Week 1. 23rd February: Decline, fall and rise: the country house and its garden between the Wars and after with Ben Cowell
Country houses and gardens faced significant pressures in the early 20th century. Rising costs, diminishing incomes and the impact of war meant that by the early 1950s country houses were disappearing from the landscape at an unprecedented rate, as owners took the decision to cut their losses and recoup the value of their assets. This could leave gardens as the only surviving relics of vanished mansion properties, and these gardens too frequently fell into disarray given the shrinkage in the number of employed gardening staff. Yet the 1950s and 60s also saw a recovery in the fortunes of some estates, as a result of the post-War boom in leisure and tourism. This talk considers the fate of country houses and their gardens, and the efforts that were taken to bring them back to life in the second half of the 20th century.
Ben Cowell is the Director General of Historic Houses, which represents 1,500 independently owned country houses and gardens across the UK and has nearly 70,000 general members. Ben previously worked for the National Trust and English Heritage. His PhD at the University of Nottingham was on the social and economic history of estate landscapes in the 18th and 19th centuries. His published books include a history of the heritage movement: The Heritage Obsession (The History Press, 2008), and works on different aspects of landscape history: Uvedale Price; Decoding the Picturesque (with Charles Watkins, The Boydell Press, 2012), and Landscapes of the National Trust (with Stephen Daniels and Lucy Veale, Pavilion Books, 2015). Ben was awarded an OBE for services to cultural heritage in the 2021 New Year Honours list.
Image: Easton Lodge, Essex. © Ben Cowell
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