The Leasowes 

‘From Stowe, Mr Loudon travelled to The Leasowes, near Birmingham. He was attracted by the fact that it had never been the property of a prince or duke. Nor was it the work of Lancelot Brown.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about the Leasowes

Like many famous landscape designs, William Shenstone’s design for the Leasowes survives as a golf course.

Loudon wrote that: ‘The Leasowes were improved about the same time. It was literally a grazing farm, with a walk, in imitation of a common field, conducted through the several enclosures. Much taste and ingenuity was displayed in forming so many points of view in so confined an extent, and with so few advantages in point of distance. But root-houses, seats, urns, and inscriptions, were too frequent for the whole to be classed with a common, or even an improved or ornamented English farm. It was, in fact, intended as an emblematical scene, in which constant allusion was made to pastoral poetry; and if we consider it in this light, in that of a sentimental farm, it was just what it ought to have been. We regret to find that H. Repton should attack the taste of this amiable man, from a misconception, as we presume, of his intentions, by blaming him for not "surrounding his house with such a quantity of ornamental lawn or park only, as might be consistent with the size of the mansion or the extent of the property." We fear that if Shenstone had adopted this mode of improvement, the Leasowes had never been distinguished from places got up by the common routine of professorship. Shenstone broke his heart through the infamous conduct of a Birmingham attorney, in whose hands he had placed the title . deeds of his estate. The farm is now much neglected, though the paths, and many of the seats, and root-houses, still remain.’

See also:

https://www.gardenvisit.com/gardens/the_leasowes

https://www.gardenvisit.com/biography/william_shenstone