Capability Brown’s Abbey Landscape Receives Funding

Capability Brown’s Abbey landscape receives funding.

We just finished celebrating the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lancelot Capability Brown (1716-1783).

I have enjoyed reading the posts about the celebration in England that included many events during the year and even a video.

You can find news about the year-long celebration of Brown’s anniversary on the website simply called CapabilityBrown.com.

Brown influenced the development of the landscape garden in the mid-eighteenth century.

Tim Richardson in his book The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden writes that a bit of formality in the garden initially marked the emerging new eighteenth century garden. He says, “An element of formality remained an important ingredient in even the most fashionable gardens until well into the 1730s.”

That lasted until the touch of Brown appeared on the scene.

Richardson says, “It was only in the second half of the century, and the advent of ‘Capability’ Brown, that the landscape of rolling pasture and naturalistic lakes became the norm.”

Brown emerged as the most signficant English landscape gardener at that time.

It was his lawn that became the mark of his work on any given landscape.

The fourteenth century Milton Abbey near Blandford Forum in Dorset rests on a Capability Brown landscape apparently nicknamed “The Great Stare” by the great landscape architect himself. [above]

Recently the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded the Abbey over a million pound grant to repair the buildings, improve facilities for visitors, and enhance the connections between the Abbey and the five hundred acre landscape designed by Capability Brown.

Today the Abbey continues in the great Benedictine tradition of hospitality to all visitors. The grant will help the Abbey, its staff and volunteers to extend their welcome, and ensure that the Abbey and its  landscape are restored for the inspiration and enjoyment of generations to come.

The grant will support the rediscovery of historic walks, drives, and viewpoints in the landscape designed by Brown between 1763-83.

Brown’s historic landscape at Milton Abbey will continue as a living example of the English landscape garden of the mid-eighteenth century.

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