A survey plan of Blenheim Park

People:

John Spyers (draughtsman)
Bartholomew Peisley III (contractor)
John Armstrong (landscape architect)
Unknown, Great Britain, 18th century (surveyor)
Henry Wise (nurseryman)
William Townesend (mason)
Sir John Vanbrugh (architect)
Bartholomew Peisley III (mason)
George Spencer, Duke of Marlborough (client)
Lancelot Brown (landscape architect)
William Townesend (contractor)
Sir John Vanbrugh (landscape architect)
Henry Wise (landscape architect)
John Armstrong (engineer)

Title:

A survey plan of Blenheim Park

Date:

1763

Description:

- DR1985:0416 records, in the form of a measured survey, the state of Blenheim Park in 1763, i.e., immediately before the modifications made by Capability Brown. According to this survey, the components and the layout of the park at that date corresponded closely to the original design (1705-16) published in `Vitruvius Britannicus III' (1725), pls. 72-73: the Grand Bridge, the kitchen garden, the tree-lined rides, the Grand Avenue, and the park plantations appear pretty much as their designers intended. However, DR1985:0416 also indicates that the military or state garden at the rear of the palace, with its great parterre and bastioned walls, was already more than half destroyed, and that a lake and a canal system comprised of three arms then existed at the front and to the south-east side of the palace. These important features, the histories of which are poorly documented, were entirely suppressed in the course of Brown's alterations.

Form:
drawings

Quantity / Object type:
1 drawing(s)

Stage and Purpose:

measured drawing
record drawing
topographic survey

Technique and media:

Pen and black and brown ink with watercolour over graphite on laid paper plume et encre noire et brune avec aquarelle sur crayon graphite, sur papier vergé

Dimensions:

sheet: 53.2 x 72.1 cm

Reference number:

DR1985:0416

Drawing Type:

rendering

Method of Projection:

plan (drawing)
site plan

Physical characteristics and technical requirements:

Old fold (repaired) in centre, t. to b.

Inscription:

inscribed - by an eighteenth-century hand, in pen and brown ink, u.l.: "No.1 [circled] Survey of Blenheim park before / Mr. Browns works." inscribed - by the draughtsman, in pen and black ink: labels throughout; b.: "A PLAN of BLENHEIM PARK / and GARDENS etc., in the / COUNTY OF OXFORD. / the SEAT of HIS GRACE / THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. / 1763."; to the right: "N.B. the whole Circumference / of the Park & Gardens etc. / is Eight Miles & Two Furlongs, / and Contains Two Thousand One / Hundred & Nintey five Acres."

Subject:

landscape architecture
topographic

Credit line:
Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal

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