Willmott/Dissolution of the Monasteries, 7. New Landscapes of Leisure

To date, developments within the wider monastic precinct have received comparatively little consideration academically. Nonetheless, it is clear that new secular owners often expended as much energy developing new landscaped gardens as they did creating houses. This chapter provides a review of this process, emphasising its continuous and ever evolving nature. It concludes by offering a caution against the simplistic reconstruction of static ‘monastic’ and ‘post-Dissolution’ phase landscapes.