An examination of the garden plans of eighteenth-century landscape architect Charles Bridgeman, shedding light on his artistic vision and contributions to English garden history.

The first authoritative survey of the history of common land in Great Britain from the medieval period to present day.

A richly detailed history of Ashdown Forest - home of Winnie-the-Pooh.

An exploration of small early folk communities prior to the eleventh century, showing their development and sophistication.

This pioneering study tells the story of the emergence of rural workers' gardens during a period of unprecedented economic and social change in the most dynamic and prosperous region of Scotland.

This first full study of Erasmus Darwin's gardening, horticulture and agriculture shows he was as keen a nature enthusiast as his grandson Charles, and demonstrates the ways in which his landscape experiences transformed his understanding of nature.

First survey of one of the most important pre-modern farming systems, and its effects on society and landscape.

First full survey of how transhumance operated in Ireland from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth.

The work of an unjustly neglected antiquarian brought to life, showing his contribution to the field.

Thomas Whatley's Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) is the first contemporary study of what has come to be known as the English landscape garden, often claimed to be the country's greatestoriginal contribution to the fine arts. It analyses natural and built elements of the garden, suggests principles of design, and provides descriptions of major gardens of the day, such as those at Blenheim and Piercefield (Monmouthshire), together with the author's responses, aesthetic, mental and emotional. It indicates a taste for the natural and the "picturesque", foreshadowing romanticism.
In its day it was enormously influential, being regarded for many years as the definitive account, and was read widely both in England and in Europe. For today's reader its importance is twofold: the garden descriptions are the fullest we have of what they looked like at the time, and the author's views enable us to understand prevailing tastes and sensibilities.
This edition of the text is accompanied by an introduction and full commentary, covering both general considerations and specific points and topics. Contemporary illustrations have been chosen to illuminate further the gardensand places discussed.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much of England's common land was eradicated by the processes of parliamentary enclosure. However, despite the fact that the landscape was frequently viewed as unproductive, outmoded and unsightly, many British landscape painters of the time - including Constable, Gainsborough and Turner - resolutely continued to depict it. This book is the first full study of how they did so, using evidence drawn not only from art-historical picture analysis, but from contemporary poems and novels, and the contemporary pamphlets, essays and reports that advanced the rhetoric of both agricultural improvement and new theories on landscape aesthetics. It highlights a deep-rooted social and cultural attachment to the common field landscape, and demonstrates that common land played a significant but - until now - underestimated role in both the history of English art and of the formation of an English national identity, reflecting what are still highly sensitive issues of progress, nostalgia and loss within the English countryside. Recasting common land as a recurrent facet of English culture in the modern period, the numerous paintings, drawings and prints featured in this book give the reader a comprehensive and evocative sense of what this now almost wholly lost landscape looked like in its hey-day. Ian Waites is Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the University of Lincoln.