| Unit name | The Victorian Garden (1820-1890) |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ARCHM0040 |
| Credit points | 10 |
| Level of study | M/7 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Academic Year (weeks 1 - 52) |
| Unit director | |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Anthropology and Archaeology |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This is an optional Unit to be taken in Teaching Block 2. It begins chronologically where the compulsory Unit: Classical Arcadia and Gardenesque (1720-1820) left off with the work of J.C.Loudon. Initially it examines the re-appearance of formal enclosures, ornamental rockeries and bedding plants. This revived formality is studied in the new craze for Italian gardens conceived to correspond with italianate architecture; the layouts of W.E. Nesfield at Great Witley and Charles Barry at Shrubland Park and Trentham are significant examples of this. Formality is also present in the emerging urban parks and botanical gardens, the result of pioneering Philanthropists like Josephy Strutt of Derby, which became the essential social 'lungs' of the great new industrial cities. The new suburban cemeteries also feature with their mix of funerary architecture and planting. Then comes the explosion of technology in iron and glass with the great greenhouses - Fowler's Conservatory at Syon, Paxton's Great Conservatory at Chatsworth and his Palm House at Kew - and their facilitation of the cultivation of exotics. Biddulph Grange with its Chinese and Japanese structures is a mid-century pointer to the re-emergence of garden buildings and the conscious mixing of plants and species, indeed it can be seen as exemplifying the central thmes of this Unit - historicism and eclecticism. As a coda to this renewed interest in flora, William Robinson's Wild Garden heralds the cottage gardens of the late seventies and eighties, paving the way for Gertrude Jekyll's Surrey gardens which are covered in a subsequent optional Unit on the Edwardian Garden.
The focus here is less directed towards the country house with its somewhat rarefied, elitist layouts as to the landscapes which make up our towns and cities. Students will be encouraged to explore their immediate environment to understand how experiments in landscape design have helped shape the cemeteries, parks and botanical gardens of every major urban area in Britain. They will explore the social and political dimensions of these spaces.
Seminars and site visits over 5 weeks (10 hours).
An assessed seminar paper from which a short essay (3,500 words) is submitted.
