He made the desert smile

The Alton Towers Gardens were mentioned in a previous post on here, but I hadn't realised that the gardens had been articificially created in what was a 'dry valley'. Thousands of trees were shipped in and a local spring diverted.

The monument in the photo was set up to remember the man who undertook this huge work - Charles, the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury, who died in 1827.


The monument's subscription reads: "He Made The Desert Smile".