In the 250th year since Jane Austen’s birth, please help us celebrate at our fabulous CHRISTMAS LECTURE AND LUNCH

Wednesday 10 December at Cerne Abbas Village Hall

'A prettyish kind of a little wilderness’ – Landscapes and gardens in the novels of Jane Austen.

By Professor Timothy Mowl

Timothy Mowl FSA is an architectural and landscape historian. He is Emeritus Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes at the University of Bristol, and a well known expert on the history of gardens, having published 14 books on the subject

Timothy Mowl’s lavishly illustrated talk will consider designed landscapes and gardens in Jane Austen’s novels, not only as representative of current horticultural fads, but as important elements in the plots, providing the background to moments of high emotional drama. Her life spans the demise of Capability Brown’s minimalist landscaping (died 1783), the growth of Picturesque theory in the late 1780s and 1790s, which she satirises in Northanger Abbey, and the coming of Humphry Repton, who appears in Mansfield Park, with his promotion of Ornamental Gardening. At the heart of the novels and of this talk are the shrubberies, sweet-scented, shadowy places for exercise, contemplation and romantic assignations..