Principal Investigator – Professor Timothy Mowl
Tim Mowl's career has included work as a freelance architectural historian, an Inspector of Historic Buildings for English Heritage, an architectural consultant and journalist in Bath, and independent lecturer and writer on architecture and planning. He joined the University of Bristol after delivering the Perry Art Lectures in 1992. He is Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes and Director of the MA in Garden History. From 1992 he taught in the Department of History of Art, but in August 2005 he moved across to the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology. In 2006 he was appointed Director of the Institute for Garden and Landscape History, which is based in the University's Clifton Hill House.

In preparation for his MA Garden History course, Tim published Gentlemen and Players: Gardeners of the English Landscape (Sutton, 2000), which charts the influence of aristocrats and professionals on the creation of landscape parks and gardens. In addition to the Historic Gardens & Landscapes of England project he recently completed a major biography of the eighteenth-century artist, architect, furniture and landscape designer, William Kent.

Photo of Tim at Iford Manor by Jason Ingram

Research Fellow – Dr Clare Hickman

Since returning to academia in 2002, Clare has been awarded her doctorate from by the University of Bristol for her thesis entitled: ‘Vis Medicatrix Naturae: The Design and Use of Landscapes in England for Therapeutic Purposes Since 1800’. In May 2005 she won the inaugural Garden History Society Essay Prize for her article: The ‘Picturesque’ at Brislington House: The Role of Landscape in Relation to the Treatment of Mental Illness in the Early Nineteenth-Century Asylum. This was published in the Society’s journal - Garden History - later that year. Another article was published in the journal, History of Psychiatry in December 2009 on

'Cheerful prospects and tranquil restoration: the visual experience of landscape as part of the therapeutic regime of the British asylum, 1800-60'.

Clare is currently managing the Historic Gardens project. In this capacity she co-authored the Historic Gardens of England: Northamptonshire and is now researching Berkshire for the series. She also teaches an optional unit for the MA Garden History course at Bristol, which explores the social history of public open spaces in England from 1800. She was involved in Garden/City/Wild, a cross-Faculty project of site visits and workshops in 2008/09.  

There is a succession of historic gardens and landscape consultants working on the counties to be visited and researched in the next phase of the project. The first to be appointed was Marion Mako, who has worked on Cheshire and Somerset. Dr Dianne Barre researched Staffordshire, Diane James is working as the consultant for Warwickshire and Dr Jane Bradney is currently investigating Herefordshire.

Find out more about the consultants here.