We explore ‘English’ architecture and gardens from royal court to cottage, including a critical walking tour of 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, its architecture and setting 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 defining the houses and gardens of monarchs, grandees and talented citizens.
Three lectures will contrast and compare royal domains: the power play of Henry VIII and William and Mary at Hampton Court Palace; the oriental excesses of the Prince Regent, later George IV and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton; and lastly traditional family values from Queen Victoria to Queen Elizabeth II that have shaped Buckingham Palace and its hidden London gardens. The sober Palladian architecture of Stourhead provides a suitably august house from which to explore its Saxon roots and sublime English classical landscape - the archetypical le jardin anglais. The vernacular materials of Gertrude Jekyll’s Munstead Wood, conversely, marry well with the borders of its quintessential English gardens. Twentieth-century ‘English Country House Style’ was defined by a Virginian, Nancy (Tree) Lancaster, at Kelmarsh Hall.
In all the aristocracy must not be forgotten. Vita Sackville-West, with her husband Harold Nicolson, transformed the wreckage of Sissinghurst Castle into an enduring icon of the English house and garden. For over three hundred years the Dukes of Devonshire have introduced innovative architecture and garden practice into their stately home and estate - Chatsworth.
