FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

Past Talks

Almost from the outset FOLAR has - with generous permission from our speakers - recorded virtually all the talks we have held at symposia and online.There are currently over 130 recordings available under Past Talks and Specials. The Past Talks section covers topics ranging from the Festival Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park, Susan Jellicoe’s photographs, The Open Spaces Society, working on Byker in Newcastle with Ralph Erskine to landscape designs that promote human health and well-being.

There are a number of talks that focus on women landscape designers, from Fanny Wilkinson, Marjory Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Brenda Colvin, and Sylvia Crowe in Bristol, to Elisabeth Beazley, Diana Armstrong Bell and other contemporary landscape architects in the can…

Our speakers include past presidents of the Landscape Institute - Brian Clouston, Hal Moggridge, Tim Gale; landscape academics - Ed Bennis, Jan Woudstra, Alan Powers, Luca Csepely-Knorr, Catharine Ward Thompson; historians - Elain Harwood, John Boughton, Katrina Navikas; practitioners – Annie Coombs; Neil Chapman, Jennette Emery-Wallis, Paul Rabbitts, Ian Baggott,  young researchers – Joy Burgess, Sally Watson, Karen Fitzsimon and many more.

The Specials section includestalks celebrating the life and works of two of the Institute’s significant practitioners – Bran Clouston and Hal Moggridge;  and a series of twenty one talks on the C20 designed landscapes that were added to the Historic England register in 2021.

So how can anybody find anything in all these recordings?  The quickest way is to use the search box – type in a strong and simple key word linked with what you are searching for, eg play, Jellicoe, Sweden, and hopefully you will find something that is useful for you.

 

Changing attitudes to open space and landscape preservation in the UK 1920-1930s

Which open space and landscape preservation organisations were pressing for change in the 1920-30s ? What were they doing? Who were their supporters and members? How effective were they in raising awareness and making change happen? Do they still exist? Where and what are their archives? We were curious to learn more about other agitators around at the time the institute of Landscape Architects was founded (1929). There were some interesting surprises of course!

FOLAR invited two speakers to talk about their recent archive-based research on the Open Spaces Society and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. Both these collections are at The MERL, and a third speaker who initiated a small restoration project where the research revealed links with Lord Meath and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, Miranda Hill founder of the Kyrle Society (Miranda’s sister was Octavia Hill), and a Streatham visionary Stenton Covington.

In The Open Spaces Society lantern slides collection and the ideal landscape in the early 20th Century, Dr Katrina Navickas examines the Open Spaces Society's collection of lantern slides, held at the Museum of English Rural Life. The Society was founded in 1865 and has campaigned ever since for the preservation of public open spaces and rights of way. The slides offer a view of the ideal landscapes that they sought to preserve in the early 20th century. The talk focuses on the designed landscapes in the image collection, including the metropolitan parks and commons, in an era of suburbanisation.

In A review of the early landscape preservationist movement and the creation, in 1926, of the CPRE, Dr Francesca Church discusses the early Preservationist movement and the creation, in 1926, of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. A key part of the Council's founding aims was amenity, an idea around which much of their practices, approaches and identity were based. Drawing on ideas that were important both to the Institute of Landscape Architects and the CPRE in the first half of the 20th century, the talk explores two examples of such overlaps: education (in particular, CPRE exhibitions) and roadside planting.

Rediscovering the stream garden at the Rookery Streatham Common was the subject of the third speaker Dr Lee Heykoop, and her Heritage Lottery Funded project to refurbish the Stream Garden at the Rookery, Streatham Common. Formerly private land, funds were raised by public subscription to enable for The Rookery to be gifted to the London County Council (LCC) in 1910 to extend Streatham Common. Archival information researched by volunteers was found in the LCC collection at the London Archive (formerly London Metropolitan Archive), contemporary newspapers, Lambeth records library, Gardener’s Chronicle, ODNB, and The ‘Old English Garden’ in LCC Parks, by John Medhurst 1989 (unpublished AA Garden Conservation thesis).

Videos

Speakers: Dr Katrina Navickas, Dr Francesca Church, Dr Lee Heykoop
August 2021, online

Links and resources:

Annabel Downs