| dc.description.abstract | Study of Georgian designed landscapes has almost exclusively concentrated on a relatively few, probably atypical, estates of the elite with little analysis of smaller estates, gardens in more urban areas or of sites contiguous with an industrial operation. This study contributes to redressing this omission and enhancing understanding of designed landscapes of the period by considering those sites contiguous and integrated with the industrial and proposes that they constitute a distinct design aesthetic. Industrial need determined the location of the landscapes. Their built environment and complex water systems were designed for operational requirements but were integrated into the ornamental resulting in the ultimate expression of the utile dulce. Contemporaries’ attitudes to the industrial and its role alongside agriculture and landscape in the national project of improvement is substantiated by the confidence industrialists asserted in displaying the industrial centre stage. The elite too included the industrial in the experience of their designed landscapes, a theme not previously explored. Whilst the focus of the research was the industrialists’ pleasure grounds, kitchen garden and park, the extent of industry and associated community and agricultural infrastructure in a number of cases has pointed to the typology of an industrial estate akin to traditional, but progressive, elite estates. Designed for industrial benefit, the landscapes were primarily for the private enjoyment of family and friends, but often also allowed visitors. They provided a polite context in which to marvel at man’s ingenuity and endeavour, with additional implied patriotism and social benevolence. The extent to which the industrial was integral to the experience of the landscape was largely a factor of industrial sector, with metallurgical exhibiting the most complex compared with textiles and pottery. Study of other industrial sectors and geographical regions would further elucidate the typology that itself suggests the need for a broader appreciation in the study of garden history of the dual pleasure and profit motives that underpinned the concept of improvement. | en_GB |
