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English garden eccentrics : three hundred years of extraordinary groves, burrowings, mountains and menageries / Todd Longstaffe-Gowan.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: London : Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022Copyright date: ©2022Description: vii, 392 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cmISBN:
  • 1913107264
  • 9781913107260
Subject(s): LOC classification:
  • SB457.6 .L66 2022
Online resources:
Contents:
Introduction -- The 'Enston-Rock' : 'A Mad Gim-cracke Sure' -- Lady Broughton's 'Miniature Copy of the Swiss Glaciers' -- Friar Park : 'Alpinism at Home' -- Sir Charles Isham's Gardens at Lamport Hall : 'A Disconcerting Eruption' -- Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale : The Clipped 'Yew-trees' at Four Ancient London Churchyards -- Lord Petersham's Gardens at Elvaston Castle : 'A Modern Palagonia' -- The Countess of Dudley's 'Stop and Buy' Topiaries -- Lady Reade and her 'Gaudy Natives of the Tropics' -- Lady Dorothy Nevill and her Ephemeral 'Exotic Groves' -- Brookes's Vivarium : 'A Curious Assemblage of Life and Death' -- Russell Collett and Sir Robert Heron : Gardens and Goldfish -- Charles Waterton : 'Unwearied Outdoor Observer' -- Antediluvian Antiquities at Banwell Caves and Pleasure Gardens -- Hawkstone : 'A Kind of Turbulent Pleasure between Fright and Admiration' -- The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House -- Denbies : 'A Persuasive Penitentiary' -- 'Do You Know Thomas Bland?' -- Stukeley's Travelling Gardens -- West Wycombe Park : 'Pretty, but very Whimsical' -- Dr Phené's 'Senseless and Bewildering Accumulation of Incongruous Things' -- Bedford's Modern Garden of Eden -- Coda: The Present Status of the Gardens.
Summary: "In his new book, English Garden Eccentrics, renowned landscape architect and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals a series of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. They include such fascinating characters as the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley and the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, as well as the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, shaped topiaries, displayed exotic animals, excavated caves and assembled architectural fragments and fossils to realise their gardens in a way that was often thought to be excessive. With quirky and compelling illustrations and chapters including 'Lady Broughton's "Miniature copy of the Swiss Glaciers"', 'Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale: The Clipped "Yew-trees" at Four Ancient London Churchyards' and 'The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House', English Garden Eccentricsbrings together garden and landscape history with cultural history and biography."--
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Lending Books Elisabeth C. Miller Library Tall Shelves SB468.36.G7 L66 2022 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 39352800190969
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (pages 370-379) and index.

Introduction -- The 'Enston-Rock' : 'A Mad Gim-cracke Sure' -- Lady Broughton's 'Miniature Copy of the Swiss Glaciers' -- Friar Park : 'Alpinism at Home' -- Sir Charles Isham's Gardens at Lamport Hall : 'A Disconcerting Eruption' -- Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale : The Clipped 'Yew-trees' at Four Ancient London Churchyards -- Lord Petersham's Gardens at Elvaston Castle : 'A Modern Palagonia' -- The Countess of Dudley's 'Stop and Buy' Topiaries -- Lady Reade and her 'Gaudy Natives of the Tropics' -- Lady Dorothy Nevill and her Ephemeral 'Exotic Groves' -- Brookes's Vivarium : 'A Curious Assemblage of Life and Death' -- Russell Collett and Sir Robert Heron : Gardens and Goldfish -- Charles Waterton : 'Unwearied Outdoor Observer' -- Antediluvian Antiquities at Banwell Caves and Pleasure Gardens -- Hawkstone : 'A Kind of Turbulent Pleasure between Fright and Admiration' -- The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House -- Denbies : 'A Persuasive Penitentiary' -- 'Do You Know Thomas Bland?' -- Stukeley's Travelling Gardens -- West Wycombe Park : 'Pretty, but very Whimsical' -- Dr Phené's 'Senseless and Bewildering Accumulation of Incongruous Things' -- Bedford's Modern Garden of Eden -- Coda: The Present Status of the Gardens.

"In his new book, English Garden Eccentrics, renowned landscape architect and historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals a series of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. They include such fascinating characters as the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley and the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, as well as the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, shaped topiaries, displayed exotic animals, excavated caves and assembled architectural fragments and fossils to realise their gardens in a way that was often thought to be excessive. With quirky and compelling illustrations and chapters including 'Lady Broughton's "Miniature copy of the Swiss Glaciers"', 'Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale: The Clipped "Yew-trees" at Four Ancient London Churchyards' and 'The Burrowing Duke at Harcourt House', English Garden Eccentricsbrings together garden and landscape history with cultural history and biography."--

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