Over at Lakeside Arts, the current exhibition ‘Country Lives’ explores the use and depiction of the English countryside over the last 200 years. We went down to check it out…
In 1800, a petition was sent from the villagers of Edwinstowe to the 3rd Duke of Portland requesting permission to gather woodland bracken that they could burn for heating. Their fall into poverty had left them no alternative but to go cap in hand to the Lord of the manor. Fast forward to 1957, the doors of neighbouring country pile, Thoresby Hall opened for coach tours attracting hundreds of thousands of people.
Two country estates, two different centuries, and the relationships and activities on country land vastly differ.
This modest but packed exhibition, curated by Dr Sarah Holland (Department of History), was compiled from Nottingham University archives. It assembles perspectives on how people shape, and have been shaped by, the countryside in-and-around Nottinghamshire and beyond. It includes beautifully illustrated books, documents, photos and more, organised across themes depicting our country lives - a rural idyll, the changing landscape and farm life.
Material from both the 19th and 20th centuries show both continuity and change, with the exhibition illustrating our changing relationship with the countryside - sometimes slow and painful, sometimes quick and dramatic.
For example, painters and engravers of Nottingham’s 19th century landscape chose the Meadows area, ‘The south prospect of Nottingham with the castle’, as the vantage point from which to portray the old medieval city and Castle – distant and separate. But would such separation between town and country have really been so stark when markets linking the two were so plentiful and the city’s population relatively static?
Behind these changes was a culture of curiosity during the 1700s, driving experimentation that resulted in farming, industry, and medicine innovations
By the middle 1800s however, the rapid growth of Nottingham’s industry and population resulted in an overcrowded and disease-ridden city. This contrasts with the Edwinstowe petitioners who experienced slower change over decades, with creeping enclosure bringing new forms of estate management and disrupting old customary rights for the countryside and forest communities.
Behind these changes was a culture of curiosity during the 1700s, driving experimentation that resulted in farming, industry, and medicine innovations. This exhibition brings alive the ideas created by this energetic period, the esteem given to the idea of beauty, and a growth in the understanding of nature, reflected in books filled with exquisite drawings and new literature and poetry.
The archive material from the 20th century is limited, but this relative sparseness perhaps tells its own story. Although ruptured by world war, the archive shows a stable and prosperous century, leisure activities mushroomed through the efforts of individuals, groups and institutions. Individual enthusiasts of walkers, ramblers and motorists explored the countryside and, at an institutional level, the Countryside Act 1968 resulted in several large public country parks being opened across the Country.
Earlier issues had not entirely disappeared - people fought to maintain their ties to the countryside or looked to forge a new link due to the increasing dominance of urbanisation and declining agricultural life.
The exhibition is valuable, providing both insight to the past and a perspective from which to spur discussions about the countryside today. The archives show that individuals have a canny way of creating their own path to what their country life will be. As new contests and disputes emerge over housing, energy, farming, transport and parks, it will be fascinating to see who documents our present country lives and what people decide is worthy of recording for the archive.
Country Lives will be at Lakeside Arts until Sunday 21 September 2025. The exhibition is accompanied by a number of events, including lunchtime talks and a guided walk of the University grounds. Find out more via the Lakeside website below.
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