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CHAPTER FOUR WARDOUR CASTLE, BUCKLAND HOUSE, AND RICHARD WOODS By far the most impressive house along the Golden Ridge west of Oxford is Buckland House. Begun in 1757 by Sir Robert Throckmorton, the house was designed by John Wood the Younger, the designer of the Royal Crescent in Bath and son of Ralph Allen's architect at Prior Park. The house, neo-Palladian in design and illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus, volume 2, handsomely furnished with superb details and plasterwork, was completed in 1767. It appears that Throckmorton was prepared to build himself the best estate possible on the manor he had inherited, and, therefore, within two years of the commencement of construction on the house, he had begun work on the surrounding park. The park and its ornamental structures were designed by Richard Woods, not by Capability Brown, as many local residents would like to believe. A contemporary of Brown, Woods built up a substantial practice based in southeastern England, although he consulted on parks as far distant as Wiltshire and Yorkshire. Ofthe eighteen parks he is known to have been engaged upon, several are noteworthy examples ofthe genre and compare favorably to the work ofBrown. The most famous ofthese is Wivenhoe Park, the subject of an early painting by John Constable , now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Constable also executed paintings of two other parks by Woods: Alresford Hall, "The Quarters:' Essex; and Englefield House, Berkshire, near Reading. The painting ofthe former depicts a delightful Chinese style fishing lodge by the edge of a pond with a lush parkland of elms and oaks behind. The latter is similar to Buckland in the massing of trees and the placement of the house on a rise above a deer park, but lacks the superb lakes of Buckland. Woods was a Catholic, and many of his clients were old families who as conservative Royalists were Catholics. Following the Restoration after the Civil War and Commonwealth , many such upper-class families returned to their ancestral homes to rebuild and improve them, some after years ofneglect or even military destruction, as at Wardour Castle , another ofWoods's projects. This castle, partially destroyed by the owner and Ludlow's troops in a siege of 1642, and converted into a picturesque ruin in the park as a result of Woods's plan of 1766, was the home of the eighth Lord Arundell ofWardour. Located ten miles southwest of Longbridge Deverill in the Nadder River valley of Wiltshire, Wardour Castle possesses as picturesque a composition of ruins and Gothic follies to be seen across water as can be found anywhere. This is a project that got away from Brown, who did come, consult, and draw up plans, only to have them not be executed, while he and the owner wrangled about payment for the next three years - a situation, unfortunately, known to all design professionals and one that I can verify still occurs with frequency in the field of landscape architecture. Nevertheless, the relationship with Woods was more successful, and work at Wardour progressed under his personal direction from 1766 to 1768, continuing for at least another ten years. As in many of Brown's projects, Woods sug308 LANDSCAPE GARDENS AND PARKS gested where to locate and build the new house (done thereafter by Paine), and he designed the handsome new garden pavilions. A major unifying feature was the creation of a large lake that lies between the new house and ruined castle. While Brown may have been more famous, there is nothing inferior in this project or the landscape art ofRichard Woods. The earliest recorded park by Woods is that of Buckland. It is interesting to note that of more than two hundred parks attributed to Brown, only twelve were complete or in progress when Woods began work at Buckland in 1758 or 1759. Of these, several were not too distant in Oxfordshire. Another was Belhus, in Essex, a park upon which both men were to work for Lord Dacre. Brown began consulting with Dacre in 1753 for changes in the layout ofroads and planting, and by 1759 he had begun plans and preparations for a lake a quarter ofa mile in length that would cover about ten acres. For financial reasons, the work was several times postponed. Finally, in 1770, the lake and bridge were carried out under the direction ofWoods, who was then living nearby at Ockendon Hall. Whatever their relationship might have been - probably that of normal and...

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