From Dan Brown to William Shenstone, via Enville

 I see that the southwest Staffordshire village of Enville (unkindly described in one report as a 'Coventry village') is in the news as the locus of a 'Da Vinci Code-style mystery'. Reading the various reports, it is hard to make out what exactly is going on here. There are some grave markers at St Mary, Enville, that appear to commemorate members of the order of Knights Templar. These seem to have been known about for some time, but are now being brought to public attention again, in the knowledge that, post-Dan Brown, anything to do with the Templars will have instant media appeal, especially in what used to be called the 'silly season' when not a lot is happening on the news front. Local historian Edward Spencer Dyas is ready with the quotes, claiming that 'these discoveries make Enville one of the most nationally important churches in the country'. Well, I suppose if you're obsessed with the Templars (as a surprising number of people are) that  might be the case, but it is what might charitably be described as a 'large claim'. 
   Never mind. This story led me to find out a bit about Enville, a place I have never visited. The church is well sited and quite handsome, restored and enlarged by Scott, who added a splendid tower that would not look out of place in Somerset, and inside is a fine Elizabethan alabaster monument and four excellent 15th-century misericords (all this is illustrated in John Leonard's Staffordshire Parish Churches). I must pay a visit. Unfortunately the nearby Enville Hall and its gardens are only occasionally open to the public. These picturesque gardens, enticingly described by Pevsner, were probably designed in part by William Shenstone, who was both poet and landscape gardener, and who died at Enville, though his own, more famous estate was The Leasowes, near Halesowen. Writing of Shenstone in his Lives of the Poets, Johnson tells how, when he took possession of his estate, 'he began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful'. Johnson writes coolly of Shenstone, and ends his short Life with  a summing-up that is not likely to encourage anyone to investigate further: 
'The general recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable.'

'Leasowes', by the way, are rough pastures.