BLENHEIM PALACE

North front of Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England; designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and residence near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, Eng., built (170524) by the English Parliament as a national gift to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, for his victory in Germany in 1704 over the French and Bavarians at the Battle of Blenheim during the War of the Spanish Succession. The palace was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and is regarded as the finest example of truly Baroque architecture in Great Britain. In the early 18th century Queen Anne's gardener, Henry Wise, designed the grounds of the palace in the formal style of Andr Le Ntre's famed gardens for Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles in France. Little remains of Wise's landscaping, however, because tastes changed in the mid-18th century, and Lancelot Brown was asked to redesign the grounds in his pastoral style of informal or seemingly natural landscapes of woods, lawns, and waterways. Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace.