Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire Through Time
Herefordshire in the early Middle Ages had more castles than any other county in England. Most castles were owned by knights and these knightly holdings at the end of the Middle Ages became gentry estates. One of the symbols of gentrification was the deer park and by c.1500 there were at least forty deer parks in the county.
Many of these had been attached to castles or manor houses but in the 16th century they became associated with new houses. For example, Colwall was one of the Bishop of Hereford's manors in the Middle Ages, it had been a deer park but this now became part of the Hope End estate. The same process can be detected at Bronsil Castle (post-medieval Eastnor), Weobley castle (post-medieval - Garnstone) and many other places. Medieval parks provided sport for their owners and were treated as a "deer larder" but by the 16th century the ornamental value of a park was beginning to be appreciated. Croft Castle, Brampton Bryan and Hampton Court were all being planted in the 17th century with avenues, rows and regular patterns of trees. New species like the sweet chestnut and the European lime were being introduced, replacing the native oak trees of the earlier parks. Orchards also make an appearance in parks, medlars at Croft, for example.
The broken and pastoral countryside, together with extensive forests in south-western and northern parts of the county, made Herefordshire an attractive place for the gentry. Many local families in the early modern period derived an income from commerce in distant towns or government patronage, and yet maintained a house in the country. Brampton Bryan, Stoke Edith, Croft Castle, Berrington Hall, Gatley Park, Hampton Court and Harewood House are just a few of the estates supported by political or bureaucratic careers. Compared with the adjoining counties of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, relatively little of Herefordshire was in the hands of monastic institutions before the Reformation. Holme Lacy is the one estate which benefited directly from the dissolution of the monasteries as Sir John Scudamore was the principal agent for Henry VIII in Herefordshire at the time of the dissolution. The largest monastic holding in the county was Leominster Priory but this passed through the hands of several landowners who absorbed the income but failed to establish a home in the country.
In the 17th century several formal landscapes were established embracing the homes of the rising gentry. Extensive parterres, terraces and avenues - like those recently found at Croft Castle - can be traced at Hampton Court, Stoke Edith, Eywood, Wessington Court and many other places. Traces from this age of Italianate gardening can still be detected on the earliest large scale Ordnance Survey plans of the late 19th century but by the mid-18th century the landscape movement was already transforming the countryside around the gentry houses. The latest aspiration was a return to nature but this was modified by a variety of cultural preconceptions such as the literary appreciation of classical landscapes of Italy. The enclosure movement also helped and at Berrington Hall an earlier field system can clearly be detected beneath the present park created by "Capability" Brown in the 1770s. Most of the Herefordshire countryside, however, was already enclosed and since many 18th century landowners in the county were reluctant to sterilise large areas of their estates as pleasure grounds, earlier enclosures were accommodated within new parks, e.g. at Brockhampton by Bromyard and Pengethley, near Ross. A wood pasture economy allowed for the development of parks providing both profits and pleasure for their owners. The countryside around such mansions as Michaelchurch Court, Whitfield Court and The Mynde still reflect this sensitivity where the envelope of the aesthetic husbandry can often be detected well beyond the boundaries of the park. Professional landscapers in Herefordshire such as John Davenport, Edward Wheeler, William Leggett and James Cranston usually provided piecemeal schemes. Significantly, "Capability" Brown's other major scheme in the county, at Moccas, was rejected by George Cornewall, who followed the advice of his friend Richard Payne Knight of Downton Castle, taking the visual improvement of his estate into his own hands.
Payne Knight and Uvedale Price of Foxley both turned their estates into show places in the late 18th century. They helped to create a new appreciation of the special qualities of the Herefordshire landscape. They urged landowners to sharpen their perceptions of the countryside by studying the paintings of Claude and Poussin, and thus improve their estates with this heightened aesthetic sensibility. They saw off Brown's successor, Humphry Repton, who, although he was consulted on the improvement of at least seven estates in the county, left in 1796, a convinced "picturesque" landscaper.
By the time the 6" O.S. plans were being produced in the late 19th century, Herefordshire had over 400 landscape parks. Some of these, no more than two or three acres in extent, were attached to suburban villas, rectories and minor manor houses but their presence still makes an impact upon every corner of the county. Notwithstanding that Herefordshire lost many country houses in the 20th century through decay or demolition, their pleasure grounds and parks continue to enhance the countryside with fine trees, overgrown shrubberies, ornamental lakes and other water features.
© David Whitehead, 2003