Sutton Park is one of the largest urban parks in Europe. It was always set apart as ‘special’ and remains so, as a large and well-used public park. Its creation as a deer park in the twelfth century preserved the past and created the present. Detailed study of extensive earthworks, combined with excavation, documentary research, palaeo-environmental evidence and the results of LiDAR survey, shows how the landscape was shaped and managed by people living in and around it, travelling through it, or hunting in it, and demonstrates how its present vegetation patterns result from past uses. In addition to the boundary, subdivisions and fishponds of the medieval deer park, its archaeological features include prehistoric burnt mounds and a Roman road, and prominent remains of later uses including woodland management, water-powered industries, military training, sport and recreation. In addition, this book discusses management of the park to protect its landscape for the future, and an appendix highlights particular features to visit.

Originally published in 1982, and based on extensive research in estates’ archives, this book outlines the changing fate of the 500 largest estates in England over the centuries. It examines estates in their heyday and looks at their changing role as they declined in the twentieth century, showing how some estates have survived and describing the differing uses to which country houses have been put.