Castles for Cows & Palaces for Poultry
David Marsh
- Region:
- Anywhere
- Notice Period:
- Emergency (maybe less than one week's notice)
- Type:
- Professional/academic/Hobby/Rotary/sometimes charity
- Fee:
- Paid: 100 online, but more if travelling
- Category:
- History
- Updated:
- 30th January 2023
- Tagged:
- Gardens | Horticulture | - History | Great British Eccentrics
This lecture started out as a bit of a joke. I write a weekly blog for the Gardens Trust and its usually relatively easy to think of something informative or at least mildly amusing to write each Saturday morning. The only difficult times are when its a big event – such as Christmas or Easter. Everything obvious has already been done and I hate the thought of being forced into writing something too twee…. but luckily as one Easter deadline loomed I looked out of the window and saw our chickens…
I could have chickened out but I eggspect you’ll have guessed by now what I decided to dooodle do. It’s difficult to be original hens these fowl jokes and this poultry piece inspired by the feathered ladies who lived in my garden last summer. I decided to research where they might have laid their eggs had they lived in the gardens or grounds of one of our great stately homes in the 18th or 19thc.
And from hens it wasn’t much of a leap to think about cows and their historic homes… and one day I’ll get round to looking at mansions for monkeys, dwellings for ducks, and tenements for turtles…
Views: 443 | Enquiries: 0About David Marsh
I've been lecturing "live" and on-line about every aspect of the history of gardens, landscapes, as well as plant hunting /plants/botany for more than 25 years to gardens clubs, U3A groups, and to museums like the V&A & across higher education. I discovered the subject because after a career as a head teacher I took very early retirement and went back into education full time on my own account. I did a four year diploma course in Garden History which led on to an MA in Historical Research and then a PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London on The Gardens and Gardeners of Later Stuart London.
I was a trustee of The Gardens Trust, the national campaigning body for the protection and support of our historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes and chaired their education committee from 2016 until 2023. I also write a weekly blog for them which you can find at thegardenstrust.blog
I've run courses on the history of gardens [and many other things] at Birkbeck and City Lit. I'm currently an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham and run a Masters Course in Garden History as well as offering supervision to PhD students.
If all that sounds posh - rest assured I'm not!
Other Talks on SpeakerNet by David Marsh
- The Little Men in Red Hats
- What Made Your Garden Grow?
- The Joys [and Problems!] of Making a Garden in France
- The History of the London Square
- Plants on Paper: A Potted History of Botanical Art
- The Opposite of Chelsea: The Garden Festival at Chaumont-sur-Loire
- The National Botanic Gardens of Burma
- Humphry Repton: Britain’s First Landscape Gardener
- Tools of the Trade
- Puzzle Pictures
- The Elephant in the Garden
- The History of the Cottage Garden
- The Tradescants
- The palaces of Tudor London and their gardens...and their beasts!
- The Great Geranium Robbery
- An Introduction to Tudor and Stuart Gardens
- The Loudons
- The Picturesque
- Moorfields: The Story of London's First Public Park
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