Estate landscapes in Gelderland

The Province of Gelderland has long boasted a large number of country houses and landed estates, which over time coalesced into estate landscapes around the historical capitals of the Duchy of Guelders quarters of Nijmegen, Arnhem and Zutphen. Rapidly increasing urbanization from the end of the nineteenth century onwards threatened the coherence and accessibility of these landscapes. Gelderland’s largest cities, Arnhem and Nijmegen, watched in dismay as many country houses and landed estates fell victim to subdivision and development. In response they started to buy up portions of that estate landscape to ensure that they would remain available to city dwellers. In addition, the ‘safety net’ provided by newly established nature and landscape organizations, in particular Natuurmonumenten and Geldersch Landschap & Kasteelen, also contributed to preservation and permanent accessibility by offering landed families the opportunity to keep their estate intact, albeit no longer under their ownership. Similar motives – the need to preserve attractive, accessible walking areas for the increasingly urbanized society – underpinned the government’s introduction of the Nature Conservation Act in 1928. The Act was invoked more frequently in Gelderland than in any other province. It promoted the opening up of private properties as well as the preservation of the cultural value of the kind of ‘natural beauty’ to be found on landed estates. After the Second World War, in addition to resorting to the Nature Conservation Act, the owners of country houses and landed estates could avail themselves of an increasing variety of grants aimed at preserving (publicly accessible) nature, landscape and heritage, although the emphasis was firmly on nature. Estate landscapes like the Veluwezoom and the County of Zutphen were eventually safeguarded by a patchwork of different government regulations. In the twenty-first century, government policy shifted towards providing financial support for both public and private contributions to nature, landscape and heritage by country houses and landed estates. This in turn has stimulated interest in estate landscapes. Instead of individual heritage-listed estates, the focus is now on areas with multiple country house and landed estates where there are spatial tasks waiting to be fulfilled: not just the preservation of natural beauty for outdoor recreation, but also spatial articulation, climate change adaptation, increased biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. Interest in design, both past and present, has burgeoned thanks to this development.

The social geography of the estate landscape in Gelders Arcadië

For many centuries, the landscape and cultural history of the Netherlands have been influenced by the rural estates of large landowners. Their country houses with gardens, parks and farmland formed an important combination of practical aspects of economic management and aesthetic landscaping. Many castles or country houses were linked to large landholdings of several hundred, sometimes even thousands of hectares, as in the case of the Veluwezoom in the Province of Gelderland. Since the late Middle Ages this area, now known as Gelders Arcadia, has been popular with the landed elite, whose ranks have included noble families, stadtholders, city regents and bankers. The undulating landscape, the rivers and brooks and the fertile land was ideally suited to the creation of the desired combination of productive and aesthetic landscapes. One of the special aspects of the Gelders Arcadia estate zone is that it represents nearly every stage in the development of the Dutch country estate, from the emergence of castles and lordships (c. 500-1600), to the foundation of small country retreats by town regents (c. 1600-1800), and the creation of villa-like country estates for a new elite of bankers, industrialists and lawyers (c. 1800-1940). The historic country houses and landed estates are manifestations of their time and therefore very diverse, ranging from transformed noble castles with large landholdings to the rural retreats of town regents to villa-like country houses for the newly wealthy. Not only the architecture of the house and park, but also the use, the anchoring in the cultural landscape and the social significance underwent development. A historical-geographical approach was used to analyse location and distribution patterns and to investigate the size, character and functions of country estates in each period from an economic, political, societal and social perspective. It appears that the majority of new country houses and estates were created by a new elite of the newly rich, whereas the old elite continued to invest in their ancestral properties. The motivation to invest in the establishment of a country seat differed per period. The landed and country estates featured both economic and aesthetic landscapes, although the former were less prominent in later periods. This socio-historical-geographical approach has given us a better understanding of the various processes of estate creation, transformation and adaptation through time – knowledge that can also be used to reach well-founded decisions in the 21st century. The geographical approach for Gelders Arcadia has resulted in improved spatial policies through: 1. Attention to the entirety of country estates (rather than only those with listed status); 2. A focus on the country estate as a cohesive heritage ensemble, including an understanding of the social, economic, landscape and political factors that contributed to its development and design; 3. Recognition that the estates, thanks to their large number and individual sizes and qualities, have formed and will continue to form an important basis for the character of the living environment.

Estate landscapes in the Netherlands

In the past, country house research was mainly concerned with individual houses and gardens. Yet, as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so many country houses were being built around the major cities that they came to define the landscape. Genuine estate landscapes took shape along several rivers (Amstel, Vecht), along the inner edge of coastal dunes, and on newly reclaimed land. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the rivers were augmented with a network of barge canals and soon they too were lined by a belt of country houses. The greatest density of country houses was to be found around Amsterdam, but other big cities in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland had their fair share as well. Access was mostly by water, but in some areas, especially in Zeeland, country roads performed this role. The majority of country houses were built on or next to a farm, which generally continued to exist and, in many cases, survived the country house. In a few areas, the evolving density of country houses has been traced in a detailed chronological record. In most cases it reveals progressive growth towards a high point in the first half of the eighteenth century, after which a gradual decline sets in. However, in a number of areas growth was much more rapid, in particular along the River Vecht. Sustained growth was followed by decline. In the final decade of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, large numbers of country houses were demolished and in many instances the land reverted to agriculture production. It appears that the decline set in earlier in Zeeland than in Holland, but regional differences in decline are not yet entirely clear. The second quarter of the nineteenth century saw the construction of a new generation of country houses, especially in the undulating sandy areas of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug and the southern part of the Veluwezoom, where railway lines provided access. The owners of this new crop of country houses laid out their gardens in the English landscape style. They also bought up vast, neighbouring heathlands from local councils or farmers and planted them with trees. As a result, these country houses are quite different in character from those of the earlier period. In the past the concentrations of country houses dominated the landscape and even today, wherever they have survived to a substantial degree they continue to represent an important landscape quality. As such, protection and management should not be confined to individual country houses but should extend to groups of country houses and their interrelationships (in the form of visual axes, for example). In recent years, a number of provinces have already set a good example by formulating policies for country house biotopes and linear estate landscapes.

Dutch research into the country house and its landscape

One of the unmistakable trends in current country house research is the growing interest in the landscape context of country houses. The unquestioned emphasis on the main house and the garden is increasingly giving way to an approach that includes or focuses on the wider setting: village, nature, town, infrastructure, farms, churches, and other country houses. This article sketches the rise of this approach and offers an overview of the various perspectives. Among the aspects covered by landscape studies are country house regions, choice of location, the productive landscape, infrastructure, the political landscape and the mental landscape. Although this growing interest in the landscape setting is one of the most important recent developments in country house research, most of these studies are predominantly descriptive. This article calls for the establishment of a firmer methodological and theoretical underpinning – a task to which it is to be hoped that future researchers will devote themselves.

Learning from the Landscape: The European Tours of Charles A. Platt and Charles Eliot

ABSTRACT Study and travel in Europe provided a foundation for the establishment of artists and architects in the United States, including landscape architects and urban planners. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Charles A. Platt (1859–1933) and Charles Eliot (1861–97), men from privileged backgrounds in New York and Boston respectively, spent years in Europe seeking training and direct knowledge of historic patterns in garden, park and city making. Both shared their observations in influential articles for professional and popular journals and in publications that discussed what they had observed abroad and showed how it could be applied to American needs. Separate publications about their work and ideas further reinforced their influence. Platt, originally trained as an etcher and painter, approached first landscape design and then architecture from the perspective of an artist. He became one of the earliest and most influential figures in the formal garden revival in the United States, especially in landscapes for country houses, for which he also became one of the country’s most admired designers. In contrast, Eliot studied European patterns as a landscape architect who was also interested in both land preservation and regional planning. He led in establishing the Trustees of Public Reservations (1891), America’s first private-sector state-wide landscape trust, and the Boston Metropolitan Park Commission (1893), the country’s earliest regional landscape-planning state agency. The two men and their work represent contrasting methods and objectives, yet their interlocking careers sketch a broader panorama of the European precedents for American conditions at the turn of the twentieth century and beyond.

Houses as Lieux de Mémoire in Margery Allingham’s Crime Fiction

This article discusses the house as a site of memory in the novels of Margery Allingham, where it embodies a tension between the past and the present that turns the domestic milieu into a place of horror. Stemming from Susan Rowland’s claim that Golden Age authors did not write ‘unproblematically conservative country house mysteries’ (43), this paper uses Svetlana Boym’s theory of restorative and reflective nostalgia and Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) to read Allingham’s novels, which critically observe the sustainment of a vision of the past after the Great War. In her work, country houses like the eponymous one in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), are, despite their aristocratic grandeur, perfect scenes for murder. While the countryside is associated with a nostalgic innocence, it is also contaminated by the intrusion of the present, as in Sweet Danger (1933). Family secrets are also reasons for crime, as we see in Police at the Funeral (1931). Hide My Eyes (1958) relocates the nostalgic atmosphere to a suburban house converted into a museum of ‘curios’, which operates as an ironic allegory of a nation wrapped up in its own history.