Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), p. 166

This is a splendid example of what can be achieved through a combination of a systematic archaeological survey of a designed landscape and thorough documentary research into its creation and adaptation over the centuries. The beautiful and accessible setting of Chatsworth has made it the best-loved country house, grounds and park in the land and much of its story is already well-known. Indeed, members of this Society explored part of the park at our annual conference in 1995. What more, it may be wondered, is there to be discovered about its history?

In the first place – as a series of detailed maps, drawings and photographs make clear – it is now obvious that the park contains ‘wall-to-wall archaeology’. As Capability Brown’s park has not been ploughed for the last 250 years, the preservation of earlier features is exceptional. They range from prehistoric round barrows to holloways, rabbit warrens and extensive medieval field systems. They throw considerable light on the wider landscape history of Derbyshire, for earthworks in the surrounding countryside have been largely obliterated by subsequent phases of farming and settlement. Another major feature of Chatsworth park is the enormous number of ancient oak pollards which remain from the medieval and early post-medieval era. These ‘veteran trees’ rank amongst the most important groups in England.

The archaeological finds have also helped our understanding of how the landscape on both sides of the River Derwent was gradually encompassed within the grounds and park by successive generations of the Cavendish family. All the numerous earthworks and standing structures, including buildings, field boundaries and woodlands, have been plotted by detailed sketches. One can only marvel at the sheer amount of detail in the maps of the ‘main historical and archaeological features’ in the various divisions of the park and wonder what such a map would have been like if it had also included the ‘minor’ features. No-one at Chatsworth was expect-ing such detailed finds as these.

Much of the archaeological survey was done after consulting aerial photographs and the rich and varied collection of historical maps, paintings, prints and documents in the Chatsworth archives. The Chatsworth documents include very detailed estate accounts that recorded payments for work carried out on the house and grounds and for items purchased for them. They often reveal the exact month or year of a particular feature, but of course they are more complete and detailed for some periods than for others. The authors take care to highlight the shortcomings of their evidence and the problems of interpretation, but they provide a detailed, persuasive account of how the park and grounds developed from the modest beginnings depicted on William Senior’s maps of 1617 to the classic Capability Brown landscape whose carefully-contrived views are largely intact. The overall structure of the park is much as Brown left it, though the rebuilding of Edensor as Britain’s finest estate village and much of the planting on the hillside behind the house and the present network of paths and drives was largely the work of Joseph Paxton and the sixth duke in the nineteenth century.

The story of the house and grounds from Elizabethan times onwards is well-known and some of the greatest architects of their time – William Talman, Thomas Archer, James Paine and Jeffry Wyatville – made major contributions. The most important addition to our understanding of how the park and grounds were changed from the formal, French or Dutch style, shown on Kip and Knyff ’s view of 1699 into the landscaped park of today is contained in Chapter Four, where evidence is gathered to argue that substantial changes were made long before Brown by William Kent. It has always been thought that the designs for improvements that Kent made while staying at Chatsworth in the 1730s were never implemented, but the estate accounts note a large amount of planting at that time and a painting of the Chatsworth landscape by Thomas Smith c. 1743 shows that the gardens around the house had already been much altered. In particular, Smith’s painting makes clear that the smooth expanse of lawn immediately behind the house, which has always been attributed to Brown in the 1760s, was already there by about 1743, as were the winding paths and casual groupings of trees.

The authors conclude, rightly, that ‘this complex, many-layered landscape works in both aesthetic and visual terms. Little seems out of place ... The result is an almost unparalleled collection of features and layouts from which ... one could almost tell the whole story of English, if not European, garden design’. Most of this landscape can be walked over, freely, at all times of the year. The book will add greatly to everyone’s enjoyment and understanding of what they see.