Hagley Park TEACHERS’ INFORMATION PACK Contents Section 1 Introduction 2 Section 2 The Historic Park at Hagley 4 Section 3 Educational Opportunities 14 Section 4 Visiting Hagley Park 19 Section 5 Hazard Information for Visiting Groups 24 The opposite pages throughout have been left intentionally blank for you to record your ideas and thoughts thus making this a personalised working document. 1 Section 1: Introduction Welcome Thank you for your interest in visiting Hagley Park. We hope that you will recognise the potential of such an experience to inspire your pupils, and inform and enrich their education. The visit allows pupils to see for themselves how a heritage site can engage and inform through a myriad of disciplines in an enjoyable and safe environment. This pack will help you to prepare a successful programme tailored to suit the needs of your group. What is Heritage? Heritage can be seen as a chronological measure which encompasses all that our environment contains. It includes the geological formation of the terrain, the flora and fauna adapted to survive those conditions, but is more usually recognised as a timeline mapping changes wrought by the progression of human endeavours which have shaped our world. Stretching back to our hunter/gatherer origins, the landforms, objects, buildings and monuments we now excavate, preserve, restore and display are obvious physical manifestations of such activity, with their combinations of material, structure, purpose and decorative style, illustrating not only technological advances, but also the acceptance and rejection of ideas. These are the more intangible traditions of language, meaning, belief and behaviour, and it is from this accumulated culture of our collective memory that we derive a sense of place, identity, and local character, which ultimately influences our perception of the world. Our heritage is the most intricately detailed map of the past, and one which can potentially guide our future. Why visit our heritage site? A visit to Hagley Park will present your pupils with exciting and engaging opportunities to experience our nation’s cultural history first-hand, giving a true taste of the places, sights and endeavours that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present. The earliest known reference to Hagley is in the Domesday Book, although human habitation in the area reaches back much further as illustrated by the presence of an impressive Iron-age hill fort on Wychbury Hill, which is still part of a larger Hagley Estate. Hagley’s much celebrated 350 acre 18th Century Park was adapted from a medieval deer park when, inspired by poetry and painting, its stunning natural scenery was adorned with architectural seats and follies to give or create breathtaking views. 2 In its day it was visited, viewed, and reviewed to great acclaim by some of the period’s most enlightened minds. Today, having laid neglected for a century and a half, the Park is undergoing a major restoration, which will return it to its 18th Century glory. With our future visitor centre still in the planning phase, this current transitional stage allows a unique access for visiting students to understand buildings and designed landscape through ongoing archaeology that is today still revealing new features and furthering understanding of the Park. This fascinating historical development brings educational opportunities for all ages and across a wide range of subjects. 3 Section 2: The Historic Park at Hagley Among the most famous of all 18th Century landscapes, George Lyttelton’s park at Hagley was, in its day, visited, viewed, and reviewed to great acclaim by some of the century’s most enlightened minds. Early in its creation English poet and critic Alexander Pope, visiting as a family friend, contributed “designs for three garden buildings”, and declared a friendly ‘ownership’ of his favourite part of the Park. Similarly, Scottish poet James Thomson’s first visit inspired his deeply descriptive prose to praise both the Park’s natural beauty and its creator’s virtuous nature in the quintessential British nature poem The Seasons. Whilst pre-eminent art historian and critic Horace Walpole’s visit drew the statement: "I wore out my eyes with gazing, my feet with climbing, and my tongue and vocabulary with commending". As the century wore on and its reputation grew, Hagley’s iconic landscape began to attract international visitors. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third American presidents, along with Russian counts and Italian princes all made pilgrimages to witness the beauties of Hagley’s “hallowed ground”. Today, after a century and a half’s neglect, but poised on the brink of a major restoration intent on reinstating the Park to its former glory, a growing influx of new visitors, both domestic and international, show this appeal is undoubtedly resurgent. Hagley Park – View to Rotunda early 19th century print by Wallis after Hill Hagley‘s prestigious position as a pioneer in the evolution of the English Landscape garden has substantial foundations, a fact recognised in part by its listing today as an English Heritage Grade-1 registered park, an award which deems it of exceptional national interest. Here, there was no formal landscape to sweep away in the 18th Century revolution that rejected the regular symmetries of gardens 4 previously modelled on those of Italian, French and Dutch origin, and the more traditional garden-makers tools of compass, set-square and rule were set aside. Instead, inspired by the sister arts of painting and poetry, this much celebrated Georgian landscape was coaxed gently from its previous incarnation of a medieval deer park, utilising its natural hillside topography, its ancient trees and watercourses, its green dales and deep wooded vales, and embellishing these with light and slight flourishes of Art, often barely visible to the eye. At Hagley, above all, it was the beauty of unadorned nature that was revered. Hagley Park –View from Thomson’s Seat c 1748 by Thomas Smith of Derby Sloping away from the Clent Hills before abruptly rising to the impressive Iron Age hill- ort on Wychbury Hill, the park’s terrain ‘borrows’ extensive views to the south and west beyond its boundaries to The Malverns, The Clee and Abberley Hills, The Wrekin and, on a clear day, as far as The Black Mountains of Wales, but it is the richness of the immediate historic environment that bears testament to a continual interaction of people and place over many centuries which contributes much to the region’s status as an undeniable national heritage asset. With an external landscape that reflects in many ways the breadth of our own nation’s history, the Park’s interior shows the influences and assimilation of wider world cultures and the changing intellectual tastes of a nation inspired by the Enlightenment. 5 Hagley Park – The View to the Rotunda - c1748 by Thomas Smith of Derby The original Park’s main period of development (from 1747) was under the guidance of George Lyttelton who, seeking solace after the premature death of his beloved wife Lucy, invested his energy in creating a lasting memorial to her. This initial elegiac countenance continued with the addition of further seats, also raised in memory of friends, to create an intimate landscape of quiet contemplation. The Park’s pathways led through contrasting sequential atmospheres intended to affect the senses, provoking moods and inspiring the visitor’s imagination, whilst its architectural designed features of temples, seats, urns, a ruined castle and an obelisk were positioned along a route to stimulate thought and conversation through associations raised in the visitors’ minds. It was George Lyttelton’s poetic and aesthetic sensibilities and his broad literary knowledge that gave the park this deeper philosophical dimension., The seats and temples were adorned with tablets inscribed with lines or verses from classical authors such as Horace and Virgil, and these often extolled the delights and virtues of the country life over the corruption and vanities that were then (as they are today) found in courtly or city life. 6 Hagley Park – The Ruined Castle by Sanderson Miller c1748 Today’s historiography shows Hagley Park to be an early precursor of the later 18th Century Picturesque style, bearing an influence that not only paved the way for the advent of English tourism and the coming romanticism of Wordsworth and the Lakeland poets, but can also be seen as a primary catalyst that led to the world- renowned paintings of Constable, Gainsborough and Turner. This prominent role as an exemplar design model also exerted considerable influence on the international stage. The French jardins anglais and the German Englischer Garten both stem from the same design root along with similar “English-style” gardens in Sweden, Russia and the United States. Esteemed architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, amongst others, deems the English Landscape Garden tradition as our nation’s most important aesthetic contribution to the world. Little wonder that we are known worldwide as a nation of gardeners. Joe Hawkins - Head of Landscape 7 History: Hagley Hall and its Park are among the supreme achievements of 18th Century English architecture and landscape gardening. They are largely the creation of one man, George, 1st Lord Lyttelton (1709-73), secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales, poet and man of letters and briefly Chancellor of the Exchequer. Before the death of his father in 1751, he had begun to landscape the grounds in the new 'picturesque' style. The Hall, built between 1754 and 1760 by the gentleman-architect Sanderson Miller of Radway in Warwickshire, was in fact constructed after the Park‘s main period of development to match the landscape’s already considerable fame. Extant park architectural features: The English Heritage Grade-1 registered Park at Hagley was developed during the 18th Century evolving from its origins as a medieval deer park.