Context 159 - May 2019

C O N T E X T 1 5 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 9 49 application of inappropriate or inadequate conservation methods and techniques. In England, parks and gardens of special historic interest can have statutory recognition through inclusion on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England . Too often the problems begin with failure to recognise that ‘The Register of Parks and Gardens’ is founded in statute under the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act 1953, making them statutory designated heritage assets. A common mistake is to confuse the lack of protection afforded to parks and gardens through the act – that is, the lack of a separate consent procedure such as that required for scheduled monuments and listed buildings – with the idea that they are ‘non- statutory’ heritage assets. Furthermore, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)1 defines registered parks and gardens as designated heritage assets; in the planning process, when considering the impact of a proposed development on the significance of registered parks and gardens, great weight should be given to their conservation, just as for listed buildings, scheduled monuments and other designated heritage assets. There are currently in the region of 1,635 parks and gardens on the register kept by Historic England 2 , representing the nationally most significant designed landscapes; nine per cent are considered exceptional and registered at Grade I, 27 per cent are of more than special interest and registered at Grade II*, and the remainder are at Grade II. Many designed landscapes contain elements that pre-date and post-date the principal building, and tell the full story of the development of the site. Apparently ‘minor’ features can provide clues to the location of now lost elements and buried assets without which the presentation and understanding of the accompanying buildings would be made more difficult. Some sites do survive as complete records of a single period of development, although such examples are extremely rare. Although the style, form, scale and materials employed in a designed landscape may change with fashion, technological advances, the availability of new materials (most notably the introduction of exotic plants from around the world) and functional requirements, a number of components are generally common to most designed landscapes. These include: •• Boundaries (walls, fencing, ha-has, hedging and railings, gates) •• Monuments (headstones and tombs, obelisks, mausoleums, statuary) •• Buildings (temples and follies, orangeries and glasshouses, sheds and shelters, lodges and gateways, rockwork and grottoes) •• Water (basins, pools and ponds, lakes, fountains and cascades) •• Trees (avenues, clumps, shelterbelts, arboretums, feature trees) •• Earthworks (terraces, viewing mounds, glacis, archaeological earthworks) •• Access (paths, drives, roads) •• Vegetation (greensward, shrubberies, formal planting) Forthcoming articles in Context will look at some of the many features and elements found in designed landscapes. The exploration will not be made through a chronological description of the development of landscape design (there are plenty of books that cover that subject admirably) or by focusing on any one type of landscape, but by looking at some of the commonly found, and occasionally overlooked, components. They will emphasise the need to approach historic designed landscapes as heritage assets in their own right, with each part contributing to the whole. Chris Mayes, heritage-at-risk landscape architect at Historic England ¹ The Gardens Trust has produced a guide to parks and gardens in the planning system http:// thegardenstrust.org ² https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/ what-is-designation/registered-parks-and-gardens/ Miles of meandering boundary wall, in this case with a coping made from clinker residual to industry associated with the site and impossible to replace A simple ha-ha wall? Conservation depends on understanding the construction of the ashlar facing, tamped backfill and rubble retaining wall behind. A steadily decaying ha-ha wall: out of sight and out of mind