Entangled Landscapes and the ‘Dead Silence’? Humphry Repton, Jane Austen and the Upchers of Sheringham Park, Norfolk

Abstract

This paper explores two related aspects of designed landscapes in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries that are often neglected -first, how they might derive importance from their place within intersecting (auto)biographies of both designers and patrons at the micro level, and secondly, at the macro level, how they embody contemporary social and political concerns at a national and international level, including crucially, how they engage with global nature of contemporary economic and political networks. By exploring Humphry Repton's commission at Sheringham Park on the coast of north-east Norfolk, this paper will consider the importance of his relationship with it owners, Abbot Upcher and his wife Charlotte, to the design process and how the relationship drew upon shared social and political views which extended across to events on the

Revealing Repton: bringing landscape to life at Sheringham Park

“…This was both synchronic, in focusing on a particular period and place around 1812, and diachronic, charting some of the longer term developments on site before, after and beyond Repton's design. Geographically, the project situated the local circumstances of Sheringham within a wider world; regional, national and international (see Daniels, 1993Daniels, , 1999Daniels & Veale, 2012;Finch, 2013). This was part of Repton's vision, and indeed the scope of the landscape arts around 1812, as a way of comprehending the world, exploring the long ago and far away, the overseas, and imperial interests of a nation at war, and its archaeological and geological ancestry.…”

“…Sheringham was not designed as a purely personal landscape; visitors were also allowed into the grounds, away from the house, to enjoy the main view from the Temple, of the house and park in its wider coastal and country setting. And this relatively small park, for a local squire, not a multi-propertied, aristocrat, was designed to open up, and "borrow" beyond its property boundaries, to emphasise the owner's social responsibilities to a wider world, including a regard for farming and the decent treatment of estate workers and the wider village poor (Finch, 2013;Daniels, 1999). So, while the rationale for this community consciousness in 1812, which Repton articulated in his designs, had a strong element of social management in a time of war and social anxiety, it also anticipated much later movements for public-spirited access to landscape, including the founding of National Trust.…”