To mark 50 years of UNESCO World Heritage, The Gardens Trust are offering a 7 week series to celebrate some of the UK’s World Heritage landscapes. Week 6 Studley Royal Park.

Venue: Online talk via Zoom
Time: 10-11.30am (recorded session available for 1 week will be sent shortly afterwards)
Cost: Individiual sessions cost £5. Or you can purchase a ticket for the entire course of 7 sessions at £28.
Booking: Eventbrite book all seven sessions here or book Talk 6 Studley Royal Park here.

Studley Royal Park, including the ruins of Fountains Abbey, became one of the first places in the UK to be named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. It owes its originality and striking beauty to the fact that a humanised landscape was created around the largest medieval ruins in the United Kingdom. The use of these features, combined with the planning of the water garden itself, is a true masterpiece of human creative genius. The water garden is one of the few great 18th-century gardens to have survived well in its original form.

The ruins of Fountains Abbey, the Jacobean Fountains Hall and Burges’s miniature neo-Gothic masterpiece St Mary’s Church unite with the water gardens and deer park to form one harmonious whole. Together, they illustrate the power of medieval monasticism and the taste and wealth of the European upper classes in the 18th century.

Mark Newman MA MCIfA FSA has been the National Trust’s Archaeologist since 1988. A graduate of Birmingham University, he provides archaeological advice and support to around 75 NT properties in Yorkshire and the North-East. He is author of Wonder of the North (NT/Boydell, 2015), a definitive history of the estate (and is working on a new edition).

Sarah France has been World Heritage Coordinator at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal since 2010. Before that Sarah spent almost 20 years working in planning and heritage for National Parks across the UK. Her current role is to coordinate delivery of the World Heritage Management Plan and deliver conservation projects. Recently she worked with Nidderdale AONB and other partners to develop the Skell Valley Project and the successful bid to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a £1.4m grant.