[4], Because the grounds were wide and extended up valleys and over wooded hillsides, it was impossible to take in the whole as a single vista. [8] Beyond that was the Wychbury Obelisk, raised in 1764 to various members of the Lyttelton family.
Ascending the left bank, one reached a grotto of "grotesque stone alcoves and seats shaded with laurels" above a cascade decorated with glittering vitrified slag from the old glass industry in the area. They were redeveloped and landscaped between about 1739 and 1764, with follies designed by John Pitt (of Encombe), Thomas Pitt, James "Athenian" Stuart, and Sanderson Miller. list a garden | Worcestershire sheet 9 NE, 1st edition published 1884. [7] On the slope immediately overlooking the new Hall was a column, originally the gift of George Lyttelton's old employer, Frederick, Prince of Wales, which was moved to that position as a memorial following the prince's death in 1751. Time to make some memories! Ardent admiration forgives what is now perceived as the artifice of 18th century landscaping, and forgets the literary associations of a bygone age, as it responds naturally to the handiwork of "Nature's God".
about | [10] Along the course of the old road on its way there was the rectory, and near it Jacob's Well, the original water source for the Hall,[11] and a quarry that produced the stone known as Hagley-rag. One of the Top Five Birmingham Wedding Make up Artist is on our list. #2 of 3 Nature & Parks in Hagley "Great lunch with the family and a good look round the shop and outdoor plants." Premier Inn Birmingham Oldbury - M5, Jct 2, Awentsbury Hotel near Birmingham University. On the way there was the Temple of Theseus built for George Lyttelton‘s father by James Stuart in imitation of the ancient Temple of Hephaestus at Athens. Hagley Park is the estate of Hagley Hall in Worcestershire, England. Hagley Skatepark, located within the Hagley Playing Fields, is a concrete skatepark. It was his grandson George, however, who was chiefly responsible for landscaping them in the Neoclassical taste and making them one of the foremost examples of the style in England. Up until the mid-19th century the park was generally open to the public, "And citizens who take the air/ Full oft to Hagley Park repair," a local author observed. Continuing within the park, rather than leaving by the gate to Clent Hill, one next encountered a pebble-floored rustic hermitage composed of roots and moss and near it a curved seat of contemplation with its Latin name (sedes contemplationis) spelled out in snail shells. [12], The circuit of the grounds as described by Thomas Maurice began at the parish church, which in the 18th century was entirely lost behind trees, and took a path "to a gloomy hollow, whose steep banks are covered with large rocky stones, as if rent asunder by some violent concussion of nature." [3] In particular he started a tradition of abandoning the European taste for formal gardens, incorporating instead the natural beauty of the landscape.
This was written following his first visit to Hagley in 1743 and introduced the following year into the Spring section of his revised The Seasons.
[31] In his essay on "The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening" (1780), Horace Walpole was to commend Milton's description as "a warmer and more just picture of the present style than Claude Lorrain could have painted from Hagley or Stourhead", going on then to apply Milton's lines on the management of water to the principal garden vista at Hagley, In addition, lines from Milton appeared at two other sites in the park. On the bank above was an elegant Palladian bridge from which one looked up along a sequence of three lakes one above the other to a Rotunda (the work of John Pitt in about 1748) crowning the valley's head.