The Journal of the Landscape Institute
Capability Brown
comes of age
Autumn 2014
landscapeinstitute.org
Culture
By Hayley Hannan
A celebration of
Capability Brown
1 – Weston Park in Shropshire is one of the best
understood of Capability Brown landscapes.
2 – Trees reflected in the lake at Compton Verney.
3 – Capability Brown designed the Sphinx gates that
lead into the landscape at Temple Newsam, Leeds.
The nationwide celebration of
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s
life, work and legacy is
gathering momentum as the
Capability Brown Festival takes
shape, celebrating the man
and his achievements three
hundred years after his birth.
E
x amples of Capability Brown’s
landscapes span England and Wales
yet his influence reaches across the
globe, with parks and gardens inspired by
his work being found in many parts of the
world. From serene landscapes, designed
for multi-purpose play and economic
functionality, to walled kitchen gardens or
water management schemes, Brown is
estimated to have worked or advised on
a staggering 255 sites across the country.
A prolific worker, Brown is credited with
evolving the archetypal Arcadian English
landscape style, yet he left few written records.
This lack of a paper trail has meant that he
has not been studied or celebrated in the same
way that many of his eighteenth century
groundbreaking contemporaries have been.
Brown is considered ‘the last of the great
English eighteenth-century artists to be
accorded his due’. The epitome of an
Enlightenment polymath, he blended art,
science, engineering and design to create
natural and beautiful landscapes that
are still visited, admired, emulated and
celebrated today.
1
The memorable nickname of ‘Capability’
is thought to have come from his practice
of telling landowners that their landscape
had ‘capabilities’. He travelled the country
by horseback often installing lakes, bridges,
follies, meadows and woods, and replacing
earlier formal gardens. His landscapes
are renowned both for their feeling and
their functionality and were at the forefront
of fashion.
The upcoming Capability Brown Festival
has evolved from a growing demand that he
be properly recognised and celebrated.
It is funded with a development grant from
the Heritage Lottery Fund, enabling the
project team to scope out and develop what
may be the largest festival of its kind ever
attempted in the UK. It is managed by the
Landscape Institute and unites 17 partners.
The festival will build over the next 16 months,
culminating in nationwide celebrations in
2016, the 300th anniversary of his birth.
3
Activities will take on a myriad of forms to
help people access, understand and celebrate
Capability Brown, his work, and his landscapes.
The project has two key strands. The first is
increasing public access to the sites Brown
created and advised on. The festival will
open up access to Capability Brown sites
not usually seen by the public, as well as
deepening knowledge and access at Brown
sites currently open. People will be able to
explore, interpret and engage with Brown’s
legacy landscapes, features and houses as
never before. Schools, charitable trusts,
independent and public sites, local authorities,
landscape architects, festival partners and
any other interested groups will be supported
and encouraged to work together to provide
a network of open sites, site background
information and interactive interpretations
on site and on-line.
The second strand of the project is to discover
more about Brown’s work, and how he created
his amazing landscapes and management
systems with the tools available in the 18th
century. Universities, schools, landscape
courses, researchers, media, volunteers,
independent groups and passionate individuals
are encouraged to undertake research projects
on Brown and his work, which will be collated
into a knowledge base and shared through
exhibitions, websites and a range of events.
The Capability Brown Festival project
network and framework were launched
with an information day at Compton
Verney in June. Attendance was at capacity,
with 95 guests. In between presentations
and workshops, the tea room buzzed
with enthusiasm as site owners, managers,
representatives of schools and local
authorities, landscape architects and project
partners shared Brown stories, ideas and
ambitions.
Even 298 years on, Capability Brown has a
far-reaching influence. For Steve Fancourt,
Arup associate landscape architect,
Brown’s work still applies to contemporary
landscape architecture.
‘I am fascinated by the fact that in the
18th century, he was designing with a
multi-disciplinary mind, and I think that
that has huge resonance today,’ he says.
construction, lots of people, moving villages,
converting streams to lakes, and I’m
fascinated by the process,’ he says. ‘If you
speak the language, you can understand
that the landscape you see today is totally
man-made and involved mathematics,
engineering, and landscape. He fused all
those sciences and creative arts.’
Kirkharle, Brown’s birthplace in what is now
Northumberland, is a community already
well entrenched in Brown celebrations and
knowledge. Kitty Anderson co-owns and
runs Kirkharle Courtyard and Lake, which
sees 40,000 visitors stream in annually to
see a lake built from a Brown plan and the
artist courtyard and workshops.
‘Some of the things he was dealing with on
a massive scale – landscape engineering,
architecture, landscape architecture –
are all things that we have to address in
the current environment. Some of his
thinking affects projects like High Speed
2, the Olympic Park, new housing areas,
eco towns and urban extensions.’
Steve is interested in how Brown transformed
the landscapes into what is seen today.
‘[Brown’s landscapes are] usually wellmanaged, and calm and serene, but at one
point there was massive change involving
4
4 – An oak tree at Harewood Park in Yorkshire.
5 – Spring at Burghley House, near Peterborough.
6 – The great lake at Wotton House
in Buckinghamshire.
6
just trying to readjust it a bit,’ Lee says.
‘It’s about finding out about how the site
was when Brown was alive.’
At the same time, the school grounds team
and school staff are learning about
Capability Brown themselves, as they
weren’t aware of the depth of his influence
before the festival.
The challenge for Lee, he says, is then to
figure out how to share Brown’s influence
at Harrow School with the wider public.
5
For Kitty, hopefully the festival celebrations
will encourage more schools to get involved.
She already works with local schools to learn
about Brown, build interpretation boards
and visit trees and landscapes, but is lacking
a formal education pack which she expects
will develop through the festival planning.
At the other end of the spectrum, Lee
Marshallsay, from Harrow School in
Middlesex, hopes to get involved in the
festival by opening up access to a golf course
adjoining the school which was built on a
Brown design. Lee’s next step is readjusting
the landscape to reflect Brown’s work, he says.
‘Our landscape is trying to get back a little
bit of how it used to be – it’s a golf course,
and that’s not going to change, but we’re
‘The question you’ve got to ask is how do
you get people to know about it?... It’s a
tough one to get people to learn about him,
and understand.’
Find out more about the
Capability Brown Festival,
or get involved through
www.capabilitybrown.org
or email Ceryl Evans, Festival
Project Manager on
ceryle@landscapeinstitute.org
Join us on
Twitter: @BrownCapability,
Facebook: www.facebook.com/
Capability.Brown.300
and Pinterest: www.pinterest.
com/capabilitybrown/
Whatever the academic or event focus, the
festival gives sites the opportunity to open
people’s eyes to the beauty of landscape. As
John Phibbs, principal of Debois Landscape
Survey Group, said at the Compton Verney
Information Day, a united celebration
of Brown has been a long time coming.
‘What makes Brown fantastically
international and good, is the scale of Brown’s
work. Only then will we realise that he’s
bigger than Brunel, bigger than the engineers
that work on sites. This guy transformed
England, and that’s why we’re here today.’
Hayley Hannan is communications officer for the
Capability Brown Festival.
Photo ©
1 – Weston Park Foundation,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – Steffie Shields
2
This article is published as an
offprint of the autumn edition
of Landscape, the journal
of the Landscape Institute