This is one of a series designed for local historians and all lovers of Britain's heritage, the main aim of which is to enable readers to look at the landscape and to read its features with understanding. This book demonstrates the significance of parks and gardens as part of the landscape. The authors pay as much attention to parks and gardens associated with local manor houses or created by local landowners and obscure local designers as to the famous names. The book shows how designed landscapes were used, and demonstrates the social, political and economic factors which formed them. It also shows how their development affected the wider landscape - field layout or settlement pattern.