Winter Lecture 2023
The Restoration of Marble Hill House
Our Winter Lecture 2023 will be given by Emily Parker, a longstanding member of English Heritage's Gardens and Landscape Team.
Emily will be talking about the recent restoration of the gardens and landscape at Marble Hill House, Twickenham.
Emily specializes in garden history and designed landscape conservation. She has researched and written interpretation content for many English Heritage sites including Eltham Palace, Belsay Hall, Marble Hill and Mount Grace Priory. She also produces Conservation Management Plans for the gardens in the care of English Heritage.
Marble Hill was built as a retreat by the courtier Henrietta Howard (1689-1767), later Countess of Suffolk. This elegant Thames-side villa became the centre for her intellectual and cultural circle as well as a family home. The design of the landscape was first being discussed in 1724 with input from two of the leading proponents of garden design at the time, Alexander Pope and Charles Bridgeman. A surviving proposal plan by Pope and a survey of the garden from about 1749 – alongside meticulous historical research – have allowed the true significance of this landscape to be understood for the first time. In 2022, English Heritage completed a project (with funding from the National Lottery Community Fund) to reunite the house and garden as the rural retreat Howard once enjoyed, including the restoration and recreation of the rare early 18th century villa landscape.
Emily's talk will focus on this new research, piecing together the story of the garden’s development during Howard’s ownership and how this was used to inform the restoration of the historic landscape.
The lecture will be held on Thursday, 9 November, 2023 at 18.30 at The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 5DR
Booking is via Eventbrite
Please note the Winter Lecture is OPEN TO ALL