MA Garden History

Garden History at Bristol

Britain is full of historic landscapes, but there are still many lost or simply forgotten gardens and designed landscapes waiting to be discovered and periods of garden history ripe for re-assessment. Castle Howard, Blenheim and Stowe are celebrated landscapes open to the public. But who has heard of Enys, near Falmouth in Cornwall, a Sleeping Beauty of a garden in the first stages of romantic decay with its walled kitchen garden, summerhouses and chain of ponds? Or of Sir Frank Crisp’s wittily cynical 1880s Gardenesque layout at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire with its fake Matterhorn, or Milton Grundy’s 1960s green shade of a Japanese garden at Shipton-under-Wychwood in the same county? Some of the least known gardens, those privately owned, can be the best to visit, just because they remain unspoilt and undiscovered.

With a Humphry Repton landscape garden at its centre, its own Botanical Garden, and the eighteenth-century Goldney garden famous for its grotto with all its shells, crystals, statuary and waterworks in Clifton, the University of Bristol starts with some inherited advantages for offering a course in Garden History. Nearby there is also a large Tudor deer park at Ashton Court and a virtually untouched Picturesque layout at Blaise Castle within the city limits, and within easy reach around Bristol there are numerous important Cotswolds, Somerset and Wiltshire parks and gardens. Some are well known like Stourhead and the Painswick Rococo Garden; others are unfamiliar masterpieces, such as Stancombe's Wagnerian secret valley with its tunnels and Temple of Love, Piercefield with its vertiginous precipice walk, or the Edwardian garden at Barrow Court designed as if for lavish open air living in the style of that bohemian coterie, The Souls.

Professor Timothy Mowl

Timothy Mowl is Director of the MA course. He joined the University of Bristol after delivering the Perry Art Lectures in 1992 and is now Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes. He is also Director of the Institute for Garden and Landscape History. Professor Mowl is a prolific writer on garden and architectural history and his Gentlemen & Players: Gardeners of the English Landscape (2000), which is core book for the MA course, charts the influence of aristocrats and professionals on the creation of landscape parks and gardens. He is now researching and writing a nationwide series on the historic gardens of England. In addition he has published a major biography on the eighteenth-century artist, architect and landscape designer, William Kent (2006).

In January 2007 Professor Mowl was awarded a generous Research Grant of £314,411 by the Leverhulme Trust for his historic gardens series: The Historic Gardens and Landscapes of England. This follows a previous 2004 Leverhulme grant, which funded the writing and research of Historic Gardens of Cornwall, Historic Gardens of Worcestershire and Historic Gardens of Oxfordshire. The latest grant will extend the existing project to produce 10 further books over the next 5 years. It has also funded a Research Fellow, Dr Clare Hickman,  to administer the project and will provide for consultants to undertake research in the counties and be joint authors, with Professor Mowl, of the surveys.

The MA course

The MA degree, which is now in its ninth year, is taught primarily by Professor Mowl, together with contributions from staff in the departments of Archaeology & Anthropology and History of Art and visiting lecturers in the field of Garden and Landscape History. The course aims to provide students with an informed knowledge of how gardens and designed landscapes may be understood as cultural artefacts, primarily through the study of British garden history. The focus is on an integrated approach to designed landscapes and gardens within their cultural and social contexts through archaeology, architectural history, horticulture, aesthetics and philosophy.

The core syllabus includes a practical introduction to interpreting archaeological, physical and visual evidence, and to conservation and management issues. Teaching consists of lectures and seminars as well as study visits to gardens and landscapes both in England and abroad. The course begins with an introductory residential weekend, based in Oxfordshire in 2008, where students will be involved at several historic sites, some entirely private, dealing with issues of historical interpretation, conservation and management.

Core Units

• Classical Arcadia and Gardenesque (1720-1820)
• The Italian Renaissance Garden
• Modern Public Landscapes
• The Archaeology of Gardens

Optional Units

• The Victorian Garden (1820-1890)
• The Edwardian Garden (1890-1914)
• Twentieth-Century Gardens
• Horticulturists, Botanists, Plant Introduction and Display
• Nature and Landscape in the French Garden 1715-1789
• European Exchanges: Continental Influences and English Gardens Abroad
• The Paradise and Islamic Garden
• A Social History of Public Spaces Since 1800
• Women and Gardens

Assessment

The taught course is assessed by essays and reports. The taught programme must be passed before students can progress to the Dissertation.

Career Possibilities

Garden conservation and management has become an important sector of the heritage industry and there is a need for graduates with appropriate specialist knowledge and relevant research and interpretative skills. English Heritage, The National Trust and public and private owners of sites make extensive use of garden historians as consultants. In publishing, the media, cultural recreation and tourism, garden history is a growing business. Former students have taken up posts with English Heritage, others have set up as historic gardens consultants and several have gone on to pursue further postgraduate research in Garden History at Bristol. There are currently 14 postgraduate students within Department of Archaeology & Anthropology studying for MLitts and PhDs in Garden and Landscape History; and with the recent Leverhulme Research Grant award there is now postdoctoral research being conducted within the scholarly community in the Department.

Further Information

Further details and application forms may be obtained from:
The Graduate School of Arts and Humanities
Faculty of Arts
University of Bristol
7 Woodland Road
Bristol
BS8 1TB
Tel +44 (0)117 928 8897
Fax +44 (0) 117 331 7469
artf-gradschool@bristol.ac.uk