Regions and Designed Landscapes in Georgian England

Sarah Spooner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138392885
• eBook ISBN: 9781317527404
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arquitectura
• Subtopic: Planificación urbana y paisajismo

Garden design evolved hugely during the Georgian period – as symbols of wealth and stature, the landed aristocracy had been using gardens for decades. Yet during the eighteenth century, society began to homogenise, and the urban elite also started demanding landscapes that would reflect their positions.

The gardens of the aristocracy and the gentry were different in appearance, use and meaning, despite broad similarities in form. Underlying this was the importance of place, of the landscape itself and its raw material. Contemporaries often referred to the need to consult the 'genius of the place' when creating a new designed landscape, as the place where the garden was located was critical in determining its appearance. Genius loci - soil type, topography, water supply - all influenced landscape design in this period.

The approach taken in this book blends landscape and garden history to make new insights into landscape and design in the eighteenth century. Spooner's own research presents little-known sites alongside those which are more well known, and explores the complexity of the story of landscape design in the Georgian period which is usually oversimplified and reduced to the story of a few 'great men'.

1 Introduction

The eighteenth century saw the flowering of the English ‘natural’ style, a form of landscape design which has been called one of the nation’s most important contributions to the arts.¹ This was replicated in hundreds of landscape parks across the country, and was also exported to the continent where le jardin anglais became fashionable for the European nobility.² Both garden and landscape historians have sought to find the origins of the ‘natural’ style within earlier traditions, which, in the case of the deer park, stretch back into the early medieval period. This search for the beginning of the ‘natural’ style favoured by designers like William Kent and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown has, to some extent, obscured the true variety of landscape design in eighteenth-century England.

A wide range of people created and owned substantial designed landscapes during the eighteenth century – the landscape parks of the aristocracy could stretch to thousands of acres, whilst small villas on the fringes of London might have park-like grounds of ten or twenty acres – and of course, there were many thousands of parks and gardens between these two extremes enjoyed by a wide cross section of polite society. There were also ferme ornée, pleasure grounds and flower gardens, urban gardens and formal designs surviving from earlier periods. Garden and landscape historians have focused their attention on a relatively restricted range of sites; principal among these is the landscape park in the period after 1750. However, even a cursory glance at many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century accounts of parks and gardens, including those by Thomas Whately, George Mason or Humphry Repton, shows that contemporaries did not think about landscape design in such narrow terms.³ They recognised the existence of a diverse range of designed landscapes, including, but not restricted to, the park, the ferme ornée, the pleasure ground, flower gardens, shrubberies, kitchen gardens, town gardens, urban open spaces and commercial pleasure gardens. Some of these strands of landscape design have been neglected, despite clear evidence of their continuing importance to many landowners. In particular, the ferme ornée is a style which needs reappraisal by historians – there was much more to this tradition than the classical inscriptions and gardens urns found at sites like the Leasowes, and it was strongly rooted in the landed elites’ desire to combine beauty and utility within the landscape.

The landscape beyond the boundary of the garden or park was also critically important during the eighteenth century – the wider estate landscape could encompass farmland, woodland, settlements and industrial and mineral exploitation.⁴ Many areas of the British rural landscape were being transformed through schemes of agricultural improvement and reclamation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, schemes which were typically implemented by the landed elite on their own estates.⁵ The same landowner, therefore, could be responsible for laying out a landscape park and also for reorganising the surrounding countryside through enclosure. The wider estate landscape itself was also given aesthetic consideration in this period with the creation of new plantations and the construction of model farms and villages.⁶ Many of these improvements also had practical benefits – new plantations, for example, provided cover for game birds, and new farm layouts allowed tenant farmers to adopt more efficient farming practices.⁷ There was no clear dividing line between the purely ornamental and the purely practical, instead the two were constantly blurred and intermingled.⁸

However, by focusing on estates and on large, well documented sites, we are at risk of missing out a whole tier of designed landscapes which were not attached to large landed estates. In some areas, particularly in the hinterland of large urban centres, such sites were the norm, and larger parks with landed estates were an atypical form of designed landscape. The long eighteenth century was a period of considerable demographic change when the population of Britain expanded at a rapid rate.⁹ The divisions between the ranks of the elite were becoming blurred and landowners and members of the county gentry found themselves coming into increasing contact with other members of society who derived their wealth from business and trade.¹⁰ The creation of a landscape park, or other form of designed landscape, acted as an important statement of social position.¹¹

The design of parks and gardens therefore, was heavily influenced by social position, aspiration, wealth, culture and fashion. But underlying all of these was the simple, yet significant factor of where these landscapes were located. To form a clear picture of how and why designed landscapes developed in this period it is first essential to understand the physical structures of the landscape. Patterns of drainage, relief and soil type underpin many of the antecedent landscape structures within which parks and gardens were created; field patterns, the density of trees and woodland and the location of settlements are all necessarily determined to some degree by the physical geography of the land itself.¹² Although there was undoubtedly some element of uniformity in design across the country (which was criticised by some contemporaries), there was also a great deal of diversity, and in part that diversity stemmed from environmental factors which combined to determine what type of trees would thrive, whether a lake was feasible, the views around the park or garden and more.

Furthermore, parks and gardens were not being created in an empty landscape. Consideration had to be given to the constraints of the existing layout of the countryside, both inside and outside the park boundary. Where designed landscapes were expanding there might be obstacles in terms of the pattern of villages, farms, woods, fields and commons, as well as the estates of neighbouring landowners. Some historians simply do not bother to consider this important factor in the development of designed landscapes, and others, even when attempting to set a particular park or garden in its wider landscape context, often do not extend their analysis to include the relationship with neighbouring sites, or the social and political links between different landscapes.¹³

This book takes a regional approach to the development of designed landscapes in the eighteenth century, examining a sample of areas from across Georgian England. The designed landscapes in the suburbs of London and around other towns and cities developed in a particular way when compared to those in East Anglia or the Midland shires, where enclosure and agricultural improvements were closely linked to park-making. In the north the distribution and form of designed landscape was influenced by their proximity to marginal landscapes – moors, heaths and highland regions, which changed in their appeal as the century progressed. The next chapter introduces a range of key concepts about the development of both the English countryside and designed landscapes in the eighteenth century, including the ways in which both contemporaries and modern historians have divided England into a series of regional landscapes, and how parks and gardens developed in the Georgian period.

The subsequent chapters deal with a range of regional landscape types, beginning with the urban fringe, both around London and provincial cities like Norwich. On the edges of London heavy clay soils blanketed most of the landscape and in the eighteenth century these had a mixed pattern of land use encompassing arable cultivation and a significant amount of pasture.¹⁴ Much of the landscape had already been enclosed by the mid-eighteenth century, so parliamentary enclosure and schemes of agricultural innovation and improvement had less impact here than in other regions. Overall, the metropolitan fringe was typified by ‘ancient’ countryside, with a dispersed settlement pattern, early enclosed field boundaries and small woods and copses.¹⁵ By the late eighteenth century there were a large number of designed landscapes around the capital. Many were small, covering an area of less than fifty acres and owned by members of the urban elite: bankers, lawyers, naval and army officers, manufacturers and other businessmen. Such individuals chose houses that were not attached to large landed estates and which can be considered as effectively suburban in character, often laid out around a villa residence. Their size meant that their owners had to rely on the surrounding countryside to provide an attractive backdrop to their limited grounds, but the sheer number of designed landscapes meant that these views often included neighbouring houses.

While the study of designed landscapes in one region can thus point to particular patterns and relationships which have received little attention in the past, it is also important to see to what extent such patterns are unique to any one type of landscape, or whether they might be applicable to the wider interpretation of parks and gardens at a regional or national level. The landscape of the Midlands, for example, was also an area of predominately heavy clay soils, and the landscape is now classic ‘planned’ countryside, with nucleated villages, straight roads and field boundaries and relatively little woodland.¹⁶ This landscape largely came into being in the post-medieval period, when the extensive open-field systems which had dominated the medieval landscape were dismantled by enclosure. This provided some estates with an opportunity to expand their designed landscapes over newly enclosed fields which, crucially, was also associated with a change of land use from arable to pasture. Most importantly parks and gardens in the Midlands still had a strong connection with the surrounding landscape, but it was a connection that was closely linked to post-medieval enclosure and changing patterns of land use. East Anglia, comprising the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, contains a wide range of landscape regions and soil types within its boundaries, including both ‘ancient’ and ‘planned’ countryside, areas which were dominated by large estates and those which had a higher proportion of smaller estates, as well as important urban centres at Norwich, Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds.¹⁷ The existence of a thriving regional commercial centre meant that small grounds around villa residences were a key feature on the fringes of Norwich. In the wider countryside, there were a large number of landed estates, many with owners who had a keen interest in both landscape gardening and agricultural improvement, and who made effective use of the opportunities presented by enclosure, particularly in marginal areas like Breckland where a number of new parks were created alongside the reshaping of the rural landscape.

Chapter 6 moves on to consider design on the margins of what were considered to be attractive and acceptable landscapes in the eighteenth century. Upland landscapes were sometimes considered to be particularly challenging, both in terms of their appearance and of their capacity for improvement. Campaigns of enclosure and reclamation began to transform heaths and moors during this period, and at the same time landowners were also creating parks and gardens on their fringes. However, in the north and west, these were also regions that were increasingly affected by both urbanisation and industrialisation in which many landowners played an active role. In the late eighteenth century polite society became transfixed by the appeal of upland landscapes, particularly the Lake District, and discovered a new appreciation of mountainous, upland scenery. This had a dual effect on regions like the north-west of England, in which new ‘picturesque’ designed landscapes were being created in line with this new aesthetic, but which also attracted new landowners whose designs did not quite fit with the aesthetics advocated by writers like William Gilpin.

Above all, Georgian landscape design was closely linked to the historic appearance of the rural landscape, agricultural change and the activities of landowners on their estates. Contemporaries sometimes referred to consulting ‘the genius of the place’ when planning designed landscapes, and whilst this term can be taken in various ways, one of the critical factors in determining the appearance of a park or garden, and the contemporary experience of it, was the landscape of Georgian England itself.

Notes

1 Hussey, C. (1975) ‘Introduction’ in Stroud, D. Capability Brown, Country Life, London, p27.

2 Dixon Hunt, J. (2003) The Picturesque Garden in Europe, Thames and Hudson, London, p92.

3 Mason, G. (1770) An Essay on Design in Gardening, London; Whately, T. (1770) Observations on Modern Gardening, London; Repton, H. (1795) Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, London; Repton, H. (1803) Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, J. Taylor, London; Repton, H. (1806) An Enquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening, London; Repton, H. (1816) Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, London.

4 Williamson, T. (1995) Polite Landscapes: gardens and society in eighteenth-century England, Sutton, Stroud; Wade Martins, S. (2004) Farmers, Landlords and Landscapes: rural Britain 1720-1870, Windgather Press, Macclesfield; Finch, J. and Giles, K. (2007) Estate Landscapes: design, improvement and power in the post-medieval landscape, Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge.

5 Gregory, J. (2008) ‘Marginal environments and the idea of improvement: transforming heathland and moorland landscapes c.1650-1850’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, p3.

6 Daniels, S. and Seymour, S. (1990) ‘Landscape design and the idea of improvement’ in Dodgshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A. eds, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Region and place in Georgian England
• 3 The urban fringe
• 4 The Midlands
• 5 The flatlands
• 6 Designs on the margins
• 7 Conclusion
• Index