Denman, Derek and Winchester, Angus and Winstanley, Michael (2011) Materialising cultural value in the English lakes, 1735-1845 : a study of the responses of new landowners to representations of place and people. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
Abstract
This thesis explores responses to the cultural construction in the developing identity of the English Lakes from 1735 to 1845, through studies of three landowners. The principal focus is Derwentwater. The Greenwich Hospital held estates from 1735 to 1832, Lord William Gordon from 1781 to 1823, and John Marshall of Leeds, the flax spinner, from 1810 and 1845. The study classifies the identity of the English Lakes and its inhabitants with Regions of Romance, as a territory increasingly occupied by the romantic antithesis of the dominant thesis within the modern age. The cultural identity of the English Lakes is considered as a construction of Throsby’s cultural values, established through discourse and overlaid upon economic values. This anthropological approach to culture recognises both aesthetic and social cultural assets. The acquisition, management and disposal of landowners estates are examined to evidence the materialisation of cultural values, whether through the agency of discourse, the influence of others, or personal experience. During the eighteenth century the Hospital responded to criticism minimally, by planting the Derwentwater shore. Lord William Gordon responded strongly to discourse by creating a picturesque park which demonstrated his taste and values, and by completing the picturesque occupation of Derwentwater by 1787. Wordsworth influenced the choice and management of John Marshall’s extensive estates from 1811, providing an early materialisation of the principles in Wordsworth’s Guide. In the early nineteenth century the Hospital protected their Keswick woods, before selling the estate in 1832 at auction to John Marshall at a low price. The study demonstrates a significant and growing intervention by these landowners to materialise aesthetic cultural value, but with little response to social cultural values, though cultural landscape was preserved. An early private path of intervention in the English Lakes is demonstrated, which feeds into the later and better known public path.