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Badminton House is a country house in Badminton, Gloucestershire, England, which has been the principal seat of the Dukes of Beaufort, since the late 17C, when the family moved from Raglan Castle, which had been ruined in the English Civil War. In 1612, Edward Somerset, the 4th Earl of Worcester, bought from Nicholas Boteler his manors of Great and Little Badminton, called 'Madmintune' in the Domesday Book, while 1 century earlier the name 'Badimyncgtun' was recorded, held by that family since 1275.
Gardenvisit.com tells us that Henry, Duke of Beaufort, built the bulk of the present house in 1682. He had a real passion for avenues, & his park grounds were traversed by numbers of walks, 20 of them starting from one point like the centre of a star. It is said that he infected his neighbours with his own enthusiasm, so that they let him extend the avenues into their territory, & in this way he obtained more distant and glorious views. But the gardens cover a very large tract of land. They lie round a house in the middle of a great park, with the chief avenue 2 & a half miles long leading to the entrance. On the left of it there are parterres & a bowling-green. Behind the parterres, & in a straight line with them, are bosquets with fountains & finely designed paths; at the very end is a semicircular little room cut out of the hedge and containing 2 fountains.
Just from this engraving, we can see knot gardens & geometric beds edged with a low hedge of box or other shrubs, & the fountains intended to animate the garden, reflecting an interest in hydraulics. Here the formal layout reflects the great gardens of France & Holland. Terraces created from excavated & moved earth are used to control the irregular natural landscape and for balanced control & order. The parterres evolved from the Tudor knots. And in these grounds, avenues are used to direct the visitor to the seat of power, to direct the view of the gardens & surrounding landscape, & as an expression of welcome as well as status. The trees in the avenues are a sort of army of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder at attention to warn as well as welcome.
Here, also, is a 4-part garden maze. A hedge maze is an outdoor garden maze or labyrinth in which the "walls" or dividers between passages are made of vertical hedges. Hedge mazes evolved from the knot gardens of Renaissance Europe. Early garden mazes began to appear in the 16C. These initial mazes were constructed from evergreen herbs, but, over time, box became a more popular option due to its robustness. Italian architects had been sketching conceptual garden labyrinths as early as 1460, and hundreds of mazes were constructed in Europe between the 16C-18C. Initially, the hedge maze was not intended to confuse, but to provide a unicursal walking path. Puzzle-like hedge mazes featuring dead ends and tall hedges arrived in England during the reign of King William III of England. It was possible to get lost in the much-admired labyrinth of Versailles, built for Louis XIV of France in 1677 and destroyed in 1778. This maze was adorned with 39 hydraulic sculpture groups depicting Aesop's fables. The oldest surviving puzzle hedge maze, at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey, England, was built for King William in the late 17C. Its distinctive trapezoidal shape is due to pre-existing garden paths running alongside the maze. Mazes & topiary are an expression of man's ultimate control over nature. The maze allows the owner to "help" his visitors who might get lost in the surrounding green, living puzzle, which the owner built, of course. Status & the impression of wisdom, culture, & intelligence were important for the owners of these gardens.
