Lancelot ‘Capability’ 300 Brown Tercentenary AMPTHILL PaRK AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE Lancelot ‘Capability’ 300 Brown Tercentenary Ampthill Park 3 INTRODUCTION TO AMPTHILL John FitzPatrick, the 2nd Earl of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was THE INTENTION OF THE Upper Ossory, was born in 1745 their chosen designer or ‘place- BOOKLETS and succeeded his father to the maker’ and we know that he had at earldom in 1758. He was a minor least two substantial commissions Two booklets will be helpful for political figure, being elected to at Ampthill. The first may have your site visits. the House of Commons in 1767, started in 1770, ran until the end of and was made Lord Lieutenant of 1772 and cost £1,596.09.07d. The first has a series of plans Bedfordshire in 1771. showing all the landscapes that The second ran from 1773-1775 we have attributed to Brown, His wife, Anne Liddell, was seven and cost at least £800.00.00d. a glossary of terms used in the years older than him and was It is notoriously difficult to give individual site booklets, a short the daughter of the first and last such sums modern values, but you biography of Brown, and an Baron of Ravensworth. She had can get a sense of the scale of his introductory field guide to some previously married the 3rd Duke of operations here by multiplying of the basic ingredients of his style Grafton in 1756 and they had three these figures by 500. We do not and to his working methods. children together. In 1764 the Duke have a plan of Brown’s work here tired of her party-going lifestyle and the first accurate record we The second are a series of and they separated. have of the landscape after he had individual guides to each of the finished is an estate plan drawn Brown landscapes that is opening He then, as Prime Minister, set some 50 years later. It is by no to celebrate the tercentenary up house with the notorious means unusual for there to be as in 2016. Each of these booklets In each case we show a courtesan Nancy Parsons. It was little evidence as this for what touches on the documentation recommended route round the the discovery of this affair, which Brown did at a site. Very frequently for Brown’s work at the site, and site, which takes in a number of was seemingly an open secret we can only ascribe plantings and on his treatment of landform, key-points.* There will be a one- in London, which pushed the details of the design to Brown on trees, water, views, buildings and page description of some aspect Duchess into the position in which the basis of similar work that we farming there, and cross-refers of the design at each of these she took a lover herself. In the have recorded at other landscapes to other places where there are key-points. summer of 1767 she met the Earl attributed to him. similar examples of each of these of Ossory in Brighton and their elements. You should not feel obliged to affair over the autumn and winter Just because there is so seldom take the recommended route, but led to her becoming pregnant. evidence for his guiding hand in It would be very easy to write the key-points are set out in the a project, it would be a mistake an entire book on the history order in which we recommend This gave the Duke the to regard Brown as a tradesman, of each landscape, and in many visiting them and the text is ammunition to divorce her and brought in to do the bidding of cases this has been done. These designed to be read in that order. a great scandal ensued. The his clients. He was very highly booklets however concentrate The set route makes it possible Ossorys married two weeks after regarded in his profession by on the underlying designs. They to build a narrative that is carried the divorce bill was passed in 1770, the likely time of the first essentially provide a field guide, forward from point to point and parliament in 1769. Under the commission at Ampthill, and if the to help you to read the design give the booklets a greater overall circumstances the couple were Earl had not wanted his guidance, of the landscape as you go coherence. not received in London, and spent he would not have employed him. round it, together with sufficient most of their time in the country. background information to enable The booklets have a single overall Horace Walpole remained a loyal you to converse authoritatively editor, they make a series and are friend and correspondent of the with anyone you may meet on collectible in their own right. Countess and was a guest at your stroll. Ampthill. The time they spent in the country may account for the unusual complexity of the landscaping here. Lancelot ‘Capability’ 300 Brown Tercentenary Ampthill Park 5 THE APPLE KNOLL Brown was often, though unfairly, accused of planting trees in random mixes. The use of juxtaposed bands of planting, each made up of a single species, or of a mix of a similar group of species, is unusual This key point is in some disarray, however. The most interesting aesthetic theory of his day concerning which gives us the opportunity what to plant where, was aerial perspective. To that end broad-leaved to see how it was put together trees were classified by leaf colour from the palest (London plane, without being distracted by what birch, lime) through to the darkest (Copper beech and Holm oak). usually bedevils any attempt to understand Brown – the fact that The idea, which was drawn from the Italian painting tradition, being his work all looks so natural that that darker trees could provide chiaroscuro in the foreground, and the it is difficult to distinguish from lighter ones would make objects seem further away. By planting dark- Nature. coloured trees in the middle of a clump, one could also, according to Brown’s admirer, William Marshall, render ‘the recess dark, to throw it There are several things to note. into shadow, and by giving a degree of lustre to the projection, give First, the path that most people variety at least, if not picturable effect’. use to get here has not been levelled across, and rises up and While his successor, Humphry Repton did make use of this theory, it is down as it crosses the ground. less clear that Brown did. Instead, while each of the clumps at Ampthill Those two facts tell us that it is not uses bands of planting, the arrangement of the bands is different. Brown’s. Repton would have regarded the final effect as ‘cheerful’, and it helped to create the ‘riant’ rather playful atmosphere of the Upper Park. There must have been a drive somewhere near this knoll, and the earthworks suggest that one may This planting is very ambitious As for the role of these oaks in run off to the north-east from its and large in scale – the screen of the wider canvas of the park, they south side. From that one might limes runs for over 100 yards, and are full-grown but they still barely imagine a walk climbing up to the measuring from the top of the screen the house, which they knoll, though it would be hard to knoll to the foot of the slope, the could easily have done had they spot today, with all the wear and planting design is over 75 yards been planted further up the slope, tear on the path that is currently deep. One should see the limes to the south. The answer seems used. as a curtain across the west side, to be that they were planted to running far enough east to conceal give a narrow peep to the house, This casting around for earthworks Park Farm. which would appear completely though shows up another very unplanned. slight bank facing out towards These direct us towards the house the house. These straight-edged where the view is broken by the battered slopes give an indication tops of a row of oaks planted of the direction of the principal along the edge of a small pond view, which seems therefore to at the foot of the slope. One have been towards the house. might suppose that the trees were planted by the water to Second, there is some interesting provide holts or hiding places for tree planting immediately to the fish around their roots. The row north-west. This consists of two is itself an odd detail, but it does rows of lime trees planted at quite occur elsewhere in Brown’s work regular intervals close to the foot – at Doddington, Cheshire and at of the slope, a collection of pine Moccas Court, for example. trees half way down the slope, and some apple trees at the top, though not many now survive. 1. Thomas Gainsborough ‘Wooded landscape with Peasant Resting’ c.1747 (Tate) 1 Lancelot ‘Capability’ 300 Brown Tercentenary Ampthill Park 7 THE BEECH & CHESTNUTS Tents were very commonly put up for the summer in Brown’s landscapes, and were much loved by the children of the house, as Frederick Robinson (aged 8) wrote to his uncle from Wrest after his Ampthill is a great place to see Grandmama had bought the children fishing rods ‘we go to that sport ‘clumps on lumps’ – or tree- every fine day. We get up in the morning about half an hour after six.