Press Release
Hestercombe Gardens, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset, TA2 8LG 01823 413923 www.hestercombe.com
Launch of Centre for Garden and Landscape Studies at Hestercombe
Study day - 'Healthy Minds: Therapy, Well Being and Wisdom in the Garden'
at Hestercombe Gardens, Taunton, Somerset, Saturday 15th November.
The new Centre for Garden and Landscape Studies based at Hestercombe in
Somerset, will be launched with this provoking study day. The Centre will offer
interdisciplinary studies covering all aspects of gardens and landscapes.
The study day will be a forum for a variety of discussions, presentations and
exchanges about “health in and out of the garden”. A starting point will be
provided by a recently discovered recipe book written in the 1720s by Margaret
Bampfylde, mother of Coplestone Warre Bampfylde, designer of the eighteenth
century Landscape Garden at Hestercombe. This is a book not only of culinary
recipes but also antidotes for a wide range of ailments suffered by the inhabitants of
Hestercombe at the time (ingredients include all manner of herbs and plants together
with snails, earthworms, boiled swallows and calves lungs!) The book gives an
interesting insight into 18th century life and attitudes to well-being. The event will
take its cue from the recipe book and explore larger areas around it. A newly
published transcript of the recipe book together with an extensive glossary and
introductory essay will be launched at the study day.
Amongst the inspiring line up of speakers, are Dr Clare Hickman, Medical History &
Humanities postdoctoral Fellow at Kings College London, and Sally Osborn,
Roehampton University, who will cast light on therapeutic aspects but also more
generally on the interrelation between gardens and the medical world,
interconnections between gardeners, cooks, and doctors, the philosophical
dimension and the part that the healthy garden might play in the environmental
agenda
Arranged on the theme of therapy and wisdom, we are delighted that the study day
has been selected to be included in the national ‘Being Human Festival’ organised
by London University’s School of Advanced Study, in partnership with the Arts &
Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Academy.
The event is also partnered with Paris Sorbonne University, which will be hosting a
« Being Georgian Today » study day on November 22nd and with The Maison
Française d’Oxford as an extension of the « Oxford Garden and Landscape Studies
Seminar » series
Registration will be available from mid-September at www.hestercombe.com.
The cost for the day including a two course lunch, tea, coffee and free entry to
Hestercombe’s famous gardens will be £48.00/head and £24.00 for students.
For further information please contact: 01823 413923,
stephanieholley@hestercombegardens.com or rebecca@powproductions.tv
Images of Margaret Bampfylde and her historic recipe and remedy book available on request.