Approaches to Landscape

Approaches to Landscape

Richard Muir
ISBN 978-0-333-69393-3 ISBN 978-1-349-27243-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-27243-3
© Richard Muir 1999
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Contents

List of Illustrations VI

Introduction xiii

1. Landscape History and Landscape Heritage

2. The Practice of Landscape History 49
3. The Structure and Scenery Approach 99
4. Landscapes of the Mind 115
5. Landscape, Politics and Power 149
6. The Evaluation of Landscape 182
7. Symbolic Landscapes 212
8. The Aesthetic Approach to Landscape 244
9. Landscape and Place 271
Postscript 297

Index 304

v
List of Illustrations

1.1 To the British geographer, R.E. Dickinson, landscape 7

was 'the scene within range of an observer's vision',
like this scene from the English Lake District.
(Richard Muir)

1.2 Physical settings do not determine the nature of 28-9

& human culture. Here the same religious impulses find
1.3 similar expressions in megalithic circles on the low,
water-girt plains of Orkney island at the Ring of
Brodgar (1.2) and on an elevated platform
commanding panoramic views of the Lakeland Fells at
Castlerigg (1.3). (Richard Muir)

2.1 Strip lynchets pleating a hillside at Linton in 53

Wharfedale. (Richard Muir)

2.2 Ancient or woodland countryside is exemplified in this 57

air photograph of Luppitt in Devon, with dispersed
settlement, small, irregular fields with thick hedgerows
and winding lanes. (Cambridge University collection:
British Crown Copyright/MOD, reproduced with
permission of the Controller of Her Britannic
Majesty's Stationery Office

2.3 Planned or champion countryside is represented by 58

scenes like this aerial view of Orwell in
Cambridgeshire, with enclosed communal
ploughlands defined by geometrical boundaries and a
general shortage of scenic detail and variety.
(Cambridge University collection)

2.4 Air photography is a technique of immense value to 63

the landscape historian. In this picture of the deserted
medieval village of Hamilton, Lincolnshire, and its
setting one can see the remains of the village in the
vi
 List of Illustrations vn

centre of the picture, with its main street surviving as a

holloway, its property boundaries and house sites and
a rectangular homestead moat, while medieval ridge
and furrow patterns give the surrounding fields a
corduroy-like texture. (Cambridge University
collection)

2.5 The landscape historian must read the clues contained 67

in the landscape. Here the slight hollow winding
between the trees was once the High Street of the
village of Childerley in Cambridgeshire. (Richard
Muir)

2.6 The skills of two landscape historians were employed 68

to chart the earthworks of settlement, gardens and
plough ridges at Croxton in Cambridgeshire, allowing
a reconstruction of the history of the locality. (From
A.E. Brown and C.C. Taylor, Cambridgeshire
Earthwork Surveys VI, Proceedings of the Cambridge
Antiquarian Society, vol LXXXII (1993).)

2. 7 Boundaries of many kinds traverse the historic 77

landscapes. Life depended upon land and territories
had to be demarcated and defended. The territorial
frontierwork of Devil's Dyke is still undated, but it
may well belong to the late Roman or early Saxon
periods. The effort involved in creating the banks and
ditches of such linear earthworks underlines the
importance attached to safeguarding land. (Richard
Muir)

3.1 Geology can exert a powerful presence in the 100

landscape. A landscape, settlement and economy built
on slate in the region of Blaenau Ffestiniog in north
Wales. (Richard Muir)

3.2 Rock type will usually influence the appearance of 102

landscape. This is a glaciated landscape with the
smooth slopes and rounded summits characteristic of
the Skiddaw Slates in the Lake District. Neighbouring
rocks of the Borrowdale Volcanics Series weather into
much more craggy and rugged forms. (Richard Muir)
viii List of Illustrations

3.3 This coastal landscape, on the north Somerset coast at 104

Kilve, owes its personality entirely to the Blue Lias
beds which can be seen dipping towards the shore.
(Richard Muir)

4.1 Meinig wrote that 'any landscape is composed not

only of what lies before our eyes but what lies within
our heads'. Some observers looking at this scene
might regard the falling water as restful, while others
could regard the rugged rocks and swirling currents as
elements in a violent landscape. (Richard Muir)

4.2- Different landscapes evoke different psychological 120-1

4.4 responses. Here the mist-shrouded view of the
mountains around the Old Man of Storr on Syke (4.2)
suggests mystery, the scene at Bayham Abbey (4.4) is
mystical and the landscape seen from the summit of
Carn Brea in Cornwall (4.3) acts like a bridge,
combining elements of the mysterious and the
mystical. (Richard Muir)

4.5 In the popular imagination, English villages seem to 140

symbolise timelessness and stability, and this scene, at
Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds, would seem to
encapsulate such sentiments. In fact, like so many
others, the village has changed considerably over the
centuries, with the built-up area expanding across a
riverside green. (Richard Muir)

4.6 This rubble-walled and thatched cottage in 144

& Northamptonshire (4.6) epitomises the romantic
4.7 vision of 'Village England'. Dwellings such as these,
which were built in the vernacular styles of the English
regions, inspired the construction of sentimental
parodies, like this cottage orne in Bedfordshire (4.7).
(Richard Muir)

5.1 Wiepking's contrasting of an 'undesigned cultural 153

landscape' (a) with 'designed German cultural
landscape' (b). (From Gert Groening 'The Feeling for
Landscape - a German Example', Landscape Research
17 (3) 1992, 108-15 at p. 111)
 List of Illustrations 1x

5.2 Built for the Duke of Marlborough following his 159

victory over the armies of Louis XIV in 1704,
Blenheim Palace is a spectacular expression of power
in the landscape. The original gardens and park were
formal, but the landscape was remodelled by Brown
after 1764. (Cambridge University collection)

5.3 Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, begun around 1640 159

and enlarged a century later when the property of the
Earl of Hardwick, the Lord Chancellor.
(Richard Muir)

5.4 The park surrounding Wimpole Hall was landscaped 160

by Lancelot Brown in the mid-eighteenth century and
remodelled by Humphry Repton in 1801. In the
foreground the ridge and furrow patterns from the
former villagers' fields are plainly visible.
(Richard Muir)

5.5 New Wimpole, the descendant of two villages 161

successively destroyed in the landscaping of Wimpole
park. (Richard Muir)

5.6 Much of the English countryside derives from the 162

exercise of might and influence. Amongst the most
influential re-makers of the countryside were members
of the Tudor landowning dysnasties, like the
Knightleys of Fawsley Northamptonshire, who
prospered by destroying villages and repopulating the
land with sheep. (Richard Muir)

5. 7 The disciplined geometry of Parliamentary Enclosure 173

field walls in Nidderdale. (Richard Muir)

6.1 In the eighteenth century the landscaping taste of the 185

educated classes was heavily influenced by the
paintings of Claude, Poussin and Rosa. Elements
from this painting, Coastal View of Delos and Aeneas,
by Claude, were echoed in many new landscape parks
of the time. (National Gallery, London)
x List of Illustrations

6.2 The orderly disposition of fields, hedgerows and 187

hedgerow trees displayed in this air photograph from
the Helperby locality of North Yorkshire would have
appealed to the tastes of eighteenth century country
landowners. (Cambridge University collection)

6.3 Wild and rugged countrysides, like this view of the 189
Cuillins on Skye, were unattractive and threatening to
the eighteenth-century mind. (Richard Muir)

6.4 From the time of Wordsworth and the Lake poets 191
onwards, picturesque scenes, like this much
photographed view of Ashness Bridge in Cumbria,
have been widely regarded as the epitome of landscape
beauty. (Richard Muir)

7.1 Landscapes contain symbols of many kinds; some can 216

be translated, but some of the symbolism, like that
associated with this Cumbrian stone circle, is
mysterious. (Richard Muir)

7.2 It has been suggested that megalithic tombs, like this 226
one at Poulnabrone in Co. Claire had strong symbolic
associations. To outsiders they symbolised the fact
that land had been held for generations by the
community whose ancestors were contained in the
tombs. They may also have symbolised the restoration
of energy and resources to the earth when a leader was
buried, perhaps compensating the land for the
goodness robbed by cultivators. (Richard Muir)

7.3 It is said that landscape is a way of seeing. The 232-3

& pictures of Ely cathedral (7.3) and the churchyard
7.4 (7.4) show how the way of seeing would be different
were our eyes to be made sensitive to the infra-red
radiation associated with living creatures and plants.
(Richard Muir)

7.5 The powerful symbolic associations of landscape are 234

often exploited in advertising and publicity. Here an
idyllic passage of ancient countryside is invoked to
 List of Illustrations xi

represent Britain on the cover of a booklet concerning

information technology and the British Library.
(Andrew Jones/British Library)

8.1 Landscapes such as the one depicted in this view of 251

Crummock Water in Cumbria seem to pose problems
for prospect-refuge theory. Though generally
regarded as highly attractive, this scene is virtually
devoid of trees or other cover and therefore has little
to offer by way of refuges. (Richard Muir)

8.2 This landscape in upper Nidderdale meets the 252

demands of prospect-refuge theory. It provides a
range of vantage points and also plenty of places
where one can see without being seen. It is not
parkland, but it has some distinct similarities.
(Richard Muir)

8.3 The parkland at Holkham, in Norfolk, landscaped by 258

'Capability' Brown in 1762. (Cambridge University
collection: British Crown Copyright © MOD,
reproduced with permission of the Controller of Her
Britannic Majesty's Stationery Office)

9.1- Completely different place associations are 286-7

9.4 encountered with these contrasting human settings:
the Northern industrial terrace (9.1); the picturesque
old Southern village (9.2); the rugged upland setting
(9.3); the flat, windswept Fenland countryside (9.4).
(Richard Muir)

P.l The replacement village at Milton Abbas, Dorset. 298

(Richard Muir)
Introduction

Interest in landscape has grown enormously in recent years. The

pattern of this growth has not been of an amalgamating nature, as in
a river system, but of a branching character, as in a tree. As different
approaches to the understanding of landscape have been developed
and refined the divisions between these different branches have
widened, so that today there will be few landscape historians indeed
who are conversant with the prevailing concepts of landscape
iconography, and perhaps fewer post-modernist students of land-
scape who could interpret a pattern of earthworks at a deserted
village site. As the study of landscape has grown, so its branches
have grown apart.
The growth in enthusiasm for landscape studies has been sus-
tained for more than two decades, but it is plain that, in the UK
particularly, two strong and largely separate strands of interest have
been involved. One is represented by a broadly-based upwelling of
interest in landscape history among scholars and amateur enthu-
siasts, and the disciplinary backgrounds of some of the figures
associated with the interpretation and popularisation of cultural
landscapes underlines the interdisciplinary nature of this field of
study: W. G. Hoskins (historian), Christopher Taylor (geographer-
turned-archaeologist), Oliver Rackham (botanist), Tom Williamson
(archaeologist), Trevor Rowley (geographer/historian), M. W. Be-
resford (historian), Brian Roberts (geographer), Jack Ravensdale
(historian), Mike Aston (geographer-turned-archaeologist) and Del-
la Hooke (geographer). The other strand arises from the develop-
ment of a new humanistic geography as a reaction to geography's
drift into spatial science. Subsequently, this strand has given rise to
interest in place, post-modernism, aesthetic approaches to landscape
and symbolism in landscapes. Diversity is sometimes a source of
strength in landscape studies, a protection against the tyranny of the
current fad or an imposed standardisation of thinking. In some
ways, however, it is a weakness:
Xlll
XIV Introduction

Despite the best efforts of the Landscape Research Group in the

UK and the journal Landscape in the USA, there is no formalised
discipline of landscape studies, with its own methodologies and
university departments. In the absence of any organisational or
disciplinary unity, landscape studies all too often consist of a great
variety of unrelated perspectives, tied only loosely to the environ-
ment and its representation. (Mills, 1997 p. 122)

This book is not an attempt to present a new theory of landscape,

and neither does it seek to advance one approach or interpretation
at the expense of others. Rather, it aims to identify, introduce and
explore the different approaches to landscape. As with the branches
on a tree, some of these approaches are close and share connections,
while others are further apart. The aesthetic approach and landscape
evaluation are linked by the fact that both concern human tastes in
landscape and they have part of their literatures in common. The
political realities of life ensure that the studies of power and of
symbolism in the landscape will frequently overlap, while the
psychological aspects of the human relationship to landscape
permeate most fields of enquiry. Within the broad area of landscape
study different workers pursue their own specialisms, the nature of
which will affect their interpretation of landscape in general and of
other specialisms in particular. (My own specialist background is in
the field of landscape history.)
The differences between some approaches are quite profound.
Landscape historians concerned to discover the evolution of coun-
trysides and towns have traditionally regarded landscape as being
like a palimpsest (a document on which the original writing has been
erased to make room for other writing but yet is still faintly visible).
However, Daniels and Cosgrove, writing from a post-modern
perspective, considered that: 'landscape seems less like a palimpset
whose "real" or "authentic" meanings can somehow be recovered
with the correct techniques, theories or ideologies, than a flickering
text displayed on the word-processor screen whose meaning can be
created, extended, altered, elaborated and finally obliterated by the
merest touch of a button' (1988 p. 8). Underlying this interpretation
is a fundamental division in the comprehension of landscape. On the
one hand there is the conventional practice of regarding landscape
as a material or tangible portion of a natural and cultural environ-
ment. On the other there is the treatment of landscape as 'a way of
seeing' which is associated with Daniels and Cosgrove and their
 Introduction xv

disciples, who interpret landscape as a painterly way of seeing the

world which creates a picturesque view (Duncan, 1995 p. 414).
There is also an implicit difference in outlook between those who
might claim to examine cultural landscapes in a scientifically
detached manner and those who rejoice in their own engagement
with the landscape. Rose explained that:

Such pleasure in and awe of landscape is often celebrated by

geographers, but with hesitation, even treated with suspicion.
Pleasure in the landscape was often seen as a threat to the
scientific gaze, and it was often argued that the geographer should
not allow himself to be seduced by what were described as 'the
sirens of terrae incognitae' (Wright, 1947, p. 1). (1992 p. 10)

Landscape has many facets and there are many ways in which it can
be represented:

Landscape may be represented by painting, drawing or engraving;

by photography, film and theatrical scenery; by writing, speech,
and presumably even music and other 'sound images'. Before all
these secondary representations, however, landscape is itself a
physical and multisensory medium (earth, stone, vegetation,
water, sky, sound and silence, light and darkness, etc.) in which
cultural meanings and values are encoded, whether they are put
there by the physical transformation of place in landscape garden-
ing and architecture, or found in a place formed, as we say, 'by
nature' ... Landscape is a medium in the fullest sense of the word.
It is a material 'means' (to borrow Aristotle's terminology) like
language or paint, embedded in a tradition of cultural significa-
tion and communication, a body of symbolic forms capable of
being invoked and reshaped to express meaning and values.
(Mitchell, 1994 p. 14)

The different interpretations applied to 'landscape' have been

explored by Barrell, who considers that the term arose as a painter's
word:

it was introduced from the Dutch in the sixteenth century to

describe a pictorial representation of countryside, either as the
subject itself of a picture, or as the by-work in a portrait, the
background of scenery behind the main subject. Later the word
xvi Introduction

came to include within its meaning both this sense, of countryside

represented in a picture, and another, more loose, of a piece of
countryside considered as a visual phenomenon. (1972 p. 1)

He added that:

Both these senses of the word 'landscape' had this in common,

that they referred to a tract of land, or its representation in
painting, which lay in prospect - that is to say, which could be
seen all at one glance, from a fixed point of view; and in this
respect both senses referred to particular locations.

Later, in the mid-eighteenth century, however, a more general

meaning became associated with the word so that one could speak
of 'the landscape' of a place, and this sense goes beyond the spatial
confinement which the sense of a landscape as a prospect had
imposed, and landscape acquired a meaning similar to 'terrain'.
Perhaps the most lucid explanation of the ambiguities surround-
ing the multiple layers of meaning associated with landscape was
provided by Cosgrove (1984). He wrote of the active engagement of
the human subject with the material object and the suggestion that
'area' and 'region' might be regarded as the equivalents of 'land-
scape': 'In other words landscape denotes the external world
mediated through subjective human experience in a way that neither
region nor area immediately suggest. Landscape is not merely the
world we see, it is a construction, a composition of that world.
Landscape is a way of seeing the world' (p. 13). The alternative
identification of landscape as a passage of scenery which is seen
rather than perceived was described by Bryan (1958 p. 1): 'Land-
scape, the dictionary tells us, is a portion of land or territory which
the eye can comprehend at a single view including all the objects it
contains.'
The location of landscape study in relation to other academic
disciplines has changed with the passing years. Before the Second
World War, the study of landscape was widely regarded as being at
the very core of geography, and even in 1958, P. W. Bryan, the
President of the Geographical Association, felt able to claim that:

the essential core of geography is the relationship between human

activity and the physical setting or stage upon which human
activity takes place ... this relationship itself is expressed in the
 Introduction xvii

landscape which results from the changes and adaptations of the

physical background made by man in his efforts to satisfy his
needs ... with the study and interpretation of this changed
landscape as its central feature geography has a distinctiveness
of outlook as a whole which marks if off from other subjects.
(1958 p. 1)

In the 1950s and 1960s, however, landscape fell from favour in

geography. In his The Nature of Geography of 1939, Richard
Hartshorne, geography's leading guru, had rejected landscape as
the central organising concept of geography and argued that the
concept of landscape adopted in American cultural geography
derived from the German Landschaft which had two meanings,
one being 'a restricted piece of land' while:

It was, however, also used, as in English, to refer to the 'appear-

ance of a land as we perceive it', e.g. 'the section of the earth
surface and sky that lies in our field of vision as seen in
perspective from a particular point'. This 'aesthetic' usage of the
term enabled users to shift 'from the landscape as sensation to the
objects that produce that sensation'. (Olwig, 1996 p. 630)

This, according to Hartshorne, caused confusion, with the same

word being used in two different ways: 'Hartshorne's solution to the
problem of landscape was essentially to abandon it in favour of
geography as a science of region and space' (Olwig, 1996).
The subjective qualities which made landscape unacceptable to
geographers in an era of spatial science and quantification would
later commend it to geographers who were disorientated and
disillusioned by the excesses and failures of the positivist movement.
In 1985 Cosgrove wrote that:

Recently, and primarily in North America, geographers have

sought to reformulate landscape as a concept whose subjective
and artistic resonances are to be actively embraced. They allow
for the incorporation of individual, imaginative and creative
human experience into studies of the geographical environment,
aspects which geographical science is claimed to have devalued at
best and at worst ignored. (p. 45)

He continued: 'American humanist geographers have adopted

landscape for the very reasons that their predecessors rejected it.
xviii Introduction

It appears to point towards the experiential, creative and human

aspects of our environmental relations, rather than to the objecti-
fied, manipulated and mechanical aspects of those relations'. Land-
scape, though, did not provide a banner under which all factions
could unite, and in 1994 Duncan commented: 'There is little ques-
tion that the new cultural geography is itself fragmenting. For
example on the one hand there is a group of scholars who primarily
analyse landscapes and, on the other, there are those who concen-
trate on space and place' (p. 362).
Cosgrove noted that: 'The frequent association in geographical
writing of landscape with studies of the impact of human agency in
altering the physical environment serves to remind us that landscape
is a social product' (1984 p. 14). Several writers commented on the
importance of landscape in studies of the relationship between
humans and their setting, but there was lively discussion concerning
the direction which such studies should follow:

The study of landscape provides for geographers a means of

analysing and organizing the surrounding material environment,
confirming the major tenet that we look to that material environ-
ment for concrete expression of the facts of human experience.
Yet despite the well-established position of landscape study within
the discipline there remain questions concerning how landscape is
defined, and even greater questions concerning the relationship
between landscapes and human beings. (Kobayashi, 1989 p. 165)

Kobayashi also writes: 'Geographical definitions of landscape

abound, of course, but they are seldom critical, and an attempt to
follow through upon upon the logic of these many definitions leads
to many loose ends and contradictions.'
Here, I focus on the different approaches to landscape study. A
certain amount of subjective judgement has been involved in the
identification of these approaches. Were the task to be attempted by
a selection of landscape enthusiasts then some approaches would
have been recognised by all, while in other respects the choices might
be different. Landscape history, landscape evaluation, the percep-
tion of landscape, an aesthetic approach, one concerning symbolism
or iconography and one concerning the relationship of structure and
scenery would probably feature on virtually every list. There is no
sign of any halt to the growth in interest in landscape, but whether in
years to come there will be a progress to a more coherent discipline
 Introduction xix

of landscape studies or whether, instead, the divisions between the

objective and subjective appreciations of landscape will deepen
remains to be seen.

Note

I am grateful to my colleague, Dr Heather Norris Nicholson, for her

comments on a part of the draft.

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