Landscape record 1556200000 - Ashridge Estate

From the 1820s, the 7th Earl of Bridgewater and his wife Charlotte oversaw extension of the designed landscape [of Ashridge] into the woodland and commons west of the Ringshall Lane. They established a network of rides formalised with ornamental planting framing views and accenting junctions with other paths. Additional ornamental features such as viewing terraces, lodges, cottages and the Bridgewater Monument were added. This included major earthworks in the form of the 1.5km long Duncombe Terrace in the north-west of the park, created between 1821 and 1828.
The second Earl Brownlow inherited the estate in 1851, aged eleven, the estate, including the garden, being administered and improved by his mother, Lady Marian Alford.
In the wake of the First World War, the 3rd Earl Brownlow, who had inherited vast estates, instructed in his will that his trustees sell the Ashridge Estate. Most of the park and woodland was purchased by the National Trust in 1925.
Formal rides cut through the woodland flanking Monument Drive, including a pate d’oie radiating from the Deer Leap. The northern of these rides links with the ornamental carriage drive known as Duncombe Terrace, which extends north along the escarpment as far as Clipperdown Cottages with sweeping views of the valley to the west and towards the neighbouring estate of Tring Park. Existing woodland (2022) obscures views along the rides and from the terraces. Some examples of associated ornamental planting survive (2022).
The land west of the Ringshall Road includes areas pre-dating the creation of the landscape park, some of which were appropriated for artistic effect. [See Register entry for further detail of the part of Ashridge in Hertfordshire](B1).
Ashridge was added to Register of Parks and Gardens in 1987, and extended to include part of Buckinghamshire in March 2023.