A mid-nineteenth-century view of the Loveden house and the maturing landscape (lithograph by J S Kell)

J S Kell’s mid-nineteenth-century lithograph of Buscot Park shows the mansion in its mature setting some seventy years after its completion. Further changes and additions were prevented by financial constraints and Robert Campbell, the new owner from 1859, seems to have cared more for his experiments in the industrialisation of the estate than in changing the design. A number of anonymous and finely executed sketches have been found, some dated August 1859, which indicate that Campbell was toying with various ideas for reworking the mansion, deploying an eclectic mix of Italianate towers, mixed with Gothic and Elizabethan windows.
   
In the event, Campbell’s enhancements to the house were far more modest, consisting of a new porch and flight of steps to the south front, and the addition of gabled dormers and balustrading to the eighteenth-century parapet. The orangery was demolished in order to create Italianate terraced gardens to the east and north of the house, with broad paths and geometrically shaped lawns, supported by bastion walls, and embankments. A new approach to the house was created by laying out a new carriage drive from the south front of the house leading eastwards through woodland and offering fleeting glimpses both of the house and of the lake.


A woodcut of around 1860, by Laurence Davies, showing the new porch and steps added to the front of the house by Robert Campbell



An anonymous architect's sketch (probably executed around August 1859) illustrating one of the grander schemes considered – but mercifully never implemented – by Robert Campbell for the enhancement of the house



Campbell’s extensive alterations to the parkland surrounding the mansion, including the creation of the reservoir and a new approach to the house, can be seen in this Ordnance Survey map of 1876