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Brilliana Harley, ‘“Functional Picturesque”: Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price in Herefordshire’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XXIV, 2016, pp. 135–158 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2016 ‘Functional PictURESQUE’: RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT AND UVedale PRICE IN Herefordshire BRILLIANA HARLEY Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price pioneered inextricably entwined. Knight, born at Wormsley, a rebellion in landscape design in the late eighteenth grew up as a neighbour to Price at Foxley; they century. These two Herefordshire squires rejected the became friends, began managing their estates at prevalent and popular style of Lancelot ‘Capability’ similar times, and constantly referred to one another Brown, and used the estates they had inherited in letters. Price often informs us of Knight’s activities to stamp their own Picturesque imprint on the and he records Knight being ‘very much fatigued’ by Herefordshire landscape. This article uses Knight’s a Snowdon climb.2 Their published works respond and Price’s writings, together with first-hand to each other, and Knight dedicated The Landscape, observations of a number of other estates and parks in a didactic poem, to Price. Close links with other Herefordshire, to argue that their Picturesque legacy Herefordshire gentry, and their geographical had a far more lasting impact than ‘Capability’ isolation, meant that ideas and practitioners were Brown’s more celebrated influence. It also includes a shared. The Knight family was related to Thomas study of their close involvement in the management Johnes, who lived and carried out improvements and financial organisation of their estates to show at Croft Castle and Hafod (Cardiganshire/Dyfed), that their concept of the Picturesque was both and owned Stanage (Radnorshire/Powys) at one functional and driven by aesthetics. point. As David Whitehead has pointed out, Knight commissioned Thomas Hearne (1744–1817) to paint erefordshire’s remoteness offered an ideal a series of watercolours at Downton Gorge between Hsetting in which Knight (1751–1824) and 1784–6.3 Hearne did the same at Moccas from Price (1747–1829) could develop their theory and c.1788–89, possibly on Knight’s recommendation. practice of the Picturesque. In a letter of 1818 to Lord Price’s correspondence tells us of visits to friends’ Aberdeen, Knight referred to ‘the Ludlow wagon of estates, such as the Oxfords at Eywood, and the the 17th, which reaches London about the 24th’.1 This Cotterells at Garnons.4 The same local architects eight-day journey to London helped preserve the were often used: Anthony Keck designed the interior unspoilt nature of the county. While Knight and Price of Kentchurch Court (1773) and built Moccas Court encouraged their aristocratic friends to visit, they (from 1775), and Thomas Farnolls Pritchard made were not inundated by visitors. A similar exclusivity plans for Downton (1772), Kinsham Court (1760s) remains today: Foxley is a private estate and Downton and the interior of Croft (1765).5 In addition, James Gorge is protected by Natural England. Sheriff surveyed Downton and Garnons.6 Both The county’s isolation also meant that the Knight’s and Price’s affinity with their estates and intellectual and social lives of the landed gentry were their love of Herefordshire is reflected in their THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIV ‘ FUNCTIONAL PICTURESQUE ’ : RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT & UVEDALE PRICE IN HEREFORDSHIRE Fig. 1. The ‘Jack of Kent’ oak, Kentchurch. reluctance to leave the county. Price wrote to Lord the north ridge of the valley and its gnarled and Beaumont, on 23 April 1803, saying ‘that it seems as weathered trunk gives it a prehistoric air. The wild, if the place [Foxley] cannot part with me’; he had untamed quality of the park appears unchanged; planting and bark peeling to do, and soon London the knotted hawthorns decked with mistletoe, the would be ‘so hot and dusty and so empty.’7 venerable trees, and the deer create a medieval Herefordshire not only had a close-knit character. Price was a friend of Sir Harford Jones, community of influential people; its rich heritage father-in-law and adviser to John Lucy Scudamore, of ancient deer parks also provided the perfect and, references to Price in the correspondence conditions for the birth of Knight’s and Price’s of Harford-Jones’ wife Lucy suggest he visited Picturesque theories. Evelyn Shirley listed eleven Kentchurch.10 It is hard to imagine that this wild ancient deer parks in 1867, and Joseph Whitaker in local scenery was not an inspiration to Price. 1892 fourteen, making Herefordshire exceptionally A section from his Dialogue is reminiscent of the well off in terms of ‘bosky’ scenery, ‘sylvan present-day walks up the thorn-filled and bracken- residences’ and wild parkland.8 Whitaker described covered valleys around the house: Kentchurch as having ‘some fine old trees in the ‘They found themselves in a neglected part of the park, especially an oak, a yew, and a Scotch fir; park, full of old, ragged thorns, that grew among a very hilly […] mistletoe grows on the old thorns in few stag-headed oaks. They got entangled in this wild profusion.’9 The oak he referred to, the ‘Jack of Kent’ scene, and could not distinguish any pathway in the 11 oak (Fig. 1), is still a truly majestic sight. It crowns long, coarse grass.’ THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIV ‘ FUNCTIONAL PICTURESQUE ’ : RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT & UVEDALE PRICE IN HEREFORDSHIRE Fig. 2. Sweet chestnut avenue, Croft Castle. Ancient deer parks and their distinctive trees are a enclosed in a way that made it conducive to the principal element of the Herefordshire landscape. Picturesque. Even today, when walking in the parks The parks at Moccas and Croft still boast venerable at Brampton Bryan or Gatley, one follows rough trees. Croft is striking for its ancient sweet chestnut paths through woods, waving cornfields, luxuriant avenues (Fig. 2). The northern avenue marches meadows and ascends steep inclines, rather than towards Croft Ambrey, an Iron Age hill fort. The simply following field hedgerows. The heavily avenues today are a riotous assembly of bulbous wooded landscape of Herefordshire contributed protrusions and bedraggled branches (Fig. 3); to its enclosed nature. At the beginning of The perhaps Knight, demonstrating inspiration for Landscape Knight referred to ‘wide domains’, ‘low his Picturesque vision in the local landscape, was sequester’d plains’, ‘high mountain’s brow’, ‘water’d referring to one of these sweet chestnuts when he meads’, ‘fertile fields’, ‘narrow glade’, and ‘craggy asserted that the finest tree ‘for a painter’ was at cliffs’; with the varied Herefordshire landscape on Croft.12 Equally, Price valued trees with ‘large knots his doorstep we can assume that he took inspiration and protuberances’, which ‘add to the ruggedness of from it.14 Besides its diversity, the topography of their twisted trunks’.13 Herefordshire is crucial: Downton Vale was created Herefordshire’s natural scenery was, and still from the overflow of the glacial Lake Wigmore.15 The is, hugely varied; a patchwork of pasture, orchards, power of nature was clearly important to Knight, and arable, woodland and forest, scattered with rivers, perhaps his gorge, carved by nature alone, influenced hidden valleys and hilly terrain. It was divided and his dislike of artificial water. He labelled a man- THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXIV ‘ FUNCTIONAL PICTURESQUE ’ : RICHARD PAYNE KNIGHT & UVEDALE PRICE IN HEREFORDSHIRE income to the area. Shropshire’s iron industry was booming at Coalbrookdale. Richard Knight, Knight’s grandfather, purchased Bringewood Forge in 1694 and produced vast quantities of iron. The Woolhope Transactions of 1869 commented on its high quality and lingered on ‘the picturesque effects produced’ by the ‘column of sparks rising high above the woods’; this along with the smoke would have appealed to Knight’s Picturesque vision.19 The inheritance of ancient parks, the diverse and beautiful natural scenery, and the enclosed nature of Herefordshire’s landscape, provided Knight and Price with a springboard for their Picturesque aesthetic: ideas which were in sharp contrast to those of ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–83), whose popular and fashionable landscape style had swept through England from the 1760s. Knight and Price rejected Brown in both their writings and their practice. Knight and Price were the owners, and designers, of their estate improvements; unlike Brown therefore they were able to engage with their projects indefinitely.20 Price asserted that ‘a professed improver’ would ‘torture’ the grounds, Fig. 3. Detail of tree, Croft Castle. and Knight urged that a landowner might lay out his own improvements and protect his ‘favourite plants’ and ‘native haunts’.21 In his correspondence with Aberdeen, Knight spoke of his ‘parental made river ‘an impostor’ with ‘false pretensions’.16 affection for the place [Downton]’ and described a Furthermore, the rugged nature of Herefordshire waterfall as ‘a plaything’.22 This intimate language assisted Knight’s and Price’s quest for the wild, reflects his familiarity and affinity with Downton. which Charles Greville confirmed in his memoirs Brown, in contrast might go to an estate only once, when he compared the Downton area to the rough later sending pupils. A letter of 1766 from the Earl countryside of Derbyshire: ‘it is as wild as the walk of Coventry at Croome Court (Worcestershire), over the hill at Chatsworth’.17 suggested that he considersed it unlikely that Brown In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth would visit him there despite his imploring ‘I don’t centuries, increased tension with France and steep know that Croome ever stood more in need of you.’23 tariffs on foreign imports meant that English timber Knight’s and Price’s familiarity with their estates was in high demand for shipbuilding material. An and the surrounding countryside contributed to advertisement in the Hereford Journal from 1795 their keen affinity for ancient features and local announced an auction sale of oak timber from Stoke villages.

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