Elmbridge
Claremont Landscape Garden
Claremont is a Grade I registered landscape garden encompassing 20 hectares in Esher, Surrey, created between 1715 and 1775 through collaborative contributions by Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown.
From the source
Claremont is a château at Elmbridge, England, in the United Kingdom. Its architecture is recorded as Palladian architecture. The register records it as “Grade I listed building”. Details are drawn from Wikidata.
Editorial reading
Claremont occupies a preeminent position in garden history as the living laboratory where the English Landscape Garden was invented. Originally purchased by architect Sir John Vanbrugh in 1708, the estate was acquired in 1714 by Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who engaged royal gardener Charles Bridgeman to lay out geometric earthworks, including the famous grass-stepped Turf Amphitheatre constructed in the 1720s. In the 1730s, pioneer picturesque designer William Kent naturalised the formal basin into an irregular serpentine lake, added an island pavilion, and constructed evocative grottoes and pavilions, famously declaring that 'all nature is a garden'. Later, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown was engaged by Robert Clive ('Clive of India') in 1769 to rebuild the mansion and soften the perimeter woodland walks. The crowning feature remains Bridgeman's Turf Amphitheatre—a unique three-acre stepped crescent cut into the hillside overlooking the lake, the only surviving earthwork amphitheatre of its scale in Europe. Other highlights include Vanbrugh's castellated brick Belvedere Tower (1717) and the Camellia Terrace housing historic nineteenth-century varieties. Protected at Grade I under NHLE List Entry 1000324 and restored by the National Trust, Claremont is celebrated worldwide as the crucible of the English eighteenth-century landscape revolution.
Recommendation
Stand atop Europe's only surviving eighteenth-century grass Turf Amphitheatre, explore William Kent's serpentine lake and grotto, and ascend to Vanbrugh's 1717 brick Belvedere Tower.
Sources
Wikidata · Q1095337 — CC0 1.0
National Heritage List for England (Historic England) · 1000324 — Open Government Licence v3.0
Wikimedia Commons · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Claremont%20House%2C%20Esher.JPG — CC BY-SA 3.0
The château by this garden
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