Monday, June 6, 2016

Berrington Parkland: Culpability's Last Stand

Lancelot "Capability" Brown changed British landscapes, and tastes, in scores of great houses and grounds throughout the 18th century, and we have seen many, if not most of his works. Berrington was his last commission, and certainly of a piece with its predecessors. He had a vision ("raze the village or move it over there behind the forest; divert the river; dig a giant twisty hole there, making it the serpentine lake; put the diggings over there, making a hill; install the ha ha over there to extend the grandest pastoral view; dot the landscape with clumps of eye-catching specimen trees and also a few follies...") and never much swerved from it, so far as I can tell.
Presenting the largest wisteria ever, so far

In the (non-Capability) walled garden


Nice cedar, close to the house

Grounds, lake


The ha ha a little more conspicuous than it should be

The Plan, with eye-catching red beams...

The embroidery celebration of Capability is a national thing,
and Berrington had the largest and perhaps best exhibit we have
seen so far

Especially this exquisite thing, the size of a postcard, nano-
detail

More grounds

Herefordshire hills



From a tree that fell ages ago, a singe limbs leaves out



Millstone and track near the house

Britain in the late spring

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