UK Database of Historic Parks and Gardens

Proposals for lists of historic parks and gardens in the UK began in the 1970s. An unofficial listing by the Garden History Society was underway by the mid 1970s, chiefly by Mavis Batey and Peter Goodchild. The latter produced ‘A Preliminary List of Gardens, Parks, Grounds and Designed Landscapes of Historic Interest in England and Wales’ in May 1976, and devised the famous Forms 1 and 2 for the recording of parks and gardens.

English Heritage produced its Register between 1984 and 1988 with 1085 parks and gardens. Meanwhile the Scottish Development Department and the Countryside Commission for Scotland commissioned an Inventory of 275 places, published in 1986. From that time various surveys began to emerge at county level – Avon, Cheshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, etc. A Register for Wales began to be issued in parts from 1994.

The idea of a database goes back to Peter Goodchild’s concept of an Inventory, first envisaged whilst doing an MA dissertation at York almost 30 years ago. The objective was, and remains, to provide a means whereby garden surveys may be assembled and disseminated from and to the garden history world. This would allow information to be shared and analytical work to proceed, such as the investigation of the work of a designer across the country and more informed decisions on the importance of places or features.

There was a short-lived attempt at York to computerise the Inventory in the 1980s using the program Dbase III, but a lack of funding stifled it. Then in 1993 Dr Judith Roberts revisited the computerisation of the inventory, and a database was developed by Simon Lewis using Microsoft Access. The entire English Heritage Register was installed on it. In 1995 David Jacques, who had initiated the computerisation of the Register when the Inspector at English Heritage, became the project director at York, and the next year Chloe Newnham became the database administrator. The UK Database project obtained funding from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in 1996, and further funding from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust in 1997, each for 3 years.

Initially the project concentrated upon assembling the information already accessible through published descriptions of gardens, material compiled as reports and privately printed lists. The database and procedures for completing it needed careful design to ensure comparability of data. It was foreseen that county level surveys would be vital to extend the coverage of the highly selective lists by national bodies, and that this would be undertaken by County Councils and County Gardens Trusts. The number of county organisations expressing an interest in data collection had rocketed; over 20 county gardens trusts claimed they were actively engaged in it or planning to be so. The database was made available to them, along with a survey form and a manual, developed from the English Heritage Inspector’s Manual, to assist contributors provide information a more-or-less standardised form.

The method of publication had yet been settled. As the data started to accumulate, the main issue was gradually turning from how to get the data in, to how best to package it so that others could get the data out. The answer was to publish a skeleton of the database, showing the most important fields, on the World Wide Web. The database was redesigned so that it could generate six thousand web pages that would be necessary for this form of publication. Publication on the web was achieved in September 1998. Probably this is a world-first for historic gardens. The ‘hit-rate’ from web surfers was soon quite phenomenal.

The database then ran on probably the most sophisticated software for historic parks and gardens anywhere in the world. Another version of the website was published three years later which allowed remote entry – this is how most of the Welsh Register was installed. Today, the database includes over 3,500 places from England, Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland.

Modest support from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust continued, and indeed it was its grant money that provided the matching funding for the studies necessary for the awarding of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the present project.

David Jacques