Downton Castle, Ludlow, England

Downton Castle was inherited by Richard Payne Knight from his grandfather, the ironmaster Richard Knight in 1772.

R.P. Knight developed the site as a Picturesque landscape park based around the gorge of the River Teme, adding walks, bridges and other features as well as Downton Castle, an asymmetrically planned house with a Gothick exterior and a classical interior. The site exemplified Payne's pioneering theory of the Picturesque as set out in his 1794 poem 'The Landscape'.

In 1809 R.P. Knight handed over the estate to his younger brother, Thomas Andrew Knight, an important horticulturist, who carried out cultivation experiments in the kitchen garden and continued to develop the ornamental layout near the house, adding the garden terraces.

In 1865 a geometric layout designed by W.A. Nesfield was added to the terrace garden.

The park is now a National Nature Reserve. The house is in separate private ownership.

The following is from the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.

HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT

Extensive estates in south Shropshire and north Herefordshire were acquired in the early 18th century by the ironmaster Richard Knight. Those estates, in all around 4000 hectares, were inherited on his twenty-first birthday in 1772 by his grandson Richard Payne Knight (died 1824), who within a few years had begun to build a new house at Downton and to lay out a landscape park. Knight later became a key figure in the debate on the true nature of the Picturesque (as well as MP and a leading figure in scholarly society), and in 1794 published his treatise on the principles of landscape design, The Landscape, a Didactic Poem in Three Books. This was followed in 1805 by An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste. In 1809 he handed over his Downton estate to his younger brother Thomas Andrew Knight (died 1838), although when not in London he continued to live in a residence, Stonebrook Cottage (on OS map as 4 & 5 The Gravels; recently renamed Stonebrook Lodge), in a dingle in the north part of the registered area. The younger Knight published widely on fruit cultivation and other horticultural subjects, and was President of the Royal Horticultural Society from 1811 until his death. The house and the Downton landscape remain in private (but separate) ownership in the late 20th century; the Gorge is leased to English Nature as a National Nature Reserve.