Lancelot "Capability" Brown - Early Life and Stowe

Early Life and Stowe

Lancelot Brown was born in the tiny village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at Cambo School. He mastered the principles of his craft by serving as a gardener's boy at Sir William Loraine's modest seat at Kirkharle Hall. In 1739 he moved south, where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire. He moved to Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, a minor seat of Richard Grenville, Lord Cobham. In 1741, he joined Lord Cobham's gardening staff at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, where he served under William Kent, one of the founders of the new English style of landscape garden. While at Stowe, Brown married a local girl named Bridget Wayet and had the first four of his children.

As a proponent of the new English style, Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families. By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle:

The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the river Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote.

In 1764 he was appointed Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, succeeding John Greening and residing at the Wilderness House.