View of the Garden

Prior Park is a Palladian house, designed by John Wood, the Elder, and built in the 1730s and 1740s for Ralph Allen on a hill overlooking Bath.

Its landscape garden was laid out by the poet Alexander Pope between the construction of the house and 1764. During 1737, at least 55,200 trees, mostly elm and Scots pine, were planted, along the sides and top of the valley. No trees were planted on the valley floor. Water was channeled into fish ponds at the bottom of the valley.

Later work, during the 1750s and 1760s, was undertaken by the landscape gardener Capability Brown. This included extending the gardens to the north and removing the central cascade making the combe into a single sweep. The features in the gardens include, among others, a Palladian bridge (one of only 4 left in the world, Gothic temple, and a serpentine lake. The Palladian bridge, which is a copy of the one at Wilton House, was built by Richard Jones.

Prior Park is typical of Capability Brown’s landscaping. The garden, as it was originally laid out, influenced other designers and contributed to defining the style of garden thought of as the English garden in continental Europe.

The photo shows the Palladian Bridge.