Historic Parks and Gardens in the Nidderdale AONB Study Group

The HPG group was established in March 2006 with the help of a small grant from the AONB Enhancement Scheme.

The initial task was to research and document evidence of parks and gardens within the AONB boundaries and to record this as an electronically accessible database.

Subsequently a two year grant from the Lottery Heritage Initiative was secured with the brief  enlarged to discover and include other designed landscapes within the area of the Nidderdale AONB.

The conclusion of the initial research identified over 250 sites. These range from the designed landscapes surrounding country houses to domestic orchards. Even where the gardens themselves have mostly disappeared, traces of the original layout or a single isolated feature can still be found and used to tell the story of how the Nidderdale landscape has evolved over time.

After the conclusion of the original project the group continued on a self funding basis to concentrate on detailed investigations of individual sites and to publish a website of the findings.

The group has now formally disbanded and the website, while no longer being maintained, will remain for some time as a record of our research.