Sir John Vanbrugh And Landscape Architecture In Baroque England 1690-1730

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 2000 by David Watkin

Edited by Christopher Ridgway and Robert Williams. Stroud: Sutton Publishing in association with the National Trust. 2000. [pound]25

The most startling disclosure in these 11 essays by different scholars is that Vanbrugh was in. India in 1683-85 as a junior merchant in the East India Company. Moreover, Robert Williams reproduces a previously unpublished plan by Vanbrugh of 1711 for a six acre garden cemetery on the edge of London which, he claims, is based on the cemetery Vanbrugh knew at Surat on the west coast of India. With its pyramids, obelisk, spires, and domed mausolea, set among trees, Vanbrugh's accompanying elevation is a visionary drawing which is 'by far the earliest-known English design for a cemetery'. As well as anticipating the Enlightenment movement against interment inside churches which led to garden cemeteries such as Pere Lachaise, it was also the inspiration behind Vanbrugh's landscape at Castle Howard.

Timothy Mowl shows how late seventeenth-century drama and antiquarian studies stimulated Vanbrugh with images and ideas about the past. Giles Worsley, in a stimulating essay on antique influence, suggests that Castle Howard was probably the earliest European landscaped park dotted with buildings. However, one might add Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli as an antique precedent. Derek Linstrum, in 'Remembering Vanbrugh', illustrates the remarkable Dilushka Palace, Lucknow (1798-1814), modelled on Vanbrugh's Seaton Delaval. Other essays cover estate management and horticulture.

The National Trust is to be congratulated for promoting the publication of these papers from an academic conference on Vanbrugh held at Castle Howard in 1999 which will be a welcome contrast to the pot-pourri and picture books in its gift shops.