Suffolk's Gardens and Parks Designed Landscapes from the Tudors to the Victorians

Suffolk deserves a special mention in garden and landscape history. Some of the greatest names in English landscape architecture, such as 'Capability' Brown, Humphry Repton, William Andrews Nesfield and Sir Charles Barry, were instrumental in creating the county's gardens and parks. In this book Tom Williamson explores how the landscapes we admire today at places such as Ickworth, Shrubland, and Somerleyton came into existence, and shows how they reveal much about the past. Starting with Elizabethan Melford Hall, Williamson takes the reader through a fascinating history of garden and park design and creation. The story has many themes: the influence of continental fashion on the Restoration garden; the proliferation of parks in the mid-eighteenth century; the culmination in 'Capability' Browns work at Heveningham; Humphry Repton's development of Glemham; the magnificent Victorian gardens at Shrubland and Somerleyton; and the impact of the 'Arts and Crafts' style on Suffolk's gardens. The author also explains the domestic economy of the Victorian garden. The book not only shows how trends in garden and landscape design were played out in a particular corner of England; it also sheds light on parks and gardens as symbolic landscapes proclaiming and reinforcing social divisions in a very unequal world.Williamson, Tom is the author of 'Suffolk's Gardens and Parks Designed Landscapes from the Tudors to the Victorians' with ISBN 9780953863006 and ISBN 095386300X.