This examination of the factors that influenced the evolution of elite landscapes has been prompted, in part, by the ongoing debate about the origins of designed landscapes. The idea that, during the medieval period, the location of buildings and features considered to be of symbolic or economic value, were consciously positioned to create ‘designed landscapes’ has become widely accepted. The arrangement of approach routes, bodies of water, park boundaries and resources such as mills, dovecotes and warrens have all been cited as evidence for the development of concepts of design in medieval elite landscapes. From the 1980s, the arrangement of landscape features around high-status properties such as castles and episcopal palaces has been the subject of much research and debate. Initially, the role of design within these landscapes was treated with caution, for example the early work on the much discussed sites of Somersham Palace73 and Bodiam Castle74 by landscape archaeologists such as Christopher Taylor, Paul Everson and Robert Wilson-North, suggested the possibility that features may have been positioned to give pleasure or create impact. However, by the mid 1990s studies of these and other sites, routinely employed the term ‘designed landscapes’ when describing the surroundings of high-status buildings.
In 1998 the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England published a volume of conference papers edited by Paul Pattison entitled There By Design: Field
Archaeology in Parks and Gardens.75 In “From Recording to Recognition”, Christopher Taylor’s contribution to this volume, he argued that analytical field archaeology was
71 Whyte, N., (2009) Inhabiting the Landscape: Place Custom and Memory, 1500-1800. Oxford,
Windgather, p.166.
72 Whyte, N., (2000), p.166. 73
Taylor, C. (1989) “Somersham Palace, Cambridgeshire: A Medieval Landscape for Pleasure?” in M. Bowden, D. Mackay and P. Topping (eds.), From Cornwall to Caithness. Oxford, BAR 207, pp. 211-224.
74 Taylor, C., Everson, P. and Wilson-North, R. (1990) “Bodiam Castle, Sussex” in Medieval
Archaeology 34, pp. 155-7.
75
Pattison, P (editor) (1998) There By Design: Field Archaeology in Parks and Gardens. Papers
presented at a conference organised by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and the Garden History Society British Archaeological Report, British Series 267. RCHME in association
40
particularly well suited to the discovery of early gardens and designed landscapes. Taylor asserted that because the discipline was accustomed to operating across all periods and with all relicts of the past analytical fieldwork had led to the discovery of several medieval designed landscapes.76 Paul Everson provided field evidence for several such sites in his paper, including those at Whorlton Castle, North Yorkshire and Shotwick Castle, Cheshire.77
The acceptance of the existence of such landscapes was confirmed during the first decade of the new millennium with the publication of many papers and volumes arguing the case for early designed landscapes. For example, in 2003 Paul Everson stated that -
… the crucial point is the acceptance of the presumption that these great medieval residences of royalty, secular lords and prelates would routinely – invariably – have been supported by manipulated, designed landscapes involving careful forethought, planning, effort and cost not dissimilar to those attending designed landscapes of later eras.78
In his contribution to Medieval Landscapes in the Landscape History After Hoskins series of volumes, published in 2007, Robert Liddiard argued that –
While there can be no doubt that landscape design did not begin in the sixteenth century, the origins of medieval landscapes are, currently, obscure. One achievement has however, been to push the origins of design back as far as the twelfth century.79
The conclusion of the piece, however, pointed out that the term ‘designed landscape’ has been only loosely defined and the suggestion was made that future studies should try to establish where a line might be drawn between production and aesthetics, and
76 Taylor, C., (1998) “From Recording to Recognition” in There By Design: Field Archaeology in Parks
and Gardens edited by Paul Pattison, pp. 1-2.
77
Everson, P., (1998) “ ‘Delightfully Surrounded by Woods and Ponds’: Field Evidence for Medieval Gardens in England” in There By Design: Field Archaeology in Parks and Gardens, pp. 34-37.
78 Everson, P. (2003) “Medieval Gardens and Designed Landscapes” in The Lie of the Land: Aspects of
the archaeology and history of the designed landscape in the South West of England, edited by R.
Wilson-North. The Mint Press, Exeter, pp 30-31.
79 Liddiard, R., (2007) “Medieval Designed Landscapes: Problems and Possibilities” in Medieval
Landscapes; Landscape History after Hoskins, Volume 2. Edited by M. Gardiner and S. Rippon,
41
what could be described as designed or non-designed.80 This cautionary note has been followed by a detailed critique of the validity of the concept of early designed landscapes by Robert Liddiard and Tom Williamson in which they query the use of the term ‘designed’ when describing medieval high-status landscapes.81
They argue that before a landscape can be said to be designed it must have been created using recognisable design principles or formulae. Liddiard and Williamson argue that large scale landscape planning would have been difficult to accomplish without an understanding of perspective combined with a level of surveying and planning expertise not available to medieval lords. And, crucially, extensive planned landscapes required that the land be owned by one individual and not subject to complex feudal rights and obligations. They have therefore proposed that the chronology and definition of the ‘design threshold’ be subject to re-examination. The evidence presented in this thesis seeks to address some of the points outlined above, by examining the processes that were undertaken prior to the creation of elite landscapes and by identifying examples of deliberate planning that included aesthetic elements, which appear to have been created using recognised design principles.