A Visit to Blaise Castle

Blaise Castle

"Blaize Castle!" cried Catherine. "What is that?"
"The finest place in England—worth going fifty miles at any time to see."
"What, is it really a castle, an old castle?"
"The oldest in the kingdom."
"But is it like what one reads of?"
"Exactly—the very same."
"But now really—are there towers and long galleries?"
"By dozens."
"Then I should like to see it..."

In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, who loves 'horrid' novels, longs to explore the wonders of Blaize (Blaise) Castle and 'all the happiness which its walls could supply—the happiness of a progress through a long suite of lofty rooms, exhibiting the remains of magnificent furniture, though now for many years deserted—the happiness of being stopped in their way along narrow, winding vaults, by a low, grated door; or even of having their lamp, their only lamp, extinguished by a sudden gust of wind, and of being left in total darkness.' 

Blaise Castle House Museum

However, she was completely misled by that sad 'rattle' John Thorpe. Far from being an 'old' castle, the Gothic edifice they planned to visit was only about thirty years old when Jane Austen was composing her novel.

The Castle, built in 1766 by estate owner Thomas Farr, was described as 'paltry' in size, but a 'very pleasing object' by Charles Heath in 1819 (Historical and Descriptive Accounts... of Chepstow, 6th edition).

Farr's manor house was replaced in the early 1790s with a beautiful neoclassical house (now Blaise Castle House Museum) designed by William Paty for new owner John Scandrett Harford (the elder).

Humphry Repton's view from the House.

Nash's Dairy.

Humphry Repton designed the picturesque views and park for the house, and John Nash added a charming Orangery and thatched Dairy (1804).

 Sadly, the Orangery was looking somewhat neglected when we visited earlier this year.









Blaise Hamlet, a wonderful collection of cottages also designed by John Nash, is just a couple of minutes' walk from the Museum.

 The houses, built in 1812 by George Repton, one of Humphry's sons, are now cared for by the National Trust.

One of Nash's cottages at Blaise Hamlet. 

Jane Austen's Landscapes

Wooburn

This year is the bicentenary of Humphry Repton's death, and several events are planned: visit http://thegardenstrust.org/events-archive/tags/repton/. 

My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World magazine (Mar/April issue) is on the way Austen uses landscapes in her novels. 

Jane Austen grew up during the great age of the ‘improvers’ like Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton. Austen loved William Cowper's poetry. In his poem The Task, Cowper deplores the rage for 'improvement' which swept away the past:

Capability Brown

Improvement too, the idol of the age,

Is fed with many a victim.  Lo! he comes—

The omnipotent magician, Brown, appears.

Down falls the venerable pile, the abode

Of our forefathers, a grave whiskered race,

But tasteless…

He speaks.  The lake in front becomes a lawn,

Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise,

And streams, as if created for his use,

Pursue the track of his directed wand

Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow,

Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades,

Even as he bids.  The enraptured owner smiles.

’Tis finished.

This tension between the old and new is explored by Jane Austen in her last, unfinished novel, Sanditon. The enthusiastic Mr Parker has built a new home at the seaside: ‘Trafalgar House, on the most elevated spot on the down’. It is a 'light, elegant building, standing in a small lawn with a very young plantation round it’ 

He pours scorn on his wife's fondness for their old home, in a ‘little contracted nook, without air or view’. 

Mrs Parker, more practical, reminds him 'It was always a very comfortable house'. Parker ripostes that ‘We have all the grandeur of the storm’ at Trafalgar House.  His wife still longs for their old garden, however: ‘a nice place for the children to run about in. So shady in summer!' 

Images from the author's collection:

Wooburn (Woburn) in Surrey, the seat of Philip Southcote. He designed it as a ‘ferme ornee’ (ornamental farm garden). The Universal Magazine c.1770. 

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Monthly Chronicle of North Country Lore & Legend, Walter Scott, 1889