Dewy Raush. "Borrowed View", Or Great In Small

This day was dedicated to the Age of Enlightenment, and only to it! I really wanted our colleagues to be imbued with the poetry and architecture of a "clean" green landscape. At the beginning of the 18th century, Desalier d "Argenville, theorist of the French regular park, called a correct garden devoid of economic functions a" garden of purity ", in which they seek" first of all correctness, order, and what should be pleasing to the eye, such as parterres, bosquets, bulingrins decorated with porticoes, green offices, figures, stairs, fountains and cascades "(translation by B. Sokolov).

Rausch. House and sky above the hillside

Rausch. View from the manor yard to the meadows

The purity of the English landscape park is quite different. Here they went from parterres to lawns, from bosquets to groves, from fountains and cascades to streams and lakes. To the delight of landscape pilgrims, two outstanding works by William Kent are half an hour away from each other, and also close to London and Oxford. In addition, one of them is an early ensemble housed in a small area, and the other is the grand, most famous park of the era, where Kent's work became the main link in the historical chain of transformations.

Dewy, sunny Rauschem

The morning was beautiful - bright, sprinkled with dew and drops of night rain. The road ran between low hills, past landscaped meadows and cows. We entered the courtyard of the manor house five minutes before the opening. There was already a tall old man in a brown country jacket - the owner of the estate, a direct descendant of the creator of the park, Charles Cotrell Dormer. I wrote to him about the arrival, and about our two girls, schoolgirls, because, as mentioned above, for some reason, children there are wary. Apart from us, the owner and the cows, there was no one around at all. Enthusiastic garden lovers poured out of the bus and admired the morning meadow, old trees and landscape views around the house. To admire the friendly grumbling - near the entrance there was a basket with large green apples and the inscription: "Do not be shy."

Meanwhile, I told about Rauschem's story. First of all, it is the house and estate of one family. The estate was bought by Robert Dormer at the beginning of the 17th century, and the magnificent, typically English house still retains the interiors of this century. Its ledges and glazed bay windows are surprisingly pleasant and cozy. It is a pity that visitors are not usually invited there.

Rausch. Manor house, courtyard with walled garden and our bus

Rausch. Park facade of the house

The founder's grandson, Colonel Robert Dormer Cotrell, lived at the beginning of the new century and, therefore, in the landscape style. In 1719, he invited the famous landscape architect Charles Bridgman to design the garden. The site here is not very large, but from the house the area slopes steeply to the quiet winding river Cherwell, and to the left this slope is softened by a small hollow. Bridgeman appears to have laid down a system of paths and views, and by the 1730s, a fashion garden seemed to be ready.

Rausch. Manor house, view parterre and Ah-ah wall

But after Robert's death, his brother James decided that the garden was too regular and out of date. Then he takes the main step in the history of Rauschem - he invites William Kent. We know the park is already undergoing processing. He also decorated the house with serf battlements - a hint of the then fashionable neo-Gothic style.

Rausch. The layout of the park. Satellite image. B. Sokolov's scheme

In four years, Kent has transformed an angular piece of land overlooking the neighboring fields into a piece of paradise with antique motives.

Rausch. Terrace Preneste - a true Italian accent

Rausch. The Preneste Terrace is a true Italian accent of the park

Rausch. View of the Preneste terrace from the Valley of Venus

Rausch. Inside the Preneste Terrace is a wonderful antique gallery

To the left of the house, above the slope, stands the Preneste terrace - a reminder of the former glory of the ancient Roman city with its once famous terraced temple.

Rausch. View from the Preneste terrace to the corner of the park with the Venus Valley, the planting of rhododendrons and the bend of the Cherwell River

Rausch. Parterre with sculpture and gazebos, turning into a green slope

From the terrace, the view curves smoothly towards the fields and the bend of the river, so the spatial experience is great. Luxurious views of the terrace open from the dense green alleys on both sides.

Rausch. Gazebo, herma and droshka to the Preneste terrace

Rausch. Lion tearing a horse. Sculpture of the main parterre

Both parterres are equipped with beautifully arranged, albeit oddly plotted, sculptures - "The Dying Slave" and a lion tearing a horse. Behind the Preneste was found the same wonderful temple - a flattened square in plan with a cone instead of a dome, and further - the caves of the Valley of Venus. However, the first and perhaps the main impressions Kent has in store for those who are right behind the house.

Rausch. Main house, dewy parterre and garden behind a green wall

Rausch. View of the Valley of the River Cherwell, Fields and Landmarks of William Kent

Firstly, the "recessed" parterre, delightful even in October - in the morning it was covered with a diamond blanket of sparkling drops. Secondly, the continuation of the species on foreign lands, which Kent called the "borrowed landscape".

Rausch. Geography of views and attractions. Satellite image. B. Sokolov's scheme

The border of the estate runs right under the hill, along the river, but the artist persuaded the neighbors to an unusual solution to this problem. He built the Gothic Mill behind the nearby neighboring field, a modest building of local gray stone with small Gothic arches. And higher and to the right, exactly on the border of the hill and the sky, Kent erected a Gothic arch - a stone wall, as if left over from an ancient abbey. Needless to say, both, as the artist called them, "sights" were decorative, and the arch still interferes with plowing the field?

Rausch. View of the Cherwell river valley, fields and sights. Drawing by William Kent

Rausch. Points of interest: Gothic Arch and the corner of the Gothic Mill

Rausch. Attractions William Kent: Gothic Mill at the bottom left and the Gothic Arch at the top right

Rausch. Attractions: Gothic mill

But from the house of General Dormer, they look exactly as the author of this landscape painting wanted - they create proportions and architectural design for the area, similar to the paintings of Poussin or Lorrain. The use of architecture here is purely picturesque - the building is a brushstroke on the canvas, and not a volume for viewing while walking.

Fortunately, the sun shone even brighter, and everyone was convinced of the existence of "attractions". Paying attention to the details - along the edges of the green wings on both sides of the parterre, green half-round arbors are inserted - we went down into the thick of trees.

Rausch. Sculpture

Rausch. Views in the park

Very dark greenery parted and revealed to us a beautiful slanting path and a sea of rhododendrons. Their plantings were so dense, the thick leaves are so radiant that you will admire even without flowers.

Rausch. Swans and grasses on the Cherwell river

After a couple of tens of meters we found ourselves under the terrace, and the green slope led us down to the river, an overgrown pier and swans. It was very good for Virgil (that is, for me) - it distracted general attention from the not yet fully opened Valley of Venus.

Rausch. A brook flows out of the ground …

… flows along the path..

We turned left, went up the hill again and saw an enchanting water path. Imagine that in the middle of an ordinary path, a stone groove two palms wide emerges from the ground, and a tiny stream goes the same way with you!

… flows into an octahedral body of water …

It meandered along with the path, and on the platform near a small grotto merged into a large octagonal pool. The water was quite still, its thickness was a little bluish, and the magic continued.

… with a grotto and green rows of rhododendrons …

… with blue, cold and clear water …

… and goes to the pond in the Valley of Venus

Flowing out of the pool, the water path made a few more bends and led us to a wide valley crowned with a grotto with a statue of a naked goddess.

Rausch. Pond and upper grotto in the Valley of Venus

Rausch. Pond and Grotto of Venus

Now everyone has seen the Valley of Venus! The stream disappeared into a wide pond, also octahedral, overgrown with aquatic plants, and we looked up and down in delight. Even me, who saw Raush, felt somehow ticklish with joy.

The Valley of Venus is the hollow in the hillside that I mentioned at the beginning of the story. Kent smoothed this gentle slope, making it a beautiful meadow - or, if you prefer, a lawn.

Rausch. View from the pond in the Valley of Venus. The lower grotto is hidden under the sod, but distant landscapes are visible

Rausch. Valley of Venus. Photo by B. Sokolov, 2010

But in the upper and middle parts, he opened a green slope, making ancient grottoes, which seem to go deep underground. The stunning beauty of the scene is born from this combination - the ideal English landscape and the Italian cascade that grows from it.

William Kent. Valley of Venus in Rauschem

Rausch. Valley of Venus. Photo by B. Sokolov. 1996

The artist (who is more correctly called an engineer here) has also found application for a high-lying large pond. It looks great from the statue of Venus (the view of it is discreetly hidden from below), and the waters were fed by fountains, the jets that poured in a high fan from grottoes. I do not know if this spectacle was embodied, but in Kent's drawing it looks like this.

The great view, which is why historians have called Rausch "a poetic landscape park", is complemented by antique statues that frame and complement the scene. The grotto is guarded by Venus's swans with fancifully curved necks, near Preneste there is a "theater" of three sculptures arranged in a semicircle, and near one of them there is a wonderful, very picturesque opening towards the Valley.

Rausch. The Grotto of Venus is guarded by hissing swans

Rausch. Light tunnel between the Theater and the Valley of Venus

The dazzling blue sky and the bright, complex clouds, which are only after heavy rains, made the impression simply ecstatic. As great as Stowe was, the morning Rauschem impressed us even more.

Rausch. Grotto of Venus

Rausch. Grotto of Venus Epitaph to Otterhound Ringwood

It's time to once again go to the statue of Venus and look at her feet. There, in the vault castle, is a hefty marble slab with a long inscription. Let's take a closer look: "Under the Sim Stone lie the Remains of Ringwood, Otterhound of exceptional Mind …" - and then four humorous quatrains in memory of this shaggy and probably very beloved dog in the family who lived during the time of General Cottrell Dormer. This is one of the earliest examples of the attention of the people of the Enlightenment to "lesser brothers" and a penchant for slight blasphemy. The fashion that came from England manifested itself in our country too - remember the gravestones of Catherine II's Italian greyhounds near the Tsarskoye Selo Pyramid, and later - the dog cemetery near the palace in Gatchina. Well, what we saw at the feet of Venus is a cute, awkward rural world, a world in which sometimes whole palaces were built for dogs and pigeons, sometimes in an antique style.

Rausch. View from the lower gallery of the Preneste terrace

The park was soon empty. Once again I walked along the valley of Venus, along the water path, admired the Preneste terrace with vases and greenery in the slanting sunlight, beating with sheaves, and saw how much more beautiful the neighboring fields look through its round arches.

Rausch. Entrance to the walled garden

In the thickets of bushes, a pair of herms was found, the jagged tops of the house looked out, an openwork iron gate appeared in the outlines of the sheared trellis - it became clear where the group had gone.

Rausch. Fenced garden

On my last visit, I did not pay attention to the walled garden. Just a garden, not a landscape park. But what a!

Rausch. Trellis apple tree in a fenced garden

Rausch. Fenced garden. Central pergola with a fountain

Geometric flower beds with a waterfall of autumn flowers, trellis apple trees with ruddy fruits, lawn stripes shading the density of bushes and grasses, a green arcade and a fountain in the center of the garden, an old stone doorway to the next garden full of sunny and lilac chrysanthemums. Yes, it was the second, unfamiliar to me by Rausch!

But not the last one. It turned out that I was not under the flower garden either. Going down the path in the green darkness of the trees, we saw the wall that bounds the estate. Such a border usually makes an unpleasant impression, cancels the illusion of endless space.

Rausch. The fence of the park and a bench directing the visitor's attention to its center

In Rauschem, a bench is installed against the wall facing the park. Sitting on it, you can enjoy the peaceful, unhurried flow of the river and gaze towards the Venus Valley invisible from here.

Rausch. In the shade of the trees, churches of funny shapes lurk

While wandering along the river, we met another temple of "home" forms, and then found ourselves at the foot of the slope and saw the parterre from below.

Rausch. The path running under the main parterre along the Cherwell River …

Rausch. The path leading under the main parterre along the Cherwell River …

… and a stunning view from below upward. The toothed top of the house and the lion tearing the horse were seen, but the main thing in the scene was the clouds, their feathery background, flying steam clouds, illuminated by the sun from both sides.

Rausch. Preneste also looks different when viewed from the lower lane

Rausch. Rose garden, orchard and trellis trees on the walls of the dovecote

Walking past Preneste again and climbing on it, we came to a low stone wall sunk into the ground that encloses the park. On the outside, the moat ended with a green slope. The famous "ah-ah" wall, invisible to walkers, but irresistible for sheep and cows.

And again we returned to the garden behind the wall, where a new shock awaited us. Closer to the house, there was a regular garden, in the center of which stood a beautiful old round tower - a dovecote with a conical roof.

The garden was fragrant, roses of various colors and shades were framed by sheared boxwood, and plane trees and sprawling old apple trees grew on the emerald lawns. Sissinghurst immediately came to mind …