Before James Wyatt raised the current house, the grounds at Dodington had already been transformed by the greatest landscape designer in English history. In 1764, Lancelot 'Capability' Brown was commissioned to reshape the narrow Cotswold valley surrounding the estate. His fee, recorded in surviving accounts, came to just under fourteen hundred pounds across two contracts — modest by his standards, but the results were anything but.
Brown dammed the River Frome to create two artificial lakes at different levels within the valley. To link them, he designed a Gothic cascade building that disguised the change in height between the upper and lower waters. An aqueduct fed the system, and the cascade itself, built in the Gothic Revival style, was designed to look like a picturesque ruin rather than a piece of hydraulic engineering. When Mrs Boscawen visited in September 1766, she recorded that Brown had found 'great Capabilities of Hills and Vales, shade and Water' and had 'dispos'd of the whole in a scene which greatly excited our Admiration.'
“An aqueduct fed the system, and the cascade itself, built in the Gothic Revival style, was designed to look like a picturesque ruin rather than a piece of hydraulic engineering.”
Brown planted strategic clumps of trees — oaks and beeches — on the valley's slopes to emphasise the natural contours of the land, a signature technique that can still be read in the landscape today. The parkland extends across some 240 hectares and was further refined by the landscape designers William Emes around 1793 and John Webb in the early 19th century. The cascade, lakes, and park are all listed on Historic England's Register of Historic Parks and Gardens at Grade II*.
