Early Tudor Gardens and Their Design: What Did They Look Like, and Why?
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Authors
Hopkins, Rachel
Issue Date
2023
Type
Dissertation
Language
Keywords
Castle Studies , Documentary Archaeology , Landscape Archaeology , Medieval Archaeology
Alternative Title
Abstract
This study explores the role of privacy in early Tudor castle garden design. I aim to identify which aspects of the garden may relate to privacy, and to determine how elites connected their private spaces inside the castle with their gardens. Literature on medieval privacy has almost exclusively focused on interior spaces, so this study offers a new avenue of research by focusing on exterior spaces. I address the questions of how size and location affect the privacy of castle gardens, as well as asking what the relationship was between interior and exterior private spaces. I employed an integrated study of documentary and landscape archaeology to answer these questions. This qualitative study used primary written sources, archaeological field survey, previous archaeological excavation data, and phenomenology to identify how privacy was created and experienced by the elite residents at three different Tudor era castles: Sudeley Castle, Wressle Castle, and Framlingham Castle. The findings illustrate how important agency was to the creation of privacy, as individuals used their space in particular, personal ways. Each individual owner placed emphasis on different aspects of the garden to create their private space, including location, access, and visibility. The common thread among the gardens in this study is the enclosure of the sites, as almost all were surrounded by a hedge or wall. The one garden that was not enclosed, the Queen’s Garden at Sudeley Castle, was likely used for a different purpose than the others. This study’s results indicate that the ability to adapt garden design to individual privacy requirements was crucial to the early Tudor elites. This dissertation offers an insight into the purpose of privy gardens at castles and the importance of privacy in everyday life in the early Tudor period. Future research should include the addition of royal castles, as the king may have had different privacy needs than members of his court, as well as a geographical comparison�"comparing both proximity to the Scottish border and proximity to London.
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License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States