‘Bowood’ in Archibald Robertson, A Topographical Survey of the Great Road from London to Bath and Bristol: with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of the Country, Towns, Villages, and Gentlemen’s Seats on and adjacent to it. London: printed for the author and William Faden, 1792. 7474.c.16–17

While many of the grandest houses had attracted admiration for well over a century, the fashion for domestic tourism created an entirely new audience for landscape architecture. Robertson’s Topographical Survey demonstrates how soon after Brown’s death the expansion of the road network was bringing new visitors to his landscapes. Although Robertson makes no mention of Brown by name, his account of Bowood clearly acknowledges his skill for naturalistic planting: ‘The beauty of Bowood consists in its simplicity and extent; as the aim seems to have been to represent beautiful nature with nothing done to it… it may be curious to a planter to observe, that the mass of the wood has been planted since 1762’.