‘Cowdray Ruins’ in The Saturday Magazine, 4 April 1835, 136

In the 1830s, the comparative durability of wood engraved blocks in contrast to soft copper plates enabled the production of much larger print runs and, consequently, cheaper publications. Costing a penny per issue, The Saturday Magazine (1832–44) was one of many cheap periodicals underwritten by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and designed to enable the working man to educate himself on a range of respectable subjects. Descriptions of country houses and their gardens were deemed suitable for this purpose. However, with the democratisation of publishing came the democratisation of opinion, and not all of it was flattering to Brown. The article that accompanied the engraving of Cowdray was scathing about Brown’s scheme, lamenting that ‘the famous Lancelot Brown… removed some of the old oaks from Cowdray, placing formal clumps instead. Lately, however, a better style has prevailed’. Similarly, in 1838, Thomas Frognall Dibdin’s Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and in Scotland expressed the need for intervention at Alnwick, which he observed was ‘a field for “Capability Brown!” who has indeed belted and clumped the rising grounds with no sparing hand. His Grace is necessarily, and most judiciously, thinning these dense woods, and thereby alike improving and fertilizing the grounds. The sun now shines, and the air now circulates, where before there was no entrance for either’.