Time Team Day 25 - Secrets of the Stately Garden

Good morning!  The Thirty-One Days of the Time Team continues, October is flying by quickly!  Today I am going to do a Time Team special.  This will not be your typical Time Team.  It is called Secrets of the Stately Garden and has a run time of 49:39.
 
The Time Team is going to be examining the Enlightenment fad for landscape gardens.  One garden in particular was designed by Capability Brown.  To get the feel of this garden design, Tony Robinson travels to Prior Park built by Ralph Allen and inspired by Alexander Pope.  A water cascade feature was restored by the National Trust.  Tony then explores the explosion of interest in natural sciences at the Royal Society in London.  Robinson learns about the classical symbolism that was heavily featured in the gardens. 

The beautiful English countryside, however for some of that countryside appearances can be deceiving.  Tony tours one of the tunnels that landscape gardener Capability Brown did to help create vast gardens.  At Crum Park, the owner would have spent thousands of pounds to create his garden.  These gardens would have been Britain’s best features, the height of architectural achievement, and would have been developed during the Age of Enlightenment. 

Crum Park has one of England’s finest landscape gardens and it is possible to experience it the way it would have been experienced in the 18th Century.  It would have been signed to be taken in from the carriage.  The landscape was carefully crafted to have the maximum impact on the viewer.  Capability Brown would have created 107 landscape gardens during his lifetime and his legacy is still seen today.

Prior Park in Bath was another of Capability Brown’s features and the National Trust is working on a restoration.  The house is now a school, and the garden has been neglected.  They are going to use the opportunity to learn about how the landscape garden was made.  Tony continues to learn more about the people who would have had landscape gardens built in Bath.  The rule book was ripped up during the Age of Enlightenment.  Men of humble origins could eventually rub shoulders with the nobility.  With their newly acquired money, they could show off that wealth in grand houses and landscape gardens.  Nature would dictate how the gardens were crafted.

Tony tours the Hampton Court Palace gardens, and they were more formal in comparison to what was to come.  The gardens at Hampton Court were the last of the formal gardens.  These gardens were closed off forcing nature to conform to their wants.  However, a new generation was rising and the gardens would reflect these changes.  The landscape was going to be liberated.

Back at Prior Park, the waterfall feature has been rediscovered after shifting a lot of earth and the archeologists are learning about how it was made.  It would have been made from Bath Stone, and Stewart Ainsworth goes on a tour of a quarry from where the stone would have come from.  In the meantime, Tony learns about how the waterfall may have been made and what the plans are for the future of the waterfall.

Sciences were changing, discoveries were being made, and the microscope became a valuable tool during this time.  Nature could be examined like it had never been done before this time.  Tony looks at an older microscope from this period.  These examinations would have changed how people would have viewed nature.   Where else does Tony go to learn about the secrets of the landscape gardens?  Tune into the rest of the episode to find out more.

You know, as I started watching this, I had the feeling that Tony never really ages.  I am also disappointed that Tony did not make an appearance during the Expedition Unknown episode about the Hellfire Club.  This was a good change of pace for the Time Team.  I am sure that my readers have checked out Pride and Prejudice, Secrets of a Stately Home, and Downton Abbey.  Now you know how the owners would have created their beautiful landscapes.  I would have thought that these gardens were natural, I would have never dreamed that they would have been manmade.  This would be a good episode for a landscape class rather than a history class.