Lancelot capability brown gardens

On the 6th February 1783 ‘Capability’ Brown died in London, leaving a legacy of landscape gardening we continue to enjoy today.

Born in Kirkharle, Northumberland, Lancelot Brown was the fifth child of William Brown, a land agent and his mother Ursula who worked in service as a maid in Kirkharle Hall.

Lancelot, as he was then known, attended school until the age of sixteen when he left to work as an apprentice to the head gardener at Kirkharle Hall, a position he held until the age of twenty three. After spending several years learning under the guidance of others he journeyed south, first to Lincolnshire and then to Kiddington Hall in Oxfordshire.

This was to be his first landscape commission and involved the creation of a new lake in the park grounds of the hall.

His career continued to flourish, so much so that by 1741 he joined Lord Cobham’s gardening team at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, working under the guidance of William Kent who had established th