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LANDSCAPE GARDENS AND PARKS By 1730 Palladian architecture was firmly established as the most fashionable mode for country estates and civic buildings. Politicians, writers, retired generals, and a cross section of hereditary lords were all building gardens and structures in the new manner. Henry Flitcroft and Isaac Ware, trained at Burlington House and Chiswick, went on to execute numerous commissions and to publish books of their own on architecture. Two of Burlington's social peers, Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, the presiding genius at Stowe, and Henry Herbert, the ninth earl of Pembroke and heir to Inigo Jones's early Palladian villa at Wilton, also became accomplished designers working with Colen Campbell and Roger Morris. Others, such as John Vardy, James Paine, and William, John, and Robert Adam (father and sons) in their early work, contributed excellent buildings in the Palladian mode. None was more accomplished than John Wood of Bath and his son. Outsiders, and not part of Burlington's circle in London, the Woods produced a series ofbuildings in Bath under the patronage of Ralph Allen, that, beyond making it a fashionable spa of the day, established it as a landmark in urban design history. These are the buildings comprising Queen's Square, the King's Circus, and the Royal Crescent. With the exception of Prior Park (1735) executed for Allen on a hill overlooking the city and Avon River valley, their superb country villas are not particularly well known. Ofthese, Pusey and Buckland houses in Oxfordshire - discussed in detail below- stand out as superb examples ofthe villa as derivedfrom Palladio, Vitruvius Britannicus, and Colen Campbell's work. STOURHEAD In 1743 on the old manor ofStourton, which laywithin the former Saxon forest ofSelwood, only seven miles southwest of Longbridge Deverill, a wealthy London banker, Henry Hoare, began to build a remarkable garden while mourning the recent death of his wife. This manor, with all of its property- houses, mills, rivers, pastures, as well as traditional rights and obligations- had only recently been acquired by the widower's father in 1720. His grandfather, Richard Hoare, had been one of a group of goldsmith-bankers who had helped to underwrite the Crown's debts and to develop the commercial banking system near the end of the seventeenth century. In 1673 after a financial crash precipitated by the monarchy's overextended debts, Richard had founded Hoare's Bank in Fleet Street. The business prospered: Hoare went on to represent London in Parliament from 1709 to 1713, becoming lord mayor of London in 1712, and was later knighted by Queen Anne. Although nearly all of his eleven sons went into commerce, only two, Benjamin and Henry, were to become partners in the bank. A patriarch imbued with the Puritan ethic of prudence and diligence, he pressed moral and economic virtues upon his sons, constantly exhorting them to tend to their business, family, and church. Sir Richard, who died in 1718, had been a founder and director of the famous - or 257 LANDSCAPE GARDENS AND PARKS 91· Woburn Abbey as transformed by Henry Flitcroft and James Paine, one ofmany such impressive products ofthe Palladian fashion. infamous - South Sea Company. In 1720, the year of the great "bubble;' its stocks rose to£I,ooo per share before suddenly plummeting to £132. In the wild speculation accompanying this event, fortunes were to be made and subsequently lost. Apparently the elder Henry Hoare and his brother were shrewd enough to make a sizable profit and to withdraw in time, and, like the disgraced chancellor of the exchequer, John Aislabie, shortly thereafter bought country estates, a move that, then as now, was considered to be one of the only investments that would safeguard their money in a volatile economy. Henry Hoare senior was married to Jane Benson, the sister ofWilliam Benson. Benson , a Whig representative to Parliament from Shaftesbury, had erected one ofthe first Palladian revival buildings in England, Wilbury House, in Wiltshire in 1715. Appointed surveyor of the royal works in 1718, he had named Colen Campbell, the probable designer ofhis house, as his assistant. It was quite natural, therefore, that when Hoare desired a new villa on his estate in Wiltshire, he should turn to his brother-in-law's assistant, the brilliant young author of Vitruvius Britannicus. Pulling down an old manor house on the property, Campbell produced a design based on Palladio's Villa Emo, the structure of which, with the exception ofthe entry portico added in the next century, was largely complete by...

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