Resumen de Stourhead in 1768: Extracts from an unpublished journal by Sir John Parnell. Edited with an introduction on 18th-century visitors
Tourism has always ranked high as a leisure occupation; the history of the English landscape garden would be far more incomplete were it not for the record which was made in numerous travel journals and letters. These vary enormously in quality and usefulness, from the cliché-ridden description of the uninstructed tourist, to the specialized attention of the connoisseur. The improvement of estates during the 18th century was followed with interest, as the two descriptions of Stourhead reproduced in this issue of the Journal show. The Extract from John Parnell's Journal of 1769 is important not only because it adds to our information, but for the critical observations it contains. John Parnell (1744-1801), later Sir John, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, was the great-nephew of Thomas Parnell the poet, and great-grandfather of Charles Stuart Parnell. He studied law in England, graduated at Trinity College Dublin, and was the Member for Bangor in the Irish Parliament for 1767-1768. Another manuscript Journal of a tour in 1763 is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. He visited Italy sometime between 1764 and 1767. From May 1769 to April 1770 he made a second visit to England, during which time he travelled to gather ideas for the improvement of his own estate in Ireland (his accounts of Woburn Farm [1763 and 1769] and Painshill [1763] are discussed in articles by James Sambrook in Garden History).
