Agricultural History Review, Volume 57 Part 2 (2009), p. 277

‘The most parky county of all’ according to Oliver Rackham in The history of the countryside, Hertfordshire is the focus of two important new park histories published by the University of Hertfordshire Press. Originally conceived as a single volume, the weight of research demanded two separate books that explore, respectively, the parks of the middle Ages (Anne Rowe) and those of the period 1500–1970 (Hugh Prince). Together, the volumes make Hertfordshire one of the most intensively studied counties in terms of its parks, and they present a multifaceted view of the subject. Parks were more complex and multilayered entities than is sometimes presented, characterized by an array of sometimes competing and contradictory functions: live larders; status symbols; venues for entertainment and elite discourse; and aesthetically pleasing backdrops for country residences.

There were about 70 medieval parks in the county. These were ever-changing entities whose extent and internal form varied depending on ownership, landscape context and the period of their creation. The introductory survey in Anne Rowe’s volume investigates not only everyday park functions (notably there are only two records of recreational hunting in the county’s medieval parks, both in 1362) but explores their wider contexts in several ways – their place in society, in the economy and, especially, the environment, which reveals some intriguing patterns of regional variation within the shire. The economic viability of parks is assessed critically, and the spatial relationships between elite residences and parks (becoming increasingly intimate through time) untangled. A valuable gazetteer of medieval parks, arranged by parish, takes up more than three-quarters of the volume. Well presented and usable, it incorporates impeccable surveys of documentary and cartographical evidence for each park alongside observations from fieldwork. Accompanying maps for each individual park, based on the Ordnance Survey First Edition with judicious use of colour, show the extent of each unit. Immediately striking is the complexity of internal park landscaping, with patchwork-type arrangements of woods, launds (or open areas) and common paddocks, invariably punctuated by features such as ponds, lodges and warrens. The large-scale format is attractive and the gazetteer is a model of its type.

Hugh Prince’s complementary volume charts the complex changes in fashion that underlay emparkment in the post-medieval and modern periods and examines the role of the park in the projection and negotiation of power. Chronologically based, the volume is particularly strong on the economic role of the park in estate management. The story of the Hertfordshire park after 1500 is a rollercoaster: from dramatic changes in the Tudor period as new parks accompanied sweeping changes in land ownership and partnered a fresh generation of gentry houses, through to a somewhat downbeat assessment of the landscape heritage of parks in the modern era, given the destruction of many and the degradation of others as tourist attractions and golf courses. The seventeenth century is shown to have witnessed widespread park destruction (and defacement in the Civil War), while the golden age of eighteenth-century emparkment saw the key figures of Lancelot Brown, Nathaniel Richmond, Richard Woods and Humphry Repton make their distinctive mark on the Hertfordshire landscape.

It would be invidious to pick out one volume as superior to the other for they are complementary and both shed new light on the subject, showing the fruits of detailed fresh research and highlighting the potential for future work elsewhere.