Lancelot (Capability) BROWN [14813]

  General Notes:

Lancelot Brown (baptised 30 August 1716 - 6 February 1783).
More commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English landscape architect. He is remembered as "the last of the great English 18th century artists to be accorded his due", and "England's greatest gardener". He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure.
His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's apologist Horace Walpole allowed that Kent had been followed by "a very able master".
Lancelot Brown was born as a land agent's and chambermaid's fifth child in the village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at Cambo School till he was 16. Brown's father had been Sir William Loraine's land agent and his mother in service at Kirkharle Hall. His eldest brother John became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. Elder brother George became a mason-architect.
After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall till he was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south arriving at the port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Then he moved further inland where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire. He moved to Wotton Underwood House, Buckinghamshire, a minor seat of Sir Richard Grenville, Lord Cobham.
In 1741, Brown joined Lord Cobham's gardening staff as undergardener at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, where he worked under William Kent, one of the founders of the new English style of landscape garden. At the age of 26 he was officially appointed as the Head Gardener in 1742, earning L25 a year and residing at the western Boycott Pavilion. He married a Lincolnshire solicitor's daughter Bridget Wayet at Stowe in 1744 and they had six children in the following 15 years.
Brown was the head gardener at Stowe 1742-1750. He made the Grecian Valley at Stowe which, despite its name, is an abstract composition of landform and woodland. Lord Cobham let Brown take freelance commission work from his aristocratic friends, thus making him well known as a landscape gardener.
As a proponent of the new English style, Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families. By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle:
The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the River Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote.
By the 1760s he was earning on average L6000 a year, usually L500 for one commission. As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, taking only an hour or so on horseback to survey an estate and rough out an entire design.
In 1764 Brown was appointed King George III's Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, succeeding John Greening and residing at the Wilderness House.
Brown died in 1783, in Hertford Street, London, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget, who had married the architect Henry Holland. Brown sent two of his sons to Eton. One of them, Lancelot Brown the younger, became the MP for Huntingdon.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Brown

  Research Notes:

The Wise Family Tree exhibts considerable data on Lancelot see:
http://person.ancestry.co.uk/tree/7895201/person/6894654705/facts

Lancelot married Bridget WAYET [14814] [MRIN: 5251], daughter of William, WAYET [14815] and Margaret KELSALL [14816], in 1744 in Stowe. (Bridget WAYET [14814] was born on 26 Apr 1718 in Boston LIN and died in 1787 in Huntingdon HUN.)