Yorkshire's Designed Landscapes - Bolton Abbey

Previous series presented by Yorkshire Gardens Trust in association with the Gardens Trust have largely focussed on the great estates of the county. This series, presented by specialists in their fields, explores a variety of other types of designed landscapes through thought-provoking and meaningful presentations.

This ticket is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for the other individual session via the link below, or you may purchase a ticket for all sessions at a cost of £28 via the link here. [Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £21 for the series or £6 each talk].

Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .

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Week 1. 17 September: The role of town memorials: collective memory, counter-memory, and forgetting in Barnsley. First of 4 online talks £8 each or all 4 for £28 (Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members £6 or £21)

Week 2. 24 September: Gale Common Artificial Hill of Fly Ash – a new landscape feature. Second of 4 online talks £8 each or all 4 for £28 (Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members £6 or £21)

Week 3. 1 October: 'One of the first that brought our northern gentry into the method of planting and raising all kinds of forest trees, for use and ornament’: the role of early Yorkshire nurseries in northern plantations. Third of 4 online talks £8 each or all 4 for £28 (Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members £6 or £21)

Week 4. 8 October: Bolton Abbey: A Picturesque Landscape Garden. Last of 4 online talks £8 each or all 4 for £28 (Gardens Trust and Yorkshire Gardens Trust Members £6 or £21)

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Week 4. 8 October: Bolton Abbey: A Picturesque Landscape Garden with Patrick Eyres

Bound by high moorland, the wooded valley of the river Wharfe at Bolton Abbey has been a popular beauty spot for over two centuries. The place began to attract visitors once the Reverend William Carr opened up Bolton Woods as a landscape garden, during the 1790s, by introducing paths interspersed with seats that offer a series of surprise views. Hackfall, on the river Ure, was the notable Yorkshire precedent. The seats were named to invoke the landowning dynasties, and were placed to reveal views of natural spectacle, such as The Strid and High Strid, as well as the historical ruins that framed this stretch of river: Bolton Priory and Barden Tower. The talk will focus on the representation of the place by artists and authors. In his History of Craven (1805), Dr Whitaker hailed Bolton Abbey as a Picturesque tour de force that combined natural splendour with historical associations, as did the numerous guidebooks that followed. The artist, J.M.W. Turner, and poet, William Wordsworth, made several visits, inspired both by the place and by the financial benefits of the tourist market. Wordsworth’s poetry dramatized the history of the ruined priory and the mortal hazards of The Strid. Turner’s watercolours were engraved for poetic and topographical publications. Unbeknown to most visitors today, Bolton Abbey remains a Picturesque landscape garden.

Dr Patrick Eyres is editor and publisher of the unique New Arcadian Journal, in which artists and writers explore the landscape garden. The current, 56th, is the penultimate edition. On behalf of The Gardens Trust, he set up the annual New Research Symposium and chaired it for the first ten years.

Image: The High Strid at Bolton Abbey, ©Patrick Eyres

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