Lancelot 'Capability' Brown - Who Was He?

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown by Nathaniel Dance, (died 1811) - National Portrait Gallery: NPG 1490

During the 18th century if you owned a country house and wanted society people to visit and admire your stately seat, then you needed to ensure that the architectural style of the house and gardens were contemporary and 'in vogue'. Throughout the period there was one single name which was on the lips of the gentry when it came to updating their estate and gardens, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.

Brown was born in 1716 in a village in Northumbria called Kirkhale, to William (a land agent) and Ursula Brown. He was the fifth child and so whilst he was not born into poverty, he certainly was not born to privilege or into the gentry. He was educated at Cambo School until the age of 16 when he left to become a gardener's apprentice at the same estate that his father worked at. He worked there until the age of 23 where his interest and passion for gardening was fostered by the estate owner Sir William Loraine.

Following this role, Brown moved to Stowe which was his breakthrough position. As under gardener to William Kent he was privy to great opportunity as well as expertise. He arrived at Stowe in 1741 and within ten years he had moved to London with his family to set up his own landscape design company.

"Brown's career as a landscape architect spanned over 50 years and he was responsible for transforming huge expanses of the British Isles and beyond into the natural Arcadian parkland that is so synonymous with English scenery. In reality he didn't so much design a landscape as allow nature to dictate its own surroundings." (Capability Brown & Belvoir: Discovering a Lost Landscape from The Duchess of Rutland and Jane Pruden).

Whilst the gentry loved Brown and were keen to employ him on their lands, the local village people must have quaked in their books when they learned he was to be employed at their local gentry's estate as Brown was known for wiping out villages if they got in the way of his vision or were too close to the country house in question.

Audley End, Nuneham and Bowood were just a few of the villages which were demolished either as a way to increase the separation between the poor of the villages and the rich of the 'big house', or because they sat in direct view of the house and therefore spoiled the rural view he was trying to create.

Badminton House - an example of Brown's work

The idea of Brown's landscape was to give inhabitants an visitors of the house an unbroken view across a landscape of rolling hills, fields, trees and lakes. If a village or church got in the way, it ran the risk of either being totally demolished and its inhabitants forced to move elsewhere, or, it could be moved and relocated elsewhere.

Brown was also criticised for the fact that when his landscapes were introduced at a country estate, they often wiped out any formal gardens, meaning many historical garden features were lost.

Whatever side you come down upon, either a staunch anti-Brown or Brown lover, one thing can be certain - Lancelot 'Capability' Brown designed some of the most famous landscapes in the country including Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace, Althorp Hall, Longleat, Hampton Court Palace, Harewood House, Kew Gardens, Warwick Castle and Stowe Landscape Garden among hundreds more.

Abandoned Medieval Villages at Kirby Hall and Tatton Park

(photo credit: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net) via Wikimedia Commons)

Long sweeping drives, gatehouses and formal gardens are often associated with country houses that people visit across the UK today, but they are often not the first dwelling on that land. There may have been some sort of habitation on the land for centuries, sometimes even millennia and some country houses across England still retain marks of that previous habitation. One example of such evidence are scars on the landscape showing where former buildings or gardens were located. These may have been part of the house you see today or may be evidence of something far older.

In the case of Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire and Tatton Park in Cheshire, scars on their immediate local landscape are evidence of abandoned medieval villages and I thought I would give you some information about these so that if this is something you’re interested in, (abandoned villages fascinate me) then you could always visit and explore the sites for yourself.


Firstly, let’s give you a very brief introduction to medieval villages and why they became abandoned.

Villages themselves all have different origins and histories and grew and adapted over time as the nature of habitation changed across the UK, but it is the sudden abandonment which can be clearer to examine. Historic England notes that,

‘Medieval villages were supported by a communal system of agriculture based on large, unenclosed open arable fields. These large fields were subdivided into strips which were allocated to individual tenants.’

From as early as the 10th century, land owners began to section off large areas of their own lands for the grazing of sheep and other animals, this is commonly known as ‘enclosure’ and this was so devastating to medieval villages because it took away the communal system of agriculture described above where tenants had portions of their own land for cultivating. Village inhabitants found themselves devoid of land for growing their own crops which then meant they couldn't sell their crops for income, and as such many had no choice but to leave and move to villages which still worked in the old way, or to find villages where land was available to rent from the landowners for their own use.

So that is a little introduction, let’s find out what happened specifically at Kirby Hall and Tatton Park . . .


Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire

(photo credit: www.english-heritage.org.uk)

Managed by English Heritage and built by Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor to Queen Elizabeth I, construction began in 1570 and continued into the 1600’s. It is a beautiful house, now partly a ruin which has architectural evidence of its change throughout the centuries. The Hall itself is well worth a visit but the nearby abandoned medieval village is particularly special:

Historic England which has the site registered as a national monument notes it as having ‘exceptional earthworks and waterlogged deposits depicting the form and plan of the settlement and fish pond.’

The beginnings of the village are unknown but in the Domesday book of 1086, two dwellings were noted there, one being a small manor. In 1194 the manor was granted to the Knights Hospitaller and between then and 1316 a small but well developed village grew. Unfortunately, in 1487 the tenant of the manor demolished several buildings and enclosed much of the land for sheep grazing and so began the period of decline for the village, ending around the early 18th century when the last house remained (there is some suggestion that this became the predecessor of the nearby Hootens Farm).

In this time as we know Kirby Hall itself had begun construction and it is possible that the village and Hall were connected for some time before its eventual abandonment. If you visit Kirby today you can see the lumps and bumps in the surrounding fields showing you where the houses and streets of the village were located, although they cannot be seen from an aerial view.


Tatton Park, Cheshire

Whilst the sprawling estate of Tatton Park now plays host to both the impressive Tatton Deer Park and Tatton Park Mansion, the Old Hall and it’s abandoned medieval villages also reside within the park and show evidence of habitation on the land as far back as the Iron Age.

“The Tatton [and Northshaw] medieval village[s] with the associated medieval hall and the remains of a mill constitute an important survival fossilised in the landscape of a later parkland. The earthwork remains of house platforms and field boundaries, ridge and furrow cultivation and hollow ways with surviving old road surfaces will provide evidence of the communities who have occupied the site since the Iron Age.” Historic England

These two villages differ from Kirby in that archaeological digs found evidence that the medieval villages had been continuously occupied since around 350BC up to the 18th century when Tatton Park Mansion was built and the land enclosed for parkland and no longer used for arable farming.

Evidence of Tatton village in the park can be seen mostly by Tatton Old Hall where the ruins follow the natural ridge of land north along Tatton Mere Brook and to the north and east of Tatton Old Hall. Because the site is so big, it can be difficult to decipher from standing in the park unless you know what you’re looking for, but the below Google Maps image shows the location of Tatton Village.

To see the evidence from Northshaw Village, this picture shows you that villages location so that if you want to visit, you can easily orientate yourself within the park.

These are just two examples of abandoned medieval villages and indeed better examples do exist but these two are so closely associated with country houses that I have chosen these as examples for today’s blog. More information about abandoned medieval villages can be found online and if you would like more information about Tatton Park or Kirby Hall then keep following my blog for upcoming posts.

Thanks for reading!