• Unknown, Great Britain, 18th century (draughtsman)
• Lancelot Brown (landscape architect)
• Unknown, Great Britain, 18th century (surveyor)
• John Spencer, Earl of Spencer (client)

A survey plan of Wimbledon Park as designed for Lord Spencer by Capability Brown

between 1765 and 1785

- DR1985:0415 presents a cartographic survey of Wimbledon Park as "improved" in the second half of the eighteenth century. Covering some 1,200 acres, the park as shown in this plan contains all the elements of Capability Brown's mature landscape style: expanses of grass traversed by meandering paths, irregular plantings of trees placed singly and in clumps, and winding streams dammed to create a large, irregular lake near the centre of the property and several small ponds about the periphery. The main house (built 1732-33 for Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough), its outbuildings, and the village church are shown at the southern end of the park, as is a kitchen garden dating from an earlier period. Roads, lanes, and neighbouring properties are neatly labelled in the draughtsman's hand, and the fall of the land has been indicated in shade lines.

• measured drawing
• presentation drawing (proposal)
• record drawing
• topographic survey

Pen and black ink on laid paper

sheet: 61.8 x 39.8 cm

DR1985:0415

• rendering

• plan (drawing)
• site plan

Old fold, c.l. to c.r.; two old hinges, verso u.r. and l.r.; repairs, u.l., u.r., and c.r.

inscribed - by an eighteenth-century hand, in pen and brown ink, u.l.: "No. 7 [circled]"; u.r.: "Wimbledon park as improved by / Mr. Brown rekon'd amongst / His best works." inscribed - by the draughtsman, in pen and black ink, throughout: with labels

• landscape architecture
• topographic