Humphry Repton was interred in a grave close by the south wall of Aylsham parish church following his death on the 24th March 1818. Next year will mark the two-hundredth anniversary of his death. This anniversary of the last great English landscape designer will be celebrated by a series of commemorative events through the spring and summer.
Repton produced designs for the grounds of many of England’s foremost country houses: in all improvement schemes for over four hundred estates, not only in Norfolk but further afield too. Many of these landscapes have come down to us and are available for all to enjoy. Some will be available for the public to visit in 2018, and we hope to provide details of those at a later date on this website.
Repton was born in Bury St Edmunds, the son of John Repton, a successful collector of excise, and Martha (nee Fitch). He was educated at Norwich Grammar School, where his father ran a transport business. In 1764 he was sent to the Netherlands to train as a merchant. Here he cultivated his skills as a sketcher and private gardener. A period of apprenticeship to a Norwich textile merchant followed and on his marriage to Mary Clarke in 1773 he went into business on his own account. This venture was not successful and his parents’ death in 1778 provided a small legacy to settle on a small country estate, as a minor squire farming his land, at Sustead near Aylsham in Norfolk. Here Repton continued to cast around for suitable business opportunities. Periods as a journalist, dramatist, artist, political agent, and as confidential secretary to William Windham of Felbrigg, when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, followed one after the other with little success. Has was also involved in a joint venture to reform the mail-coach system, but this similarly lost him money.
The successor to Capability Brown
Following these early business setbacks, Repton was encouraged by a childhood friend, James Smith, to develop further his interests in gardening and sketching. It was at this point that his professional interest in landscape gardening blossomed: William Windham gave access to botany books from his library. His capital dwindling, he moved his young family in 1788 to Hare Street near Romford, Essex. Capability Brown’s death five years earlier had left a gap in the landscape gardening world that Repton was keen to fill. He sent circulars to land owners he had cultivated whilst in Norfolk and Ireland; thus he tentatively commenced his career as a landscape gardener, a phrase he coined. His first landscape commissions relied on his Norfolk connections: Catton Park, Norfolk, England for the mayor and textile merchant, Jeremiah Ives, and at Holkham, also in Norfolk, for Thomas Coke, a notable farming improver. Arguably, the most successful of his projects in Norfolk was Sheringham Hall some years later.
Repton the Landscape Gardener
Many of his commissions involved the preparation of a folio of plans, drawings and accompanying explanatory text for individual clients: his famous ‘Red Books’. Repton’s approach to landscape gardening contrasted sharply with that of Capability Brown, who invariably worked on a wide canvas that fashioned huge new landscaped parks. Repton, by contrast, more often than not embellished and modified the existing landscape in harmony with nature. And whereas Brown used large perimeter belts of trees to enclose, Repton cut vistas through to ‘borrowed’ features beyond, such as church towers, making them seem part of the designed landscape. He contrived approach drives and lodges in the cottage orné style to enhance impressions of size and importance. Capability Brown acted as both designer and contractor; providing a concept to completion service. By contrast, Repton acted as a consultant, charging for his Red Books and sometimes staking out the ground, but leaving his client to arrange the actual execution. Consequently, many of Repton’s four hundred or so designs remained wholly or partially unexecuted. Also, whereas Brown became wealthy, Repton’s income was never more than comfortable.
