south. The parkland which lies to the north-east of the main house now has an open aspect since many of the scattered trees which are shown on the 1st edition 6 inch Ordnance Survey map of 1862-3 have vanished. A thatched lodge (LB II) survives at the entrance to the parkland as do the stone walls of the kitchen garden.
Weston Manor (LB II*), now in in Totland Parish, was designed for W G Ward by the architects Goldie & Child and built from 1870-1872. Ward, the owner of Northwood Park in Cowes, was a convert to Roman Catholicism and his new house had a chapel attached. The house and grounds were laid out within former farmland on a previously bare hilltop site. There was a walled kitchen garden to the east of the house with pleasure grounds and parkland on the north side. The grounds were protected on three sides by shelter belts formed by the planting of many pines and other trees but the north side of the parkland was left open to allow views out from the north side of the house towards Hurst Castle across the Solent. Papers from Ward's estate office, now in the Isle of Wight Record Office, include a plan of the kitchen garden and orchard, lists of plants and progress reports on plantings. Today the framework of the parkland and inner grounds with the remains of the walled kitchen garden survives (LL).
Strathwell (LB II) is a stone mansion of mid C19 date on the site of an earlier house near Whitwell, built for the Vicar of Whitwell on his retirement . The house is shown with a small area of pleasure grounds and a straight drive on the 6 inch Ordnance Survey map of 1862-3 but the park is first marked on the 25 inch Ordnance Survey of 1898 which also shows a lodge and a winding drive to the house.
Informal garden design and the abandonment of geometrical and symmetrical lines within ornamental parkland was first pioneered by William Kent (d.1748) but Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was England’s most influential and best-known designer of informal ‘landscape parks’ from about 1750 to 1783.
Landscapes around houses were transformed or laid out from scratch in an idealised ‘natural’ manner with pasture ground running uninterrupted from the house and animals being kept at a distance by an unseen ha-ha (a sunken wall and ditch). This parkland comprised gently undulating grounds studded with clumps of trees and the world beyond was screened by plantation belts around the park edge. The key feature of interest was usually a lake in the middle distance, ideally contrived to resemble a great river curving through the park. Whilst buildings and temples were included within the landscape to add variety and interest, they were employed more sparingly than they had been in slightly earlier designed landscapes such as Stowe.
Typically, in a Brownian landscape the house was approached by a sweeping, curvilinear drive – such parks were meant to be experienced in motion – which wound through the extensive parkland, allowing the carriage-borne visitor to catch varied glimpses of the lake and house between the parkland clumps and plantations. Landscape parks are reckoned among England’s most important contributions to European civilization.
Edward Burke had a major influence on the aesthetic theories of the later C18. In ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’ (1757), he stated that ‘our gardens, if nothing else, declare ... that mathematical ideas are not the true measure of beauty’. He found the basic aesthetic categories to be the Beautiful and the Sublime. Capability Brown’s serpentine lines and aesthetic objectives were essentially ‘Beautiful’ in Burke’s sense. The Sublime was associated with terror, darkness, greatness of size and irregularity of line. Towards the end of the C18 more of these qualities were introduced into gardens after theorists such as Sir Uvedale Price had identified an intermediate aesthetic category, known as the Picturesque, between the Beautiful and the Sublime.
The true pioneer of the Picturesque was William Gilpin (1724 -1804) whose publications linked the enjoyment of pictures and the appreciation of scenery by setting out a way of viewing landscapes and deciding on their capability of being formed into pictures. His essentially practical ideas were later developed by Uvedale Price (d.1829) and Richard Payne Knight (d.1824) who argued that sweeping lawns, serpentine lakes and parkland clumps were too contrived to appear natural. Instead, influenced by their home surroundings - Foxley and Downton Gorge in Herefordshire - they promoted landscapes which were wild, rugged and varied.
Another strand contributing to C18 landscape design was the concept of the ferme ornée, first described by Stephen Switzer in 1715, but which influenced gardens created in the mid C18 and later. Important examples included the Leasowes in the West Midlands, Enville in Staffordshire and Woburn Farm in Surrey. Typical features were walks beyond the pleasure grounds, ‘garden arms’ extending into the countryside and ornamental buildings. In its small scale and use of ephemeral garden artefacts, the ferme ornée has some affinity with the concept of the early-mid C18 ‘Rococo Garden’.
By the end of the C18, landscape parks were attracting criticism on the grounds that they lacked interest around the house. Humphry Repton (1752-1818), famous for his before-and-after ‘Red Book’ proposals, re-introduced raised terraces around the house to separate it from the grounds beyond. Sometimes these terraces were decorated with elaborate flower urns.
From the early C19, pleasure grounds comprising flower beds, lawns, shrubberies and walks, sometimes with edged pools, summer houses, statuary and other architectural features, again became commonplace between the house and park in a style which became known as the ‘Gardenesque’. This term was coined in 1832 by the highly influential horticulturalist John Claudius Loudon.
As a result of increased plant availability, planting schemes became more ambitious in the Mid-Victorian period, including elaborate formal bedding schemes. From around the 1840s historically-inspired revivalist gardens became ever-more popular, with W.A. Nesfield (d.1881) being the most influential designer. Complex French-style parterres with box and coloured gravels were laid out alongside the main garden fronts of houses, often combined with Italianate terraces, balustrading and stairways. Trentham (Staffordshire; registered Grade II*) of the 1830s and Osborne (Isle of Wight; registered Grade II*) of the 1850s were among the most ambitious of many large-scale schemes.
On the Isle of Wight, the fashion for informal landscape parks was adopted by local gentry in the later C18 in line with the rest of the country and the Island was also influenced by the other fashions in garden design described above.
The largest and most significant landscape park to be created on the Island in the late C18 was at Appuldurcombe where the landscape was redesigned on a grand scale by Sir Richard Worsley from 1772. There is evidence that Capability Brown provided a plan which influenced the later stages of the design.
Appuldurcombe provided a large canvas on which Sir Richard Worsley could execute his landscape designs. The house lay on gently sloping land enfolded by the steep slopes and high ground of the South Wight Downland to the west. This block of downland provided magnificent views across the Island and beyond and was an obvious place for Sir Richard to site an obelisk in memory of his great-uncle. The designed landscape stretched eastward beyond the confines of the park to take in St Martin’s Down where a folly known as Cook’s Castle was erected.
Appuldurcombe Park was approached from the north through the monumental structure of the Freemantle Gate, possibly by James Wyatt (LB II*). A serpentine drive approached the house indirectly before winding up onto Appuldurcombe Down behind the house. Unusually, this downland was incorporated within the park and encircled by a stone wall covering a large area.
The landscape design at Appuldurcombe was modified in the early C19 in line with contemporary taste when a raised inner park enclosed with a ha-ha and railing (LB II) was created around the house.
Much of the framework of Appuldurcombe’s designed landscape (NHL II) survives today and can be viewed from public footpaths, including features such as the Freemantle Gate (SM, LB II*), lodges (some listed), the remains of the obelisk on Appuldurcombe Down (LB II), stretches of the deer park wall (LB II) and the walled kitchen garden sited some distance away from the house. Sadly, the folly of Cook’s Castle does not survive. The house at Appuldurcombe (LB I, SM), in English Heritage Guardianship, is unoccupied and only partially roofed.
At Nunwell (NHL II) a concern to create a unified designed landscape was apparent as early as 1735 when the east wing of the house (LB II*) was rebuilt to face the C17 garden.
By 1768 the present east facade, with its full-height canted bay, had been added to overlook the newly created park. An estate map of 1773 confirms that Sir John Oglander’s C17 garden had been swept away and that the landscape park now came right up to the east side of the house.
The park was considerably extended to the north-east and north-west of the house by Sir William Oglander and reached its greatest extent in 1815. By 1823 a formal space beside the house had been delineated by a ha-ha although the present formal east garden, enclosed by a balustrade surmounting the ha-ha, appears to date from the late C19. This garden provided views out over the parkland and beyond towards the Solent and Brading Haven.
Today, the pleasure gardens at Nunwell survive as does a walled kitchen garden of late C18 date (LB II) and parkland with scattered trees to the east of the house. The wider estate also retains a parkland appearance although in agricultural use.
At two of the Island’s country houses, Northcourt and Priory Bay, there were small landscape parks which formed only one element within late C18 landscape designs strongly influenced by the Picturesque movement.
The grounds of Northcourt at Shorwell (NHL II) were originally laid out in the C17 (see Section 12.4). They were remodelled from 1795 by Elizabeth Bull. Her design contained elements typical of a ferme ornée such as an ornamental dairy and a circuit walk beyond the pleasure grounds. Other elements such as the bath house, the stream fed by a chalk spring, the rustic alpine bridge, a summer house with knucklebone floor and the ‘temple of the sun’ reflected the picturesque garden style pioneered by Richard Payne Knight at Downton Gorge. The garden at Northcourt is well-described in early C19 accounts.
A walled garden at Northcourt (LB II) is indicated on the 1769 Andrews map and the 1793 OS shows three walled enclosures to the northwest of the house which roughly corresponds with the site of the kitchen gardens in the C19 and today.
Today, the historical design layers of several different periods still survive within the garden at Northcourt although not all recorded elements survive to the present day.
Northcourt is of particular significance in providing perhaps the only example on the Island of a large inland country house garden influenced by the Picturesque movement.
The Priory (LB II), on the coast between Seaview and St Helens, was improved by Sir Nash Grose from 1776. There are many late C18 and early C19 descriptions and illustrations of the property which emphasise its winding cliff-edge woodland walks, sea views and ‘ancient watch tower’. The framework of the design still exists including the area of the modestly-sized landscape park.
The value of the designed landscape (LL) is enhanced by published letters of the Grose family detailing improvement to the house and grounds from 1776 and by the many late18th century/early 19th century descriptions and illustrations of the property. The aesthetic quality of the garden design was explicitly assessed by late 18th century writers.
The nationally important landscape designer Humphry Repton (1752-1818) is known to have worked on the Isle of Wight even though no ‘red books’ have survived for any of his Island commissions. He was in partnership with the architect John Nash from 1795 to 1800. This is of particular interest in connection with the Isle of Wight since Nash was involved in designing a variety of local buildings and built himself a country house at East Cowes Castle.
At St John’s, Ryde, Repton was involved in remodelling the grounds from about 1797.
The land from which St John’s Estate was created was originally called Troublefield. In 1769 Colonel Amherst had a house built on the land and changed the name to St John’s. In 1796 the estate was sold to Edward Simeon.
Repton’s work at St John’s included the removal of hedge boundaries to create a parkland setting, the creation of paths and seating to take advantage of the sea vistas and the creation of a new approach through ornamental plantations to the house and then on to connect to Appley Road.
At the entrance to this new drive (which today is the junction between St John’s Wood Road and St John’s Hill) he built two clematis-covered stone thatched cottages with rustic wooden supports which are now lost. These cottages are described by Repton in his book on Theory and Practice published in 1803.
Not all commentators viewed Repton’s self-consciously picturesque cottages with approval. A contemporary diarist, the Rev. William Norris, recorded ‘there is too much ornament and Finery in these Cottages to render them pleasing or harmonious’.
Repton was responsible for the extension of the turnpike road to the ‘Marina’, this being a specially built structure for bathing and admiring the seascape. The building is shown in an engraving used as the frontispiece to Cooke’s 1808 ‘New Picture of the Isle of Wight’ where it is described as ‘the pretty Gothic, or Moorish Castle called the Marina’. This building no longer survives.
A plan of 1803 held at the Isle of Wight County Record Office provides detailed information on the St John’s Estate at this period. The Estate is divided into three sections, the first being St John’s House, pleasure grounds and meadows (169 acres); and the second and third being Preston and Westridge (137 acres). The whole estate is recorded as being 307 acres. The plan shows a deer park fence separating the ‘pleasure grounds’ around St John’s House from the ‘meadow’ to the north.
In the mid C19 the St John’s estate was split up and various new properties and developments with attached grounds were created. These included remodelled pleasure grounds around St John’s House itself, the private but communal St John’s Park serving local villas and the Apley Tower (later Appley Towers) estate.
Much of the St John’s estate as it existed in the late C18 has now been built over and most of Repton’s landscaping has disappeared. However the house (LB II), now a school, still survives as do the grounds around the house. Some original parkland tree planting from the St John’s estate may still exist within the former golf course of Appley Park.
At Norris Castle, East Cowes, a castellated gothic-style mansion with views of the Solent (LB I) was built in 1799 for Lord Henry Seymour. Humphfry Repton is thought to have been involved in designing the grounds.
Norris Castle is located at the northernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. The south- western half of the site occupies level ground which falls north-eastwards, gently at first and then precipitously to the Solent. The woodland and meadowland of the estate merge with that of the neighbouring Osborne estate.
The framework of the parkland survives (NHL II) and provides a spacious setting for the dramatic, castellated main building designed by the architect James Wyatt. The enclosing walls of a remarkable ferme ornée and walled kitchen garden designed as a Norman castle by James Wyatt also survive (LB I).
Norris Castle is of particular significance on the Isle of Wight as being possibly the only local designed landscape where significant physical evidence for Repton’s work appears to survive although Swainston may also provide some evidence.
East Cowes Castle was built by the architect John Nash as his Island residence in 1798. Repton was Nash’s business partner at this time and is likely to have been involved in designing the grounds. At a later date William Aiton, the Royal Gardener, sent exotic plants from Kew for the garden which may have had ornamental shrubberies in the Regency style. East Cowes Castle was demolished in the 1960s and its grounds were subsequently developed.
John Nash also had a country estate at Hamstead on the northern coast near Shalfleet. His house was demolished in World War II (although there is a late C19 property and garden at nearby Hamstead Grange) but the estate has not been fully investigated for surviving designed elements.
Humphfry Repton was consulted about the landscape at Swainston (NHL II) in c.1811 and it has been suggested that the parkland to the south of the Swainston House (LB II*) - including a small lake and bridge (LB II) - may have been his work although the area of parkland to the north of the house incorporates some earlier elements (see Section 12.5). An ornamental temple (LB II) is located to the south of Swainston House on a steep downland slope against a backdrop of woodland and would originally have been visible from the main house as well as providing views towards the Solent. This temple may be the work of Repton since he published an illustration of the building in the 1809 edition of Peacock’s Polite Repository. Today, Swainston retains its parkland, woodland, lake and bridge as well as the temple facade although parts of the site are farmland.
New landowners came to the Island at the end of the C18 and created designed landscapes from scratch. Elsewhere, landscape parks were created, enlarged or modified to complement existing properties.
At Northwood Park, in West Cowes, a new house was built for the financier George Ward in 1799 on the site of an earlier house called Belle Vue. Pleasure grounds and parkland encompassing 216 acres were developed from about 1800 - 1818 and this development can be traced in contemporary documents and maps. Ornamental lodges and a toll house were built in and around the park (of which Debourne Lodge, Church Lodge and the Round House still survive). These were designed by George Repton, son of Humphfry, who worked in the office of John Nash and by Nash himself. Nash also carried out other work at Northwood House and rebuilt the Church of St Mary beside the park where Nash’s tower still survives.
Northwood House (LB II*) was rebuilt in the 1830s and 1840s and the remodeled pleasure grounds were planted with non-native trees including cedars, cork oaks, other semi-deciduous oaks and holm oaks, possibly influenced by the planting at Osborne. The outer park was developed in the C20 but the pleasure grounds survive as a park (LL) owned by the Northwood House Charitable Trust and open to the public.
There was a house on the site of Fernhill, near Wootton from at least 1769 but the landscape park seems to have been created by Thomas Orde Powlett, 1st Baron Bolton and Governor of the Isle of Wight from 1791. The grounds were alleged to be ‘amongst the finest in the Island’ with notable plantations and contained a folly described as a ‘Druid’s temple’ Fernhill House was destroyed by fire in the C20 and only fragmentary remains of the designed landscape survive, including a wooded drive, icehouse and the remains of a circular walled garden.
A hunting box built at Westover, near Calbourne, in the 1760s or 1770s was located on the northern edge of the West Wight Chalk Downland. The 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawings show a small park.
In the early C19 the house at Westover (LB II*) was rebuilt by John Nash. At this time the pleasure grounds were remodelled and extended, as was the parkland beyond.
The designed landscape extended beyond the south edge of the park as far as Westover Plantation on the north slope of the downland ridge. Several thatched cottages ornés were erected as lodges around the edge of the park, one being located beside the main entrance (LB II) where an ornamental bridge (LB II) carried the drive past a small ornamental lake. A walled kitchen garden (LB II) was also built in the early C19 within the pleasure grounds.
The pleasure grounds, walled kitchen garden and the framework of the park survive at Westover (NHL) although some of the parkland is in agricultural use.
At Gatcombe Park, to the south of Carisbrooke, the 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawing indicates a much larger area of parkland than existed in 1843 when an estate map depicts a somewhat remodelled landscape with the public highway moved further to the east to give greater privacy within a consolidated area of parkland.
Today, Gatcombe House (LB II*) with its associated parkland containing a small lake (LL) form a picturesque composition close to the parish church and backed by woodland.
At Brook House (visited by Henry VII in 1499) the 1793-4 Ordnance Survey drawing shows gardens and a small landscape park surrounding the house, which lay close to Brook village between Brook Down and the south-west coast. The park was expanded after the Seely family purchased the estate in 1850. A heart-shaped earthwork surrounding the garden to the south of the house is shown on the 1st edition 25 inch Ordnance Survey of 1863-74, and perhaps defined the original pleasure grounds of the manor house. Today, Brook House (LB II) is in divided ownership, but some remains of the park and gardens (LL) survive in various ownerships, including an enclosing earthwork (surmounted in places by a stone wall) and a walled kitchen garden. A late C19 - early C20 water feature also survives.
Afton Manor in Freshwater Parish was another long-established West Wight estate. John Andrews’ map of 1769 shows a walled kitchen garden but parkland to the south of the house was created in the C19, as were ornamental lakes to the NE of the house . In the late C20 parkland trees were lost to Dutch Elm Disease and other causes. Today, Afton Manor House survives (LB II*) but much of the parkland is in agricultural use although the enclosing shelter belt survives. The walled kitchen garden (LBII) and lakes are also extant.
In the mid C19 the Island’s popularity was enhanced when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert purchased Osborne, just outside East Cowes. The estate overlooks Osborne Bay and there is a long vista from the house through parkland to the Solent.
Osborne had been landscaped by Robert Pope Blachford in the 1770s but after Osborne was purchased by the royal family in 1845 the grounds were greatly extended and completely remodelled whilst the house (LB I) was rebuilt.
Prince Albert was closely involved in the design of Osborne House, the layout of the pleasure grounds and parkland and the running of the wider estate.
The gardens close to the house at Osborne exemplified Victorian formality in garden design with Italianate terraces, balustrading and stairways and formal bedding schemes.
The use of exotic specimen trees was a typical element of Victorian design. Many memorial or commemorative trees, mainly exotic species and conifers, were planted at Osborne in the pleasure grounds by royal visitors or dignitaries. A full list of these memorial plantings exists and many survive to the present day.
The landscape park at Osborne, greatly enlarged after 1845, was more traditional in style than the pleasure grounds, containing mainly native tree species.
The late C18 walled kitchen garden at Osborne was retained but with a heightened east wall and the portico from the C18 house (LB II) was re- positioned to provide a gateway into the garden. This garden was for ‘display’ and also provided cut flowers for the house. It never grew common vegetables, which were provided either by train from royal estates and other sources on the mainland or from the increasing, surrounding farm estate on the Isle of Wight.
Osborne is of high national significance as a designed landscape (NHL II*), both exemplifying contemporary trends in garden design but also reinforcing these trends due to the influence of the royal family.
The designed landscape at Osborne is conserved and managed to a very high standard by English Heritage. At a national level, it represents an unusually complete example of a large Victorian country house garden with associated parkland.
Barton Manor, adjacent to Osborne, was purchased by Victoria and Albert and its Jacobean manor house (LB II) was partially rebuilt. The ‘pleasure grounds and wilderness’ shown in a Winchester College survey of 1776 were remodeled to include a terraced garden, ornamental ponds and a cork oak plantation but the C18 walled kitchen garden was retained. Today the main elements of the Victorian designed landscape survive with some later overlays (LL).
The royal family built up a large farming estate outside the landscaped grounds of Osborne. The houses on the estate, if not the gardens, show a strong royal influence in design.
The Island has several examples of landscape parks of relatively late date which were first created in the C19.
Parkland was first laid out at Farringford in Freshwater Parish before it became the home of Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1853 .
William Henry Dawes remodelled an existing house at Wydcombe in 1856 and created a landscape park (LL) from farmland. Wydcombe lies in Niton & Whitwell Parish in the south of the Island and the estate is enfolded by the lower slopes of St Catherine’s Down to the west and Head Down to the south. The parkland which lies to the north-east of the main house now has an open aspect since many of the scattered trees which are shown on the 1st edition 6 inch Ordnance Survey map of 1862-3 have vanished. A thatched lodge (LB II) survives at the entrance to the parkland as do the stone walls of the kitchen garden.
Weston Manor (LB II*), now in in Totland Parish, was designed for W G Ward by the architects Goldie & Child and built from 1870-1872. Ward, the owner of Northwood Park in Cowes, was a convert to Roman Catholicism and his new house had a chapel attached. The house and grounds were laid out within former farmland on a previously bare hilltop site. There was a walled kitchen garden to the east of the house with pleasure grounds and parkland on the north side. The grounds were protected on three sides by shelter belts formed by the planting of many pines and other trees but the north side of the parkland was left open to allow views out from the north side of the house towards Hurst Castle across the Solent. Papers from Ward's estate office, now in the Isle of Wight Record Office, include a plan of the kitchen garden and orchard, lists of plants and progress reports on plantings. Today the framework of the parkland and inner grounds with the remains of the walled kitchen garden survives (LL).
Strathwell (LB II) is a stone mansion of mid C19 date on the site of an earlier house near Whitwell, built for the Vicar of Whitwell on his retirement . The house is shown with a small area of pleasure grounds and a straight drive on the 6 inch Ordnance Survey map of 1862-3 but the park is first marked on the 25 inch Ordnance Survey of 1898 which also shows a lodge and a winding drive to the house.