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While this summer’s drought conditions have had a dramatic effect on many aspects of our environment, one upside of the recent hot and dry conditions has been the discovery of long-forgotten or completely unknown archaeological sites. This was the case at Blenheim Palace, the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough, where the ghostly outline of a 300-year-old formal garden reappeared, picked out in detailed parch marks.
Created in 1705 by royal gardener Henry Wise, the space’s layout was revealed in intricate detail. While the formal, ornamental garden – or parterre – was known from a surviving 1719 plan of the palace (below), the present parch marks are allowing the Blenheim team, as well as the site’s many visitors, to appreciate its scale and layout in real life. Stretching the full width of the palace and running nearly half a mile long, with high stone walls surrounding it, the garden was in keeping with the architect John Vanbrugh’s grandiose vision for the estate.
It was dismantled, however, in the 1760s, during Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown’s initiative to transform Blenheim’s grounds to make them more natural and in keeping with the surrounding English countryside. It is this landscape, with its large lake, cascades, and surrounding woodland, that predominantly survives on the palace estate today.
The palace grounds are set to undergo further major changes over the next ten years, with plans to restore and transform the Formal Gardens in what will be the biggest change to the site’s 90 acres (35ha) of gardens in more than 100 years.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka / Images: Pete Seaward
