In 1961 Brenda Colvin was appointed, with engineers Rendel Palmer & Tritton, to design a new hill made from pulverized fuel ash from two coal fired power stations, together with waste shale from the nearby coal mine. It is 7 miles SW of Selby, beside the M62. The 50m high hill, 1.5km wide by 2.2km long, was designed to be constructed in three phases to an “unabashed and obvious artificial form” with the surface returned to agriculture, arable fields on top. Construction started in 1972 under Hal Moggridge, Brenda’s new partner; at first experiencing a number of awkward landscape problems and continued until the coal-fired power stations were closed. The brief gradually developed preferring nature conservation over economic land use, and on this basis Phase 1 was completed successfully in 2004. However, fuel ash has now become a valuable raw material so that the further parts of the hill which were commenced in the 1980s are not to be permanent features. This September 24 online lecture is sponsored by the Yorkshire Gardens Trust.
Colvin & Moggridge, the oldest active landscape practice in the UK, was founded in 1922 by the late Brenda Colvin. Hal Moggridge joined her as partner in 1969; Chris Carter became partner in 1981. Both are now consultants to the practice which continues thriving under younger directors, with a staff of 15. (www.colmog.co.uk). This link is for this individual session and costs £8. Register through Eventbrite HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.
In January, join Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading for the beginning of an online series of talks in partnership with the Gardens Trust, on six women – Susan Jellicoe, Sheila Haywood, Brenda Colvin, Mary Mitchell, Marjory Allen and Marian Thompson – who all contributed to the expertise, development and awareness of the landscape profession and in so many different ways. A ticket is for the series of 6 talks at £42 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8. (Gardens Trust and FOLAR members £6 each or all 6 for £31.50). There will be an opportunity for Q & A after each session. Please note that the 6th and final talk in this series is on 30th April. Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. For tickets visit www.eventbriteco.uk
Join us in this online series to hear from these special speakers – Sally Ingram, Paula Laycock, Hal Moggridge, Joy Burgess, Wendy Titman and Bruce Thompson – who have each known, worked with, or researched one of these six remarkable women.
The third talk in the series will touch on Brenda’s childhood in India and her early practice (1922-39) designing gardens, which she continued throughout her career. Because she was a thinker about landscape, the talk will be interspersed with brief quotations from her writings. She was elected president of the Institute of Landscape Architects in 1951, the first woman to lead a British design or environmental profession. From the late 1940s Brenda shared her office with Sylvia Crowe but practising separately. The talk will illustrate how they, like other colleagues, broadened the scope of the landscape profession in the latter part of the 20th century. Brenda, independent in thought and practice, worked on government sponsored activities, for instance as consultant for large projects for the Central Electricity Generating Board, a Water Authority, a military town and a new university. Committed to continuity, she set up the basis for perpetuation of her practice and its ideas.
Hal Moggridge was introduced to Brenda Colvin by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, in whose office he had worked after qualifying as an architect. He then became a landscape architect, and in 1969 entered into partnership with Brenda who had retired her practice to the Cotswolds. They worked together harmoniously, and their landscape architectural practice, Colvin & Moggridge, continued after Brenda’s death in 1981 with Chris Carter joining as partner; and still thrives, now under new directors.
Between 1969 and 2005 Colvin & Moggridge handled 1,430 commissions, varying between large long-term rural industrial landscapes, reservoirs, cement works, quarries, a waste ash hill, and new parks and gardens including consultancy to the Inner London Royal Parks and creation of the new National Botanic Garden of Wales.
Hal was elected president of the Landscape Institute in 1979. He has represented the Institute on the International Federation of Landscape Architects, was a commissioner of the Royal Fine Art Commission, served on the National Trust’s Architectural Panel, and on ICOMOS Cultural Landscapes Committees. He has explained the practice’s approach in an illustrated book: Slow Growth – on the Art of Landscape Architecture(Unicorn, 2017). He has been awarded the OBE in 1986, the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999 and the Landscape Institute Medal.
