James Grantham Turner

The Structure of Henry Hoare's Stourhead

The garden at Stourhead, Wiltshire, is regarded as “the one total and authoritative masterwork” of English landscape gardening still in existence.1 It is a paradigm of the reaction against formality and the growth of picturesque sensibility, a harmonious composition of hanging woods, undulating lakeside paths, and irregularly placed temples, grottoes, and ruins. It is also now recognized as a serious work of art, an important piece of evidence in the study of visual meaning in the eighteenth century. Stourhead is the subject of two major analyses, by Kenneth Woodbridge2 and Ronald Paulson,3 as well as innumerable passing references. All of these have confused the gardens chronological development, misrepresented its allusions, and underestimated its unity.