The paper presents the cultural landscape surrounding Roztěž near Kutná Hora. The existence of a designed landscape linked to the person of Franz Anton von Sporck was presumed in the area between the ...chateau of Roztěž and chapel of St. John Baptist on the Vysoká hill built in 1695–1697. Compared to other landscape designs of Sporck this project is almost unknown, but the name of the landlord offers a clue. This is the reason why this area was selected for testing the Methodology for Identification of Designed Landscapes created at the Department of Landscape Planning of FH MENDELU in 2012. The assessment confirmed the basic compositional relation (Roztěž chateau – chapel of St. John Baptist) and detected conditions of larger spatial relations linked to the chateau. The special part of surveys and analyses used GIS tools that allow for testing the visual links between individual features of the composition and spaces, and to formulate a hypothesis about the actual form of the composition in the landscape. The core of the composition was the chateau of Roztěž, but it was not limited only to the link with the chapel but included the surrounding settlements as well (Malešov, Nová Lhota), and also the extensive pheasantry.
The decline of the 'military paradigm' in European castle studies is encouraging a host of new approaches that are emphasising the place of private fortification within the medieval landscape and the ...agency of lordship in its transformation. Yet research is dominated by regionally and nationally based approaches and wider perspectives are lacking. Scholarship that seeks to escape the constraints of national agendas and traditions is urgently needed. This paper establishes some starting points for the study of castles within their contemporary medieval landscapes on a pan-European basis, and addresses critically the notion that these settings embodied a common aristocratic 'world view'. It is argued that future research should engage with the different political frameworks and structures of lordship through which the impact of authority on the landscape was manifested, as well as identifying areas of common experience. A number of emerging themes for future work are identified, including: the visual relationships between lordship sites and settings intended for leisure, pleasure and sensory impact; the imagery of élite landscapes in medieval romance literature; the contexts of castles within seascapes; the status of aristocratic landscapes as contested spaces; and the ecological signatures and impacts of castles.
Poltimore House, near Exeter, Devon, was the seat of the Bampfylde family from the mid-sixteenth century until the 1920s. The AHRC-funded knowledge transfer project 'Community and Landscape: ...Transforming Access to the Heritage of the Poltimore Estate' researched the changing relationship between house and setting through a public heritage initiative that promoted the co-creation of knowledge with local groups. Research techniques included analysis of maps, estate records and pictorial sources; geophysical and earthwork survey; test-pitting; and fieldwalking. The designed landscape around the house went through a series of previously unknown iterations as the park was enlarged and gardens re-designed, while accompanying changes saw roads diverted and farms and estate buildings variously moved, re-built and abandoned. Visual experiences of the house and its surroundings were manipulated in complex ways as different elements of the estate landscape were exhibited to certain audiences but secluded from others at different points in time. The case study demonstrates how the design of a post-medieval estate landscape could be moulded by the 'personality' of a local dynasty and mediated by local circumstances. It also shows how integrated archaeological and historical analysis of polite landscapes can reveal antecedent activity and illuminate layers of re-use to these settings.
When after 1968, millions of Chinese citizens were driven into the countryside in order to participate in agriculture as part of the Cultural Revolution, Dazhai was the model of what the countryside ...should be, not just socially, but also physically. In 1964 it came to prominence for its spirit of self-reliance, hard struggle and collectivism, and in this Dazhai came to embody the battle against nature and the hegemony of mankind. It was therefore not the natural features that were valued in the landscape, but the evidence of human endeavour. On heavily eroded mountainsides, terraces-an age-old way of cultivation-were re-invented and were re-presented as features of the modern age and evidence of the communist revolution. Similarly Dazhai village was promoted as a model of communal living.
Oblique aerial photograph taken by Leo Swan of a designed landscape feature in Kilnabinnia townland, Co Offaly, viewed from the NE - in the foreground of this photograph.
Oblique aerial photograph taken by Leo Swan of a designed landscape feature in Kilnabinnia townland, Co Offaly, viewed from the NE - in the foreground of this photograph.
Oblique aerial photograph taken by Leo Swan of a designed landscape feature in Kilnabinnia townland, Co Offaly, viewed from the E - in the upper left of this photograph.
Oblique aerial photograph taken by Leo Swan of a designed landscape feature in Kilnabinnia townland, Co Offaly, viewed from the E - in the upper left of this photograph.
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