Description
Enville, Hagley and The Leasowes were the three great eighteenth-century landscape gardens of the West Midlands. They had much in common yet, viewed individually, had their own distinctive character. The authors examine each to bring out its original appearance and reception by contemporary visitors, and the three are also considered as a trio – as they often were at the time – bound together by topography and a remarkable networking of those involved in their creation. An intriguing chapter discusses the history of the ferme ornee, which The Leasowes is traditionally considered to embody. The gardens were not only local treasures, but stand out prominently in any survey of the eighteenth-century English garden, reflecting a development of the mid-century pictorial, building-studded landscape towards the romantic and ‘pictureque’ taste of the later years of the century. This ground-breaking book contains much new material and previously unpublished illustrations. Michael Symes is a garden historian based at Birkbeck, University of London. His principal interest is in eighteenth-century gardens in Britain and on the continent, on which he has written several books, such as The English Rococo Garden, in addition to more general works on garden sculpture and garden bridges. Sandy Haynes is a garden historian and archivist to the Enville Estates where over the last 15 years she has established the archive from previously unsorted material. She has been a member of the West Midland Regional Committee of the National Trust and contributes to the Garden History MA course at the University of Bristol.
ISBN: 978-1-906593-53-7
244 x 165mm
264pp / softback
