Water with a message

Water is the most precious and sought-after element in the park. At Croome, Worcestershire, [Capability] Brown engineered both a mile-long river and a lake, and, as his monument notes, ‘formed this garden scene out of a morass’.

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Such a sheet of water had coded messages: the owner was rich, for it was monumentally expensive to excavate and then to maintain; the owner had taste, for he or she had commissioned it in the latest style by the best designer; the owner was powerful in the area, for the source was obviously in his control. Size mattered, and the bigger the sheet or the wider and longer the ‘river’ the better. As a mirror for reflecting the house, garden buildings and trees, the surface provided an additional, ephemeral dimension to the view.

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