Virtual Program Explores England’s Belvoir Castle
Historic New England presents a virtual program called
“Belvoir Castle and Capability Brown: Discovering a Lost Landscape” on Thursday, June 3, at noon.
From its high hill, brooding over immense tracts of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, Belvoir Castle is one of England’s great treasure houses. Since taking charge of the estate, its chatelaine for the new millennium, Emma 11th Duchess of Rutland, has shaken off the dust-sheets and brought back to life a castle which had slept for most of the 20th century.
In this virtual program, join the Duchess as she tells the story of her discoveries, including long-forgotten landscape plans drawn up in 1780 by the great landscape designer Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, a likely influence on Lyman Estate’s eighteenth century landscape designer William Bell. Brown’s plans for Belvoir were shelved and left forgotten– until now, over 200 years later, Emma is working to bring them
Historic New England recently announced that thanks to a grant from the city of Waltham, as part of the Community Preservation Act, the organization will be restoring the Lyman Estate Library.