Researching Historic Parks and Gardens

HGT's Research Group traces Hertfordshire's landscape heritage from medieval times through to the 21st Century. The work is directed by Tom Williamson, Professor of Landscape History at the University of East Anglia and the Group's desk research and site surveys are organised by the Trust's own Landscape Historian Anne Rowe.

We have carried out extensive research in three areas of the county and the results of our work can be seen in several publications and in an ever-growing collection of comprehensive reports detailing the histories of dozens of Hertfordshire's parks and gardens. Most of these reports can be seen in Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) at County Hall, Hertford, including the following sites:

Currently we are researching historic parks and gardens in the Welwyn-Hatfield area and, as always, our volunteers are offered training and study days to add to their interest and enjoyment. New members are always welcome and, as an example of the kind of work we undertake, below is a short summary of the report on Standon Lordship in East Hertfordshire.

The lovely Standon Lordship incorporates the fragmentary remains of a very grand mansion built in the mid 16th Century for the statesman Sir Ralph Sadleir. In the late 17th Century it was the home of Lord Aston and vied with Hatfield House for the position of premier residence in the county. No documentary or pictoral evidence for gardens from either century survives but in the fields around The Lordship there are some intriguing earthworks. The Research Group undertook a thorough survey of these earthworks under the direction of Professor Tom Williamson.

Professor Williamson concluded that the rectilinear humps and hollows in the fields lying to the south of the mansion represent extensive gardens and enclosures and terraces of 16th or 17th Century date (areas A and B on the Plan). To the north-west of The Lordship is another area of very impressive earthworks lying on the valley slope above the river Rib (area C). Various features suggest that these enigmatic terraces may also be the remains of early gardens and, if this were the case, then Standon Lordship would represent one of the most important earthwork sites in Hertfordshire.


The most recent survey undertaken by the Research Group was in Gobions Wood at Brookmans Park. Within this lovely wood lie the earthwork remains of a famous eighteenth-century garden designed by Charles Bridgeman for Jeremy Sambrooke and laid out in the 1720s. Visited by many notable people, including Queen Caroline, the garden was one of Bridgeman’s most significant designs, and was considered by Horace Walpole to represent an important stage in the development of the ‘landscape’ style. Exciting new evidence about the layout of the garden has recently come to light with the discovery of a plan in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. An article assessing the significance of the plan has been written by Tom Williamson and Anne Rowe and will be published in the journal Garden History in 2012. Here are some photographs of the Research Group hard at work in Gobions Wood on two gloriously sunny spring days in March 2012.

For more information about HGT research email: research@hertsgardenstrust.org.uk