Improving landscape or recreating the picturesque? . Three historic rural landscapes in the English Midlands

Maintaining and restoring historic landscapes requires attention to native vegetation, cultural artefacts, historic buildings, hedges, stone walls and riparian woodland. One United Kingdom National Lottery scheme, which was launched in 1994, funds preservation of ‘heritage landscapes’. This paper examines the Lottery’s contribution to landscape restoration and rural development. It considers different scales at which restoration is occurring, focusing on three examples. The Leasowes estate is a small yet important example of a landscape garden in the eighteenth-century ‘picturesque’ taste. Croome Park, a National Trust property, boasts 270 hectares of parkland and a neo-Palladian mansion. The 105 sq km of the Malvern Hills is a human-created landscape traceable to prehistory, with landscape features dependent on longstanding grazing practices now threatened by changing farm economics. The article highlights different management approaches as it debates issues affecting landscape restoration and heritage management. Resolving tensions between official policy and cultural values within the community offer directions for further research.