Chatsworth: The Greatest Country House

My trip to England included the many gardens that I visited.

Before leaving, I made a list of the ten or so gardens I planned to see. I would rent a car to get around the countryside to see these garden treasures.

One of them was the grandest of all, Chatsoworth, north of London.

Recently Alan Titchmarsh wrote a book called Chatsworth: The Gardens and the People Who Made Them. What a wonderful way to learn about this garden.

The first and important issue is the massive size of this garden. Today the gardens cover one hundred five acres. The estate itself measures thirty-five thousand acres.

They include the castle used in the TV andd film ‘Downton Abbey”.

So you can see we are talking about quite an extensive property.

All of it was owned by the same family for centuries.

What I find most fascinating is , according to Titchmarsh, is its reputation is for moving forward and reflecting the changing tastes of landscape.

One element of that sharing of what was popular at the time has to be the landscape design of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Brown was a designer of the sweeping lawn that appeared in many country homes in th seventeenth century when he was at his prime.

His method was only genius.

Brown would come to your property one year and evaluate the potential of the estate. Was it ‘Capable’ of sustaining a sweeping lawn? He would leave members of his crew to remain on the property, sometimes for years, to supervise the installation of the lawns.

Titschmarsh writes, “All was planned to delight the eye from the house, making the best view pf the contours in the wide expanse across the river.”