My brother continues to enhance and extend the gardens at Barmeath. There is a new summer house in the walled garden, new beds and paths and a maze. He is a latter day Capability Brown.
It is not a disparaging comparison. Lancelot Brown made a fortune from his commissions, allowing him to buy an estate comprising two manor houses, two villages and 2,668 acres. He was also appointed High Sherriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire.
While he was amassing his fortune he lived with his family on Hammersmith Mall by the Thames. Last year was the 300th anniversary of his birth and to commemorate this, at the end of last month, a statue of him was unveiled on the riverside walk at Fulham Reach (just east of Hammersmith Bridge on the north bank). I wasn’t in time to take a picture. It was a bit wobbly and has been removed for the fault to be rectified.
Until the bronze is re-installed we must be content with Nathaniel Dance’s portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.
There is a glut of new flats coming onto the market in London, often, like Fulham Reach, on the river. Around Battersea Power Station alone there will be 20,000. The developers will have a hard time shifting them. London property may become a little less unaffordable.
Lancelot Brown’s career started in 1741 when, having left Northumberland, he arrived at Stowe aged 25 and rose rapidly to Head Gardener.
He married Bridget “Biddy” Wayet (from Boston Lincs) in our local church in 1744 and they lived for 6 years in The Boycott Pavilion (now occupied by The kennel Huntsman of Stowe Beagles) – just 300 hundred yards from our house.
Later in his prosperity he got himself a coat of arms and a thoughtful motto “Never less alone, when all alone”.
Richard
My late and much missed friend Jeremy Williams mentions a hermitage (ornamental?) at Barmeath in his Architecture in Ireland 1837 – 1921 . Does it still flourish? Was there ever a hermit to go with it? Beautiful photos.
Yes, there are still the remains and those of a Shell House too.I don’t think there was a hermit.