Roger White: Georgian Arcadia: Architecture for the Park and Garden

Date: Tuesday 25th April 2023 at 2.30pm

Location:  Leigh Village Hall, Chetnole Road, Leigh, Sherborne DT9 6HL

Cost: £16 (plus booking fee) on line to include tea. (Payment at door possible)

About: The invention and evolution of the Georgian landscape garden liberated garden buildings from the corset of formality, allowing them to structure much more extensive areas of garden and park. One of the leading authorities on Georgian landscape architecture, Roger White explores a genre in which some of the era’s greatest architects experimented with different forms, styles and new technology, in the process producing some of their most interesting and original ideas. Covering not just the obvious adornments of parks and gardens such as temples, summerhouses, grottoes, towers and ‘follies’, he also describes structures with predominantly practical functions including lodges, mausolea, boathouses, dovecotes, stables, kennels, deer pens, barns, and cowsheds, all of which could be dressed up to make an architectural impact in the designed landscape.

Roger White is an architectural historian and former Secretary of the Georgian Group and Garden History Society. Roger has written extensively on 17th and 18th century topics for a variety of journals and magazines and is perhaps the country's leading authority on Georgian landscape architecture. His lecture is about follies, based on his fascinating and beautifully illustrated new book published this year Georgian Arcadia: Architecture for the Park and Garden, described by Country Life as “a synthesis of this most alluring topic. The result is a beautifully illustrated volume, one that merits our attention” and by the Telegraph as “this magnificent book celebrates the bonkers and beautiful in British garden architecture.

It follows his beautiful book: Cottage Ornés The Charms of the Simple Life, published 2021 which was the subject of his previous really excellent lecture for the DGT Members in October 2021.

There will be a Dorset Gardens Trust visit to a wonderful example of a garden folly on Tuesday 23 May , tickets available from 10 April through the DGT website

Later in the year we will be visiting a garden to illustrate Georgian Arcadia, indeed the garden and folly are mentioned in the book.

Roger White is an architectural and garden historian, formerly Secretary of the Georgian Group and Garden History Society and has written extensively on 17th and 18th century topics. His ‘definitive’ book on Georgian landscape architecture, which has been many years in the making, is published by Yale University Press.