We will explore defining Englishness through England’s architecture and gardens, from stately home to cottage, including a critical walk around the exteriors of Selwyn College and the Sidgwick Site. Dating back to 1130, the Manor Hemingford Grey is reputedly the oldest inhabited house in England, it encapsulates the notion of the rural English home at one with its billowing, floriferous gardens. However, there is a more colourful, complex weave to the term English which we will analyse when exploring the houses and gardens of noted designers, artists, grandees and homemakers. The classical English house and landscape was defined during the 18th century by the theatrical gymnastics of William Kent and formulaic intelligence of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The latter’s skills illustrating the scope of the English Enlightenment. The sober Palladian architecture of Stourhead provides a suitably august house from which to explore its Saxon roots and sublime English setting – the archetypical jardin anglais. A horror of 19th-century industrialisation inspired William Morris to advise: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. In a quest for the vernacular, the English Arts and Crafts movement was initiated. Morris’s Kelmscott Manor being an exemplar. Trained as an artist Gertrude Jekyll crafted her house and gardens at Munstead Wood with architect Edwin Lutyens who evolved ‘Wrennaissance’ architecture. Each house buoyant in quintessential flowering English gardens. ‘English Country House Style’ was defined and perfected by a Virginian, Nancy (Tree) Lancaster from the 1920’s. In all the aristocracy must not be forgotten, not an Earl but with noble blood, the Lady Vita Sackville-West and her husband Sir Harold Nicolson transformed the wreckage of Sissinghurst Castle into an enduring icon of the English house and garden. The television series Downtown Abbey has reinvented Highclere Castle into an English icon of international proportions.
Learning outcomes
The learning outcomes for this course are implicit in the course description and, for those who wish to write papers, in the essay questions which follow it. Students are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject, and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course specifically are:
1. The ability to evaluate an understanding and appreciation of ‘Englishness’ in the work of key architects and garden designers from 1330-1970;
2. The ability to identify several properties that are iconic to defining English cultural development;
3. An increased pleasure when visiting English houses and gardens in the recognition of certain features and styles.
Classes
1. Defining the perfect English country house and garden – the Manor Hemingford Grey
2. The English classical house and landscape I – the theatrical overtures of William Kent
3. The English Enlightenment, its houses and landscapes – the formulaic intelligence of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown
4. Educating Englishness – a walk around Selwyn College
5. English country house style – Nancy Lancaster
6. The sublime English setting – Stourhead, Wiltshire
7. English arts and crafts ‘beauty and utility’ – William Morris and Kelmscott Manor
8. English arts and crafts, the golden afternoon - Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens – the ‘Wrennaissance’
9. The tyranny of Englishness – Sissinghurst Castle
10. International Englishness – Highclere Castle setting for Downton Abbey
