A magical, tranquil vision, Stourhead is one of the finest examples of 18th-century English landscape gardening.
It is a 1,072-hectare (2,650-acre) estate at the source of the River Stour near Mere, Wiltshire, England. The estate includes a Palladian mansion, the village of Stourton, gardens, farmland, and woodland. Stourhead is part owned by the National Trust since 1946.Stourhead is the best example of a garden inspired by the great landscape painters of the seveneeenth century. Ernst Gombrich suggests it should bear the signature of an Italianized French painter: Claude Lorrain (1600-82). The Stourhead garden was made by a wealthy English banker who had been buying works of art in Italy at the time he inherited the Stourhead estate.
