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| The Mixed Style at Wimbledon House: an illustration from
Loudon's Suburban Gardener |
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Garden historians are wont to say that J C Loudon invented the 'Mixed or Gardenesque
style', and that Alton Towers is the
best surviving example of his taste. This is false. Their reasoning
appears to be that Alton Towers is described in the Gardener's
Magazine, which Loudon edited, and that it looks like a
physical counterpart to his encyclopaedias on gardening and
architecture: a vast assemblage of plants and garden buildings in
styles from all parts of the known world.
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| The Pagoda at Alton Towers |
The Pagoda at Alton Towers |
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| The glasshouses at Alton Towers |
The glasshouses at Alton Towers |
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| The yew arches at Alton Towers in 1900 |
'Stonehenge' at Alton Towers |
Alton Towers is the best example of the Mixed style but
it was severly criticised by Loudon and the planting design is not
Gardenesque. The plants at Alton Towers are in irregular groups but
the collection is of very marginal interest to plantsmen and there
is no evidence of a botanical zest for identification,
classification and variety. Loudon was appalled by the mixture of
styles at Alton Towers - it offended him in the same way that
encyclopaedia entries on 'rakes and roses' or 'French and Finnish'
architecture would have offended him. After visiting Alton Towers
in 1826 and again in 1831 he wrote the following descriptions of
the gardens:
Alton Towers is a very singular place, both in its geology,
which is peculiarly adapted for grand and picturesque effects, and
in what has been done to it by the late Earl of Shrewsbury.....
This nobleman, abounding in wealth, always fond of architecture and
gardening, but with much more fancy than sound judgement, seems to
have wished to produce something different from everything else.
Though he consulted almost every artist, ourselves among the rest,
he seems only to have done so for the purpose of avoiding whatever
an artist might recommend. After passing in review before him a
great number of ideas, that which he adopted was always different
from every thing that had been proposed to him.
Loudon found the consequences of the Earl's policy to very mixed
indeed:
The first objects that met our eye were, the dry Gothic bridge
and the embankment leading to it, with a huge imitation of
Stonehenge beyond and a pond above the level of the bridge
alongside of it, backed by a mass of castellated stabling. Farther
along the side of the valley, to the left of the bridge, is a range
of architectural conservatories, with seven elegant glass domes,
designed by Mr Abraham, richly gilt. Farther on, still to the left,
and placed on a high and bold naked rock, is a lofty Gothic tower
or temple.... consisting of several tiers of balconies, round a
central staircase and rooms; the exterior ornaments numerous, and
resplendent with gilding. Near the base of the rock is a corkscrew
fountain of a peculiar description..... below the main range of
conservatories are a paved terrace walk with a Grecian temple at
one end.... The remainder of the valley, to the bottom, and on the
opposite side, displays such a labyrinth of terraces, curious
architectural walls, trelliswork arbours, vases, statues, stone
stairs, wooden stairs, turf stairs, pavements, gravel and grass
walks, ornamental buildings, bridges, porticoes, temples, pagodas,
gates, iron railings, parterres, jets, ponds, streams, seats,
fountains, caves, flower-baskets, waterfalls, rocks, cottages,
trees, shrubs, beds of flowers, ivied walls, rockwork, shellwork,
rootwork, moss-houses, old trunks of trees, entire dead trees,
&c., that it is utterly impossible for words to give any idea
of the effect..... in one place we have Indian temples excavated in
it, covered with hieroglyphics; and in another, a projecting rock
is formed into a huge serpent, with a spear-shaped iron tongue and
glass eyes.
It is difficult to conceive of a garden with a greater mixture
of stylistic features than Alton Towers. Loudon most certainly did
not consider it a model to be imitated and concluded : 'we consider
the greater part of it in excessively bad taste, or rather,
perhaps, as the work of a morbid imagination, joined to the command
of unlimited resourses'.
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| Ashridge: Repton's Mixed Style Plan and
illustrations of the the Monk's Garden and the Rosarium |
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The real inventor of the Mixed style was Humphry Repton. His
last book contains proposals for a variety of 'different kinds of
gardens' which were restrained by the standard of Alton Towers but very mixed by the refined
standards of the eighteenth century. Repton described Ashridge as 'the child of my age and declining
powers' and his 'youngest favourite'. He said that few other
projects had 'excited so much interest in my mind', and published a
fragment from the Ashridge red book in which he justified the
mixture of features as follows:
The novelty of this attempt to collect a number of gardens,
differing from each other, may perhaps, excite the critic's
censure; but I will hope there is no more absurdity in collecting
gardens of different styles, dates, characters, and dimensions, in
the same inclosure, than in placing the works of a Raphael and a Teniers in the same cabinet, or books sacred
and profane in the same library.
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Declining, Repton's powers may have been, but his reasoning had
a most potent effect on Victorian gardens. The Ashridge Red Book proposed no less than fifteen
different types of garden. They included a holy well in an
enclosure of rich masonry, a winter garden, a monk's garden, a
sheltered garden for foreign trees, an American garden, raised
beds, and a rosarium which was 'supplied from the holy well, and
then led into the grotto, from whence it is finally conducted into
the drinking-pool in the park'. The suceeding fragment from the red
book on Woburn Abbey proposed another
American garden and a Chinese-dairy 'decorated by an assemblage of
Chinese plants, such as the Hydrangea, Aucuba, and Camellia
japonica'. Since Repton's Fragments on the theory and practice
of landscape gardening was published in 1816, and Alton Towers was made between 1814 and 1827,
it seems certain that Repton, as the most famous landscape designer
and gardening author of his day, was the predominant influence on
the Earl of Shrewsbury. However Repton's different types of garden
were only intended to make the foreground more Beautiful; the Earl
and many subsequent designers applied the style to whole estates.
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| Shendish, Hertfordshire, a prime example of
Edward Kemp's work in the Mixed Style |
Edward Kemp
published the first edition of his highly successful book on garden
design in 1850 and included a number of Reptonesque designs by his
own hand. It is perhaps the most typical of all Victorian books on
garden design.
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| Underscar in the Lake District, designed by
Edward Kemp |
Kemp advocated 'the mixed style, with a little help from both
the formal and the picturesque'. Fearing that this might not be a
sufficient mixture he went on to say that 'an absolute adherence to
one style.... is not to be rekoned among the paramount virtues of
the art', and even individual styles should be adapted to fit in
with the peculiarities of individual sites.
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| Biddulph Grange |
Believers in stylistic purity may never appreciate the Mixed
style but its popular appeal has always been great. Surprisingly
few good examples remain, though two good examples survive within
thirty miles of Alton Towers: Biddulph Grange, and Tatton Park. In order to gain a full
appreciation of the style it is necessary to resort to one of three
expedients: one can look at contemporary illustrations (especially
Loudon's); one can look at the
photographic books which were published between 1890 and 1914; or
one can go on tour and set the remembered images beside each other
in one's mind. The tour could well start with a visit to the
surviving parts of Repton's work at Woburn and Ashridge. It should then include the following:
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Alton Towers
The aviary at Waddeston Manor
The circular rosary at Regent's Park
The Indian garden at Sezincote
The Italian terrace and the rose gardens at Shugborough
The Brighton
Pavilion, based on a Repton design
The Chinese and Egyptian gardens at Biddulph Grange
The alpine garden in the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden
The bamboo glade and the Palm House at Kew
Gardens
The Great Conservatory in Sefton Park
The conservatory and the American garden at Bicton
The Swiss Cottage at Osborne
The Japanese garden and the fernery at Tatton Park
The Chinese bridge at Winterbourne, University of Birmingham Botanical
Gardens
The prehistoric monsters at the Crystal
Palace.
Alton Towers itself has been turned into an amusement
parks which attracts large crowds and could develop into 'England's
Disneyland'. The more ephemeral garden features have gone but the
main garden structures were soundly built and are well maintained.
Time and the Earl's lavish plantings have welded them into a
unified whole which has the self-confident exuberance of the great
nineteenth century railway stations, piers, hotels and churches.
Like these buildings, the gardens at Alton Towers can be seen as
symbols of the nineteenth century thirst for travel, comfort and
spiritual adventure.
The variety of countries in the above list remind us that the
Mixed style helped to safisfy the globe-trotting Englishman's taste
for the exotic. Nowadays they turn to the television set, the
package tour, the internet or the National Geographic
Magazine.
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| The Great Conservatory at Sefton Park, Liverpool |
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