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 Professor Tom Williamson, Chair in 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 offer training and study days for all our volunteers to add to everyone's interest and enjoyment and the results of our work and all original papers are available in Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies. They are also recorded on the new national Parks and Gardens UK Database. The past year has seen steady progress in our East Herts Project. The most notable achievements were the research and recording of two very important historic gardens in the county: Standon Lordship and Panshanger.
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 magnificent 19th Century gardens at Panshanger, west of Hertford are of particular importance due to their connection to the wider landscape of Panshanger Park which was laid out according to the directions of Humphry Repton from the very end of the 18th Century and which forms perhaps the finest and most important landscape designed by him in the county.
In the early 1950s the moveable garden features (ornaments and stonework) were auctioned off along with fixtures and fittings from the house, prior to its demolition in 1954. Since then the former pleasure grounds have been left to nature and completely neglected. In recent times Lafarge Aggregates, the present owners of the site, have started to clear the site of the mansion and former gardens and the Research Group has now recorded and mapped what remains of the gardens.
For more information about HGT research email: research@hertsgardenstrust.org.uk