J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This is the left half of a double-page spread, continued on folio 12 recto (D11388) opposite, recording the view north from Mowbray Castle, Hackfall, with the Banqueting House on the hilltop to the left, Fisher’s Hall amongst trees below centre and the spire of Masham church closing the far distance.

Between West Tanfield and Masham the River Ure cuts a winding route through high ground. The most dramatic section at Hackfall was laid out as a woodland garden by William Aislabie about 1750. There are pathways, seats, buildings, prospect points, springs, ponds and waterfalls, on a grand scale, and Hackfall is one of the most important managed landscapes of its kind and period in Britain. William Aislabie’s father John Aislabie was responsible for laying out the celebrated gardens at nearby Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey. William Fisher was their head gardener and the building near the river was named after him. Turner will have known of Hackfall through The Works of the Late Edward Dayes, published in 1805, to which he was a subscriber. Dayes had visited Hackfall on a tour of Yorkshire and Derbyshire in 1803, and devoted a distinct section of his account to its description.1 The woods are now in the care of the Woodland Trust, and considerable work has been done since 2002 to preserve the historic buildings and improve access and appreciation.