Foxley: the prices' estate in Herefordshire

• Autores: Denis A. Lambin
• Localización: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscape, ISSN 1460-1176, Vol. 7, Nº 3, 1987, págs. 244-270
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • It is the first time, and to my knowledge the only one, when the names of Downton and Foxley, however garbled, appear in a French work of some merit. In the same passage, Delille also mentions Parkplace, "Leasowe de Shenstone", Hagley and "Pain'shill", but devotes more lines to Downton and Foxley (a few more to Chiswick) than to the places just cited. However, in the four lines quoted above, Delille implies - or so it seems - that Foxley, much better than Downton or any other place, could serve as a model of what should be done to beautify some rural estate by means of plantations. At the same time, Delille compliments Price, whose Essay on the Picturesque he probably knew. For "the rules that Foxley laid down", as Delille suggests, could more easily be read on paper than on the terrain - still better, be heard from Price himself, who was so fond of guiding visitors over his lands and about his woods, while expatiating upon the details of his embellishments. That the fame of Foxley, on a par with much better known places, should have spread to France thanks to the many editions of Delille's poems, begged for investigation. The more so as visits to present-day Foxley hardly confirm the idea one might have formed of its former glory. For indeed the general appearance of the place is so very quiet and rural that it is difficult to understand how Foxley could have been worth the détour, "in search of the Picturesque", by the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. William Gilpin, quoting some "journal" in the second edition of his Wye tour, says of Foxley that "the forms of the grounds about it, and the beautiful woods that surround it, are said to be worth seeing".