Stourhead
Stourhead is the name of the country house and the associated landscape garden near Stourton in Wiltshire , approx. 180 km west-southwest of London. The country house was one of the first to be built in neo-Palladian forms. The garden is one of the early and most influential English landscape gardens . It has been operated by the National Trust since 1946 and is open all year round.
history
The site has belonged to the Stourton family since the Middle Ages. Sir John Stourton was u. a. Treasurer of King Henry VI. , was made a baron in 1448 and received 1,000 acres of land on which he set up a manor and park. Already impoverished during the 16th century and discriminated against as a Catholic and Jacobite , the last Lord Stourton sold the property in 1714.
In 1717, the banker Henry Hoare (1677-1725) acquired the Stourton manor and renamed it to Stourhead based on the sources of the River Stour. In 1721 he commissioned the architect Colen Campbell to build a country house based on the model of the Venetian villas of Andrea Palladio . After the death of his wife, Jane Benson, his son Henry Hoare inherited the property in 1742. Hoare completed the Grand Tour in the 1730s and devoted himself to the arts and patronage . From around 1742 he began to design the gardens together with the architect Henry Flitcroft. It was inspired by Italian and French landscape painting of the 16th century. In his designs, Hoare adhered to the principle that you should never see the same thing twice when walking through the park. Every bend in the road brings a new perspective. Hoare's horticultural ideas correspond to those of William Kent . The owner planned the plant himself and had it done by gardeners. He had the dam that dammed the springs into a lake filled up and built numerous staffage structures. He bought a gothic high cross, the 'Bristol High Cross', which had been demolished in Bristol , and had it set up in his garden. Around 1800 Hoares heirs redesigned the park in a Victorian style. Planting newly introduced species such as rhododendrons , azaleas and other flowering shrubs changed the face of the garden, which originally consisted of deciduous trees. In some cases, the previously existing lines of sight were obscured by the new plantings. Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Hoare (1865-1947) and his wife Lady Alda Hoare rebuilt the 1902 partially burned house. Since their only son had died in World War I , they left the property to the National Trust in 1946.
The garden
It is a so-called inner garden, which means that the view and path relationships are based on a center, here the lake, and do not lead into the surrounding landscape. The core of the landscaped garden is formed by the valley with the sources of the river Stour , which are dammed into a lake by a dam. From the house, a circular path leads counter-clockwise around the lake and offers magical views of the lake, the park and its buildings.
The temple of Flora, built in 1744–46, bears the inscription Procul, o procul este, profani (“On, stay on, you non-consecrated”), taken from Virgil’s Aeneid , which can be understood as the motto of the park. A long, shady path leads to the narrow beginning of the valley and from there to the other side of the lake. There a dark, winding path leads through an arch made of rough stones, behind which one suddenly stands in front of the entrance to a grotto. Above the entrance to the grotto there is the following inscription: Intus aquae dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo, Nympharum domus (“Opposite you can see a cave under overhanging rocks, inside sweet water and seats made of grown stone, dwellings of the nymphs.” Cf. Virgil, book I, verse 166–168.) Behind a water basin, one of the springs of the river Stour, lies the statue of a resting spring nymph , opposite a window opens a view over the lake. Another inscription is carved on the floor in front of the water basin, reminding of the grotto in Alexander Pope's garden in Twickenham:
Nymph of the Grot these sacred springs I keep
And to the murmur of these waters sleep;
Ah! spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave,
and drink in silence or in silence lave.
After leaving this grotto you come to another smaller grotto. This third line of sight shows the sculpture of a seated river god in another water basin. He is often referred to as the river god Tiber, inspired by Salvator Rosa's drawing Aeneas und Tiber . But one can also speculate that this is a personification of the River Stour.
The path leads past a Gothic hut. “Hermits” used to be sought for this hermitage . For Painshill , the garden of Charles Hamilton, it is known that he was looking for a highly paid actor for a full seven years who was neither allowed to speak to anyone nor cut his fingernails or beard. The path continues to the Pantheon, built in 1753–54. Inspired by the Pantheon in Rome (slightly smaller than the original), it contains statues of Hercules , Flora and other classical figures. It dominates the west bank of the lake.
After returning over the dam to the other bank of the lake, a fork in the path opens up the choice between an easy, level path along the lake shore and a steep path that leads up through rugged rocks, which rewards the visitor with wonderful views and a visit to the Temple of Apollo . This is considered one of the most beautiful in the world. After the two paths have reunited, they lead past a Palladian bridge to the Bristol High Cross and the deliberately picturesque village of Stourton and the church of St. Peter behind it. In contrast to other country nobility, Hoare did not insist on displacing the village, but instead included it as an eye-catcher in the rural idyll. About two miles away, Henry Hoare had Alfred's Tower, a folly , built on Kingsettle Hill on the site where King Alfred the Great was said to have made camp in 879 , before throwing back the invading Danes and the splintered English kingdoms united.
literature
- Oliver Garnett, Stourhead Landscape Garden. The National Trust (2000).
- Christopher Hussey, English Gardens and Landscapes 1700-1750. London: Country Life Ltd (1967) pp. 158-164.
- Valentin Hammerschmidt - Joachim Wilke, The discovery of the landscape. English gardens of the 18th century. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (1990) pp. 71-79.
- Tomke Schäfer-Stöckert: The garden at Stourhead between presentation and interpretation (1742–2012) . VDG Weimar, Ilmtal-Weinstrasse 2020. ISBN 978-3-89739-940-2 .
- Rudolf Sühnel, The park as a total work of art of English classicism using the example of Stourhead. In: Meeting reports of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class (1977) pp. 7–26.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 6 ′ 27 ″ N , 2 ° 19 ′ 12 ″ W.