Four Great Designers, One Garden
Claremont Landscape Garden has been shaped by four of the most important names in English garden design: Sir John Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. No other garden in England can claim that lineage, which makes Claremont a living textbook of how the English landscape movement evolved across the 18th century.
Vanbrugh started it in 1709, buying a small farm at Chargate and building a villa he called ‘Chargate House’. He sold it to Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who renamed it Claremont. Vanbrugh designed the Belvedere Tower – a distinctive hilltop structure that still stands – and Bridgeman created the turf amphitheatre around 1725, one of the earliest known examples of its kind in Europe.
Kent, Brown, and Clive of India
William Kent arrived in the 1730s, softening Bridgeman's formal geometries. He created the lake and its island, turning the central space from an angular canal into something more natural. When Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey, bought the estate in 1769 for £25,000, he hired Capability Brown to reshape the grounds and Henry Holland to build a new house on higher ground. Brown enlarged the lake, opened up views, and created the flowing parkland that survives today.
Restoration and Revival
The garden was separated from the house in 1922 when the estate was divided. By the 1970s, much of the 18th-century landscape had been lost to scrub and neglect. The National Trust acquired the garden in 1949 and launched a major restoration in 1975. Today, the 49-acre garden is back to something approaching its original splendour: the amphitheatre, the lake, the grotto, Kent's island, and Brown's serpentine walks are all open to the public.
