Hawksmoor's Vision of Wray Wood, Castle Howard

Despite an extensive literature on Castle Howard and its innovative landscape, few details have been known about the important naturalistic garden at Wray Wood. This article identifies four drawings attributed to Nicholas Hawksmoor as designs for the wood's rockwork and watercourses. Although these features have long since disappeared, building records, letters and visitor accounts confirm their existence and show that Hawksmoor was also involved in the display of the sculpture and fountains, with subjects drawn from classical myths and legends. His later designs for the two temples on the east wall of the wood further illustrate his personal vision of the woodland garden and of the sources that inspired its mythological theme. This article draws together all the evidence relating to the wood and considers it in the context of innovative European garden design and its transfer to England in the first years of the eighteenth century. The wood has usually been attributed in more or less equal measure to Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh and their patron Lord Carlisle, but the evidence indicates that it was Hawksmoor who took the lead in carrying out Carlisle's wishes.