Batty Langley (''baptised'' 14 September 1696 – 3 March 1751) was an English garden designer, and prolific writer who produced a number of engraved designs for " Gothick" structures, summerhouses and garden seats in the years before the mid-18th century. An eccentric landscape designer, he gave four of his sons the names Hiram,

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

Vitruvius Vitruvius ( ; ; –70 BC – after ) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled . As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissan ...

and

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse ( ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Greek mathematics, mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and Invention, inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse in History of Greek and Hellenis ...

. He published extensively, and attempted to "improve" Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions. BattyLangleygarden

Early life

Langley was baptised in

Twickenham Twickenham ( ) is a suburban district of London, England, on the River Thames southwest of Charing Cross. Historic counties of England, Historically in Middlesex, since 1965 it has formed part of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, who ...

, Middlesex, the son of a jobbing gardener Daniel Langley and his wife Elizabeth. He bore the name of David Batty, one of his father's patrons. He started worked as a gardener, inheriting some of his father's clients in Twickenham, then a village of suburban

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the f ...

s within easy reach of London by a pleasant water journey on the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after th ...

. An early client was Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park. He married Anne Smith in February 1719. They had four children, but she died in June 1726. He had ten further children with his second wife, Catherine.

Landscape gardening

Langley moved into surveying and landscape gardening. He published his first book, ''Practical Geometry'', in 1726. Inspired by Switzer's ''Ichnographia Rustica'' of 1718, Langley advocated more irregular, informal gardens, with rococo "arti-natural" landscaping. His sinuous forms predated

William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraving, engraver, pictorial social satire, satirist, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from Realism (visual arts), realistic p ...

's line of beauty. For the Palladian house built at Twickenham by James Johnston in 1710 (later Orleans House, demolished 1926), Langley, probably on his own endeavour, prepared and published a garden plan, which offered an encyclopaedia of the garden features that were swiftly becoming obsolete by the time the plan was published in Langley's ''A Sure Method of Improving Estates'' (1728): here are several

maze A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that lead ...

s, a "

wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plurale tantum, plural) are Earth, Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human impact on the environment, human activity, or any urbanization, nonurbanized land not u ...

" with many tortuous path-turnings, garden rooms or ''cabinets de verdure'' cut into dense woodland, formal stretches of garden canal and formally shaped basins of water, some with central fountains, and a central

allée In landscaping, an avenue (from the French), alameda (from the Portuguese and Spanish), or allée (from the French), is a straight path or road with a line of trees or large shrubs running along each side, which is used, as its Latin source ' ...

of trees leading to an exedra. His ''New Principles of Gardening'' (1728) included designs for mazes, a feature he could never quite leave behind, with 28 plates engraved by his brother Thomas. He also published ''A Sure Method of Improving Estates'' (1728) and ''Pomona'' (1729). He also undertook work at

Castle Howard Castle Howard is an English country house in Henderskelfe, North Yorkshire, north of York. A private residence, it has been the home of the Earl of Carlisle, Carlisle branch of the House of Howard, Howard family for more than 300 years. Castle ...

in North Yorkshire and Wrest Park in Bedfordshire.

Architecture

Langley moved from Twickenham to London in 1729, and shifted again from landscape gardening to architecture. Working near

Exeter Change The Exeter Exchange (signed and popularly known as Exeter Change) was a building on the north side of the Strand, London, Strand in London, with an arcade (architecture), arcade extending partway across the carriageway. It is most famous for the ...

in the Strand, he published ''A Sure Guide to Builders'' in 1729. He moved to Westminster in the 1730s, where he started to teach drawing, geometry, architecture, and garden design, and continued to teach when he moved to Soho in 1738. He also made and sold stone garden ornaments. Despite his literary aspirations, and advertisements in architectural journals, he secured few commissions, submitting an unsolicited proposal for the competition to design a new Mansion House in 1735 and a design for a new Westminster Bridge in 1736-7. He inclined strongly towards a home-grown English architectural form, publishing articles in the Grub Street Journal under the pseudonym "Hiram" from July 1734 to March 1735, praising

Gothic architecture Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High Middle Ages, High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved f ...

(or as he termed it "native Saxon") and rejecting the "imported" Palladian architecture favoured by Lord Burlington and his circle. He published a wide range of architectural books, from a huge folio on ''Ancient Masonry'' in parts from 1733 to 1736 with over 450 plates, through ''The Builder's Complete Assistant'' of 1738 (also known as ''The Builder's Complete Chest-Book'') and ''The Builder's Jewel'' of 1741, to the tiny ''The Workman's Golden Rule'' in 1750, in vicesimo-quarto. He is best known for one of his confident self-promotions, ''Ancient Architecture, Restored, and Improved'' published in 1742 and reissued in 1747 as ''Gothic Architecture, improved by Rules and Proportions'', a bit of cockscombry that thoroughly irritated

Horace Walpole Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (; 24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English Whig politician, writer, historian and antiquarian. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London ...

, whose Gothick villa at Twickenham, Strawberry Hill, gave impetus to the stirrings of the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

All that his books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre that venerable species, and to give occasion to those who know nothing of the matter, and who mistake his clumsy efforts for real imitations, to censure the productions of our ancestors, whose bold and beautiful fabrics Sir
Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren FRS (; – ) was an English architect, astronomer, mathematician and physicist who was one of the most highly acclaimed architects in the history of England. Known for his work in the English Baroque style, he was ac ...
viewed and reviewed with astonishment, and never mentioned without esteem. (Walpole, ''Anecdotes of Painting'', 1798, p 484)

His book, with engravings by his brother Thomas, attempted to improve Gothic forms by giving them classical proportions and to create a scheme of architectural orders for Gothic architecture. He provided inspiration for elements of buildings from Great Fulford and Hartland Abbey in Devon, to Speedwell Castle in Brewood in Staffordshire, and Tissington Hall in Derbyshire, and the Gothic temple at Bramham Park in Yorkshire, and gates at Castletown House in County Kildare. Langley's books were also enormously influential in Britain's American colonies. At

Mount Vernon Mount Vernon is the former residence and plantation of George Washington, a Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States, and his wife, Martha. An American landmar ...

, for example,

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

relied upon plate 51 of Langley's ''The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs'' as the source for the famous Venetian (or Palladian) window in the dining room; upon plate 54 of the same book for the ocular window on Mount Vernon's western facade; and upon plate 75 of Langley's ''The Builder's Jewel'' for the rusticated wood siding. Batty Langley was also thought to be an important Freemason; his naming of his son Hiram was a reference to the architect, prominent in Masonic tradition and symbolism, of Solomon's Temple, and many of his books were dedicated to his Masonic brethren. The ''frontispiece'' to ''The Builder's Jewel'' (1741), for example, contains many examples of Masonic symbolism found in the first three degrees of Freemasonry. He was imprisoned for debt in Newgate Prison and wrote an account of that institution, ''An Accurate Description of Newgate''. He died at home in Soho in 1751.

References

The Twickenham Museum:
Batty Langley
University of Rochester Book of the Month: Batty Langley, ''New Principles of Gardening'', 1728
Detailed illustrated report. * "Batty Langley: A Tutor to Freemasons (1696-1751)", Eileen Harris, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 119, No. 890 (May 1977), pp. 327–333+335, Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/878768 {{DEFAULTSORT:Langley, Batty 1696 births 1751 deaths English landscape architects English gardeners Landscape and garden designers British garden writers People imprisoned for debt Freemasons of the Premier Grand Lodge of England