The Landed Gentry and Garden Design: Central Northamptonshire c. 1780 - c. 1815

With Stephen Radley, University of Nottingham.

All seminars online. Please contact sue.davis@nottingham.ac.uk for the link. Subject to change.

Part of the Cultural and Historical Seminar Series.

Abstract

The landed elite have been producing designed landscapes for centuries. These landscapes are a material expression of the self-identity of the landed elite. Many designed landscapes, particularly those of the aristocracy, are on a large scale and highly elaborate. However, the landed gentry, generally less wealthy and owning smaller estates than the aristocracy, also expressed their way of seeing in improving their gardens, demonstrating to themselves, their visitors, travellers, and neighbours, their world view and their qualification for belonging to the elite.

In this presentation the improvements undertaken by two landed gentry families in central Northamptonshire are compared. The families had long histories in the county but differed in the decisions they made about landscape improvement and their relationships to county and national affairs, and to the village they lived in. The result of their improvements was two landscapes, parts of which have survived, that shared an ideology but also reveal slowly evolving tastes in landed elite landscape design, and the gradual emergence of new relationships between the landed elite, their communities and society beyond the parish boundary.