below At Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, ‘Capability’ Brown used an enlarged version of a bridge-dam to mark the changes in level between two bodies of water. To the visitor crossing the bridge, it looks as if the water flows naturally from one side to the other, whereas the flow from one to the other is controlled by a sluice gate. below right The conduits and sluices that were integral to 18th-century dams are prone to silting and are difficult to repair, so many dams of that period have since been modified to incorporate an open spillway, lined with stone. A by-pass channel, or leat, could also be used to divert water from the lake to the river on the downstream side of the dam.

Feature

Looking at lakes as ornaments in the landscape

For a visitor to a late 18th-century country seat, the most striking feature of the landscape, apart from the house, would have been the lake. For that reason, it is all the more surprising these bodies of water have had such little attention from garden historians and archaeologists. Perhaps that is because it is assumed that they are natural, and that the house site was chosen to overlook the water, whereas the opposite is usually the case, as Chris Catling now reports.

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Current Archaeology

October 6, 2021

Imagine a stately home or historic park and the chances are that your mind’s eye sees a large and distinctive house fronted by a lake: perhaps Castle Howard in Yorkshire, or Bowood in Wiltshire. A large body of tree-fringed water, serving as a complement to the house, is almost part of the definition of stately home, and we tend to take for granted the pairing of the two. Yet, as Wendy Bishop points out in her newly published book on the origins and evolution of the ornamental lake, we need to take a closer look, because nearly all the lakes in England are artificial (with the exception of those in the Lake District and a handful elsewhere), and almost none of these existed before c.1720.

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