Ruined for Life: Phoenix Edition

So I’ve explained how these families like the Crawly’s amassed huge estates, but how did English estates come to look as they do? Barbara Geiger enlightened us on this question as well.

Wealthy young English men of the 17th and  begin to cap their education with a trip abroad. Often these classically educated men would spend time in Europe and value paintings of Greek pastorals with beautiful expanses of land dotted with sheep and enclosed at the horizon with a line of trees.

By Thomas Cole

Sometimes a nymph, probably naked would show up.

By John Reinhard Weguein

Geiger mentioned Claude Lorrain as an influential painter.

By Claude Lorraine – Note the Classical Greek structures

These sons would return home and want to recreate the images in these paintings.  In addition the price of English wool goes up so bring in the sheep.

Lancelot “Capability” Brown was a famous landscape architect who

Glamis Castle, designed by Lancelot Capability Brown

Blenheim Place designed by Capability Brown

A key feature of English landscaping, the Haha, a ditch near a home that kept animals like sheep from nearing a house. It’s something of a moat out of land.

A haha

This doesn’t seem so deep, but they aren’t crossing

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