Foxley: the prices' estate in Herefordshire

Abstract

It is first time, and to my knowledge only one, when names of Downton and Foxley, however garbled, appear a French work of some merit. In same passage, Delille also mentions Parkplace, Leasowe de Shenstone, Hagley and Pain'shill, but devotes more lines to Downton and Foxley (a few more to Chiswick) than to places just cited. However, four lines quoted above, Delille implies - or so it seems - that Foxley, much better than Downton or any other place, could serve as a model of what should be done to beautify some rural estate by means of plantations. At same time, Delille compliments Price, whose Essay on Picturesque he probably knew. For the rules that Foxley laid down, as Delille suggests, could more easily be read on paper than on terrain - still better, be heard from Price himself, who was so fond of guiding visitors over his lands and about his woods, while expatiating upon details of his embellishments. That fame of Foxley, on a par with much better known places, should have spread to France thanks to many editions of Delille's poems, begged for investigation. The more so as visits to present-day Foxley hardly confirm idea one might have formed of its former glory. For indeed general appearance of place is so very quiet and rural that it is difficult to understand how Foxley could have been worth detour, in search of Picturesque, by end of eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth century. William Gilpin, quoting some journal second edition of his Wye tour, says of Foxley that the forms of grounds about it, and beautiful woods that surround it, are said to be worth seeing.