Landscape and Antiquity: Aspects of English Culture at Stourhead, 1718 to 1838

"The book is concerned with the lives of two men, Henry Hoare (1705–85), the imaginative baker who was a pioneer of English landscape gardening, and his grandson, Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838), the archaeologist. The first part of the book discusses in detail the making of the famous Classical Elysium at Stourhead, and its associations with literature and painting. An account of travel, at home and abroad, forms a prologue to Colt Hoare's main achievement, his exploration with William Cunnington of the barrows and earthworks on and around Salisbury Plain. the record of this in the Ancient History of Wiltshire was an important step towards objective methods in field archaeology. the story of their collaboration is here told for the first time in full. The tastes of Henry and Colt Hoare as collectors and patrons of the arts show the trend in fashion from Classicism to Romanticism. The book is an illustration of the background from which the English topographical and picturesque movements arose."-Publisher.