The term itself hints at intention, at a landscape that was meant to be read as well as used.

Clonbrock was the seat of the Dillon family, later the Barons Clonbrock, who held the estate across several centuries of Irish landed history. The demesne was developed and refined over generations, and the house and its surroundings became known in the nineteenth century as a well-maintained example of estate culture in Connacht. The Dillon family were notable, among other things, for an interest in photography; Augusta Dillon produced an extensive photographic record of life on the estate in the later Victorian period, images that now provide an unusually detailed documentary view of how such a demesne looked and functioned at its height.