Week 3. 15 March. ‘Exceeding Fine Country’: An Eighteenth-Century Tour of Yorkshire with Jemima Hubberstey

This talk will examine the travel accounts of Philip Yorke (later 2nd Earl of Hardwicke) and his wife, Jemima Marchioness Grey, focusing on their tours of Yorkshire – which Grey judged to be ‘exceeding fine country’. Both keen travellers, the couple often spent summers touring the length and breadth of the country seeking inspiration for their own garden improvements at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. Their travel accounts reveal shifting attitudes to garden design and engagement with the emerging discourse of the picturesque in the mid-eighteenth century, which is particularly evident in their accounts of Studley Royal. While Yorke had praised Aislabie’s improvements when he first visited in 1744; by the time he visited again in 1755 with his wife, both were critical of the way the gardens had been ‘tortured’ to fulfil the owner’s fancy – preferring instead the ‘wild Hilly romantic Country that forms Studley Park.’

Dr Jemima Hubberstey completed a collaborative doctoral award with the University of Oxford and English Heritage in 2021, in which she examined the influence of literary coteries on garden design in the mid-eighteenth century, with a particular focus on the circle at Wrest Park. She is currently a postdoctoral research assistant for ‘Mithraic Groves and Gothic Towers: Reuniting the Lost Literary Legacies of Wrest and Wimpole’, a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship between the University of Oxford, the National Trust, and English Heritage. This project examines the shared literary, gardening, and cultural connections between Wrest Park and Wimpole Hall when both were owned by the Yorke family in the mid-eighteenth century. She recently assisted English Heritage with new garden interpretation at Wrest Park and has published on Jemima Grey’s engagement with garden design in the Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Image: Allan Ramsay, ‘Lady Jemima Campbell, Marchioness Grey’, 1741. Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. © National Trust Images / Roy Fox.

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Unforgettable Gardens - ‘Exceeding Fine Country’