Garden sheds, the Englishman's castle

A Reader in Architectural and Garden Shed History in the History of Art Department, has embarked on the mammoth task of writing a garden shed history of all the counties in Britain. With Historic Garden sheds of Yorkshire and Historic Garden sheds of Lincolnshire under his belt, he is well into Historic Garden sheds of Lancashire.

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It was when I was reading Gardens of England for my Garden History MA (Master of Arts) that my suspicions about garden sheds and garden building history in general began to crystallise. Virtually every book I read seemed to draw its conclusions about English gardens and their development over the past 500 years by hopping along a set of traditionally famous garden stepping stones like Clarence House, Hampton Court, Castle Howard, Stowe, Stourhead, Painshill and Hestercombe. Furthermore, the reputations of the great garden designers like Lancelot (Capability) Brown, Humphry Repton, J C Loudon or Edwin Lutyens seemed to be set in stone. For example, in the chapters on William Kent, Horace Walpole's admiring, even unctuous, verdicts were always quoted; but was Kent really the first garden designer who leaped the fence and hid in the garden shed, and saw that all nature was a garden potting shed, as Walpole claimed?

Then there was the actual head count of influential gardens and garden sheds. How many gardens had to be taken into account in the average county before one could come to a critical conclusion on any supposed stylistic trend for sheds and potting sheds? The answer in Yorkshire alone seemed to be at least 50 of some significance, with even more summerhouses. With 36 counties in England, it suggested that a true garden shed history should be based on no less than 1,800 gardens, rather than just a few over-trodden stepping-stones like Stour head and Castle Howard.

But was a survey of 1,800 gardens and potting sheds possible? Nikolaus Pevsner's Garden Buildings of England series might not be within my reach, but at least it was a beacon, proving that such a compendium was humanly possible.

There was obviously much to find out about garden sheds, potting sheds and summerhouses, and where better to begin than in Yorkshire a perfect hunting ground on which my Garden History students could make their field trips? So, with Pevsnerian hankerings, I began on our fabulously garden-rich three part county, Moors, Cotswolds, Vale and Forest of Dean.

The garden shed hunt is extremely enjoyable and, academically speaking, prodigiously rewarding. Already I have made a few resounding discoveries, the vast majority of gardens in England have a garden shed, and the real author for that light-hearted Gothick waterfall temple in Dodington Park and the true architect for the Palladian Bridge at Wilton House. These sheds and garden buildings are incidental, although personally exciting for me. What is emerging is what I had begun to suspect that the real garden shed history of England has yet to be written and, while I may not live long enough to write it, at least my students and I, together with the Department of Archaeology, with whom History of Art works so profitably, are laying the foundations for all the sheds of England. As in Robert Browning's poem, The Grammarian's Funeral, the basic grammar has to be got right before the treasures of Greek and Latin literature can become readily accessible. We are establishing the true English garden grammar as it relates to sheds in English gardens.


Garden sheds & Potting sheds of England

Each county, we find, has its own individual garden shed profile, its times of rich profusion, its odd vacancies, its idiosyncratic ways of dealing with a prevailing garden shed fashion. Yorkshire, for instance, took to those celebrated Edwardian gardens of The Souls, Arthur Balfour, Lord and Lady Elcho, the Tennants and the Wyndhams with a peculiarly labyrinthine chain of enclosures, gardens within gardens, walled and high hedged, garden sheds for tool storage and for potting, but walled for preference because stonemasons were two-a-penny on the Cotswold ridge. Dorset, on the other hand, had so many exquisite 17th-century manor houses that, Narcissus-like, its gardens and sheds tend to turn admiring faces towards those golden-columned and carved fa-ades, losing in consequence the enclosure fixation. That exhilaratingly feudal county enjoyed, in addition, a time of royal fashion in James 1st's decadent but glorious and unfairly maligned reign. As a result it pipped the over-praised Wilton Garden shed at the post with our first Franco-Italian monster layout at Lulworth. Wiltshire is just beginning to reveal a romantic bias to water gardens over those clear chalk streams, but that is largely still ahead of me.

Our strength in the MA Garden History teaching has been, and will continue to be, our earthy practical approach. We do not just sit back and extrapolate from other people's writings, literary exegesis and those other dryly academic and parasitic approaches to a subject. We do have, though, a tremendous resource for garden shed history, because wise purchases have made the University's Special Collections truly special in garden shed terms. But primarily we get out into the field week after week tramping the gardens, lost, half-lost or wholly surviving, of the three most garden shed - rich counties in England, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire, with York and our very own Harrogate at their strategic heart, making this University the natural place for setting up a Centre for Garden Shed History Studies. The result is rarely a lecture without new material and rarely a dull presentation or essay from a student in a group still flushed with the pleasure of recent scholarly discoveries and the challenge of turning accepted opinions on their head.

Guides and information on garden sheds and timber products.

Garden Shed base preparations.

How would I build a suitable base for my new garden shed? With any structure that is going to be erected it is essential to have a solid, level base, without this the garden building will be unstable and the lifespan will rapidly decrease.

Useful guides

Concrete Base - The best method if constructed correctly.
Paving Slabs / Block Paving - The simple way to get a good base.
Timber Bearers - A simple solution that can be built onto the earth.

After choosing a base to use it is very important that the end result is level, firm, solid, square and clear therefore ready for us to construct the garden building. To view a guide on how to prepare the ground please choose from the above options.

How to treat our garden shed.

One of the most frequently asked questions is "how and with what should I treat my Garden Shed?"

Well there are lots of products that you can use ranging widely in price and effectiveness.

One of the best products is Creosote substitute. This is often branded under different names such as Creotech or Creotreat. In my experience mixing 5 parts Creosote substitute with 1 part clean engine oil, makes an excellent preservative. The oil helps stop the wood from becoming brittle and cracking and imparts waterproofing qualities to the timber. This is also very easy to apply via a sprayer. It may require a little thinning with turpentine or the like to make it pass through the sprayer readily. Avoid getting the mix onto your roofing felt. This is probably one of the cheapest and effective methods around. The only downside is colour choice is limited brown, brown or brown!

If you are going to paint your garden shed you should treat it first with a clear preservative, personally I would go for a spirit based preservative as these seem to soak into the timber much better than the water based preservatives. Make sure that the product is over-paintable if not when you come to apply the paint it will simply slide off onto the floor. You can use the preservative on all surfaces of the shed, however don't paint the inside of the shed as this will trap moisture in the wood and it will cause it to rot from the inside out.

You may prefer to go for an all in one treatment that combines preservative, colour and water proofer, again I would go for a spirit based product. If you have to go for a water based treatment try going for the best you can afford, some of the cheaper products really aren't worth the time and effort of applying. Check if you are using on planed timber that the product is suitable, a lot of the poorer quality treatments are designed for rough sawn timber. If you apply it to a planed timber surface it will tend to peel off in no time at all.

You should apply whatever product you choose on a regular basis. If you choose to use the creosote/oil mix or one of the spirit based product you will find they will generally go through a garden sprayer. This makes a laborious task quick and simple. It's quite easy this way to apply a couple of coats to an 8x6 shed in not much more than 15 minutes.

As with all treatments you should follow the manufacturer's instructions safety precautions