The Letchworth Settlement:  User Groups

This course aims to explore an important aspect of the landscape history of the county over the last millennium – its parks.  Hertfordshire has a particularly rich parkland heritage which starts with the three (at Benington, St Albans and Ware) which were recorded in the Domesday book and continues up to the present day.  In the first three sessions we shall examine the county’s seventy medieval parks: their origins, how they worked, where they were and why.  We will then look at the parks which survived into the sixteenth century – when many came into the hands of Henry VIII, a passionate huntsman – and the new parks which were created.  A century later, another passionate huntsman, James I, was on the throne and indulged in perhaps the most audacious act of park-making in the county at Theobalds, Cheshunt.  The Civil War caused major problems for some Hertfordshire landowners – and their parks – but more new parks continued to be created after the Restoration.  Even more were laid out in the 18th and 19th centuries – many with the help of famous landscape designers like Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.  We shall examine the fate of the county’s parks during the 20th century and assess the important legacy that is left to us.  It is hoped that the course will incorporate two field trips, one to the site of a medieval park and the other to a designed park landscape of the 18th century.