Wednesday 28 November 2007, 6pm for 6.30pm

Landscape Architecture at Castle Howard in the First Steam Age: William Andrews Nesfield,
John Thomas and their Contemporaries

by Dr Christopher Ridgway

In the early 1850s the 7th Earl of Carlisle commissioned William Andrews Nesfield to modernise the gardens at Castle Howard with the introduction of two fountains and an elaborate parterre de broderie. This enormous project, which went five times over budget, was executed against a backdrop of railway construction and investment in Yorkshire, with the Earl trading Castle Howard land for railway shares.

The principal figures in these operations - landscape designers, architects, engineers and patrons - shared a peculiarly intimate world, encountering one another repeatedly in various guises, thanks largely to the birth of the railway age, which facilitated rapid and widespread travel throughout the British Isles. The steam-age traveller par excellence was William Andrews Nesfield, England's first self-styled professional landscape architect. A contemporary figure in every sense, Nesfield is famous for his elaborate parterre designs which were drawn from 17th-century French patterns. Drawing on Nesfield material in a private archive overseas, this talk will set the work of Nesfield and his contemporaries in the architectural, technological and social context of the 1840s and 1850s.

Dr Christopher Ridgway has been Curator at Castle Howard since 1985. He has lectured widely in the UK and overseas on its history, architecture, collections, and landscape, on which he has also published extensively. He is currently at work on a book-length study of the gardens and landscape, entitled The Landscaping of Castle Howard.

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Places must be booked in advance by contacting Beth Kingston, Education Manager
Sir John Soane's Museum. Tel: 020 7440 4254. Email: Beth Kingston

We ask for a contribution of £2.00 on the evening, to cover the cost of wine and postage.

The Soane Museum Study Group is a forum for discussion on all aspects of architectural history
and related areas of interest, with a particular focus on work in progress.