Landscape record 1232102000 - Stoke Place

House was built in 1698. The small park was landscaped by Brown in 1765-7. Parkland dotted with trees and irregular copses, large walled kitchen gardens, lake with islands and boat house in informal landscaped park closer to the house (B2).
Brown's involvement confirmed by payments to his accounts and by contemporary references (B3).
A mid‐C18 pleasure ground by the nationally renowned designer Lancelot Brown while at his most productive, as the setting for a C17 Chiltern country villa, for career soldier General Howard. The pleasure ground was enlarged and embellished in a further phase in the early C19 by Howard’s grandson, adding features, enlarging Brown’s lake, and creating the park to the east and south. It was unusual for Brown to design only a pleasure ground, but for his work he was paid £800, indicating a significant commission. The most important elements of the layout, those established by the mid‐C19, largely survive in the 40 ha. site, including the essence of Brown’s work of the mid‐1760s, but also an extensive kitchen garden in three compartments with gardener’s house, and the remains of former structures around the lake. The layout made good use of the Chiltern setting, originally including views from the pleasure ground towards Windsor and Eton (now obscured by vegetation). Two key ornamental structures present by the 1820s (orangery and rotunda possibly by Brown) have gone but their positions are evident and their settings remain. The extent and survival of villa gardens is not well recorded and this is a good example at this larger scale, with a typical ensemble of features which survive largely intact, although the layout has been somewhat simplified. See report for detail (B4).
Registered at Grade II for the following principal reasons: - Historic interest: as a mid-C18 pleasure ground, developed further in the early C19 with the addition of various landscape features, including a park and extensive kitchen gardens; - Survival: retaining the general layout of the two main phases, both of which pre-date 1840; - Designer: ‘Capability’ Brown is one of the most important and influential figures in the history of English landscape design, and Stoke Place is an unusual example of a design by him for a pleasure ground in a villa setting; - Historic association: General Sir George Howard and his grandson, Richard William Howard-Vyse, responsible for the two major phases of work at Stoke Place, are notable figures in C18 and C19 military and political history; - Documentary evidence: early-C19 accounts provide an insight into gardening practices of the period, for which evidence on the ground survives; - Group value: with Stoke Place house, two sets of gates and walls, and Stoke Place Farm, which once formed an entrance to the park, all of which are listed at Grade II (see Register entry for detail) (B5).