Charles Walter Radclyffe, 1817–1903
Dowton Castle from Downton Woods Herefordshire, with the Shropshire Hills beyond
signed '' C W Radclyffe'' and further inscribed on a label attached to the reverse '' ''Downton Woods, Herefordshire, Early Spring'' by Charles W Radclyffe.''
oil on canvas
Provenance
from a descendant of the artist
Notes
Downton Castle is a grade I listed 18th-century country house in the parish of Downton on the Rock in Herefordshire, England, situated about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Ludlow, Shropshire. The south-facing entrance front has a central square tower, six bays to the left terminating in an octagonal tower and five bays to the right flanked by a square tower, the whole resembling a medieval castle with embattled parapets. Pevsner considered the inspiration to be the French semi-fortified houses in paintings by Claude Lorraine or Gaspard Poussin.
It was the Norman baron Ralph de Mortimer, who as part of his reward for helping William th
...e Conqueror defeat the English in 1066, was given Downton. After a mention in the Doomsday Book of 1086 the estate was quietly left to its own devices for the next six centuries until, in 1727, Richard Knight, a successful iron smelter, acquired it. He in turn left it to his grandson Richard Payne Knight, a ‘libertine and freethinker’, who was a founding member of the Picturesque Movement that wished to `improve’ the landscape
The estate of Downton was acquired by Richard Knight (1659–1749) a wealthy ironmaster from Madeley, Shropshire, and proprietor of the Bringewood Ironworks. The Downton Estate is part of the `birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’. It is less than 25 miles from Iron Bridge, the world heritage site where the technique of smelting iron with coke was perfected in the late 18th century. It was at Downton, in the gorge, where over ten percent of the country’s iron, from nails to plough shares, was produced. There were eleven working mills on the Estate and while some remain in a state of disrepair, much of the industrial heritage including the bridges, weirs and mills in the river gorge have been renovated.
The estate passed to his grandson the art connoisseur and MP Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824), who rebuilt the house in the Gothic revival style. Payne Knight was an enthusiast of the picturesque style, and commissioned the landscape artist Thomas Hearne to produce drawings of the grounds. Construction started in 1772/3 and was largely completed by 1778.Knight conceived the idea of building Downton Castle in the gothic revival style and he designed it to complement the wild and irregular scenery of the area, as opposed to reflecting the then fashionable `artificial and tame’ landscapes advocated by the great garden architects Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton. He cut new paths, built a Roman Bath, an Alpine Bridge and a Switchback Tunnel. He also commissioned the English landscape water-colourist Thomas Hearne to paint twelve views of the dramatic Downton Gorge
In 1824 the estate was inherited by the horticulturalist Charlotte Knight (c.1801-1843), niece of Payne Knight, the daughter and heiress of his brother, the botanist Thomas Andrew Knight. She was the wife of Sir William Edward Rouse-Boughton, 2nd and 10th Baronet (1788-1856), of Downton Hall, Stanton Lacy, Shropshire, (about 6 miles (9.7 km) to the NE of Downton Castle), a Member of Parliament for Evesham in Worcestershire. As her eldest son was heir to his father''s estates and two baronetcies, she bequeathed the Downton Castle estate to their second son Andrew Rouse-Boughton-Knight (d.1947), who in 1857 adopted the additional surname of Knight. He served as High Sheriff of Herefordshire in 1860 and at that time began improvements and extensions to the house, including a new entrance and porch, a north west tower, and a chapel.[1] He added terraced gardens in 1865 to t
Internal Reference: 4458
Antique ID Number (AIDN): SA868401
Dateline of this antique is 19th Century
Height is 56cm (22.0inches)Width is 91cm (35.8inches)Depth is 3cm (1.2inches)
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