New light on Gobions

Gobions in Hertfordshire was one of Charles Bridgeman's most significant designs, and was considered by Horace Walpole to represent an important stage in the development of the 'landscape' style. Gobions house was demolished in the mid-nineteenth century and the gardens survive as a complex of earthworks buried in woodland. The recent discovery of a hitherto unknown map in the Bodleian Library, Oxford - possibly a design by Bridgeman himself - throws much new light on the character of the site, as well as raising more general questions about the use of maps in the study of garden history.