Sustainable Arcadias: Reinterpreting Estate Landscapes through Environmental Sustainability and Public Good

The English country house is an undeniable cultural powerhouse and one of the nation’s most iconic landmarks. However, it is merely one component of the wider historic estate complex which includes designed parkland surrounded by tenanted and home farms. Yet its twentieth-century preservation was largely driven by a cultural appeal which prioritised the house and collections, thus disentangling the house from its estate landscapes in heritage contexts. This partition has been further reinforced by the authorised heritage discourse and a focus on high art and elite culture which has led to academic and popular meanings of these sites as stagnant emblems of conservative nostalgia.
Contemporary crises including climate change, biodiversity loss, and a rising mental health deficit are key issues both globally and in the United Kingdom, for which land use is essential to addressing. This research provides a systematic study on how landed estates are reconceptualising their landscapes to address these issues. Through qualitative data from stakeholders at key sites across England, this research examines the transition from traditional forms of estate parkland and farmland management towards environmentally-sustainable systems of landscape maintenance, regenerative farming, habitat creation, and rewilding. Furthermore, it analyses how these estate landscapes are being promoted as inclusive and accessible spaces for mentally and physically restorative leisure in tourism contexts.
By shifting the perspective away from the twentieth-century heritage paradigm that centred on the house and its collections, this research reconnects the country house to its historically inextricable estate landscapes. In doing so, it sheds light on how this ‘landscape turn’ to address critical environmental and social issues problematises entrenched heritage valuations which have defined the country house since it entered the nation’s heritage fabric in the twentieth century and revitalises the role of the holistic landed estate in contemporary England.