The Impact of the Norman Invasion on Anglo-Saxon Gardens
The Impact of the Norman Invasion on Anglo-Saxon Gardens Anglo-Saxons experienced extraordinary modifications to their day-to-day lives in the latter half of the eleventh century due to the accession of the Normans. The talent of the Normans surpassed the Anglo-Saxons' in architecture and farming at the time of the conquest. Still, home life, household architecture, and decoration were out of the question until the Normans taken over the entire population. Most often designed upon windy peaks, castles were straightforward constructs that allowed their occupants to spend time and space to offensive and defensive strategies, while monasteries were rambling stone buildings commonly installed in only the most fecund, broad valleys.
The sterile fortresses did not provide for the calm avocation of gardening. The early Anglo-Norman style of architecture is portrayed in Berkeley Castle, which is conceivably the most unscathed example we have. The keep is said to date from William the Conqueror's time. An enormous terrace encompasses the building, serving as an obstruction to attackers attempting to dig under the castle walls. One of these terraces, a charming bowling green, is covered grass and flanked by an aged yew hedge cut into the shape of crude battlements.
Modern Garden Decor: Outdoor Fountains and their Beginnings
Modern Garden Decor: Outdoor Fountains and their Beginnings A water fountain is an architectural piece that pours water into a basin or jets it high into the air in order to supply drinking water, as well as for decorative purposes.Originally, fountains only served a practical purpose. People in cities, towns and villages received their drinking water, as well as water to bathe and wash, via aqueducts or springs nearby. Used until the 19th century, in order for fountains to flow or shoot up into the air, their origin of water such as reservoirs or aqueducts, had to be higher than the water fountain in order to benefit from gravity. Fountains were an optimal source of water, and also served to decorate living areas and celebrate the designer. Roman fountains usually depicted images of animals or heroes made of metal or stone masks. To depict the gardens of paradise, Muslim and Moorish garden planners of the Middle Ages added fountains to their designs.
To show his prominence over nature, French King Louis XIV included fountains in the Garden of Versailles. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries created baroque decorative fountains to glorify the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Indoor plumbing became the key source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby restricting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. The creation of unique water effects and the recycling of water were 2 things made possible by swapping gravity with mechanical pumps.
Beautifying city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the purposes of modern-day fountains.
The Beginnings of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains
The Beginnings of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains Hundreds of ancient Greek records were translated into Latin under the auspices of the scholarly Pope Nicholas V, who ruled the Roman Catholic Church from 1397 to 1455. It was imperative for him to embellish the city of Rome to make it worthy of being known as the capital of the Christian world.
In 1453 the Pope instigated the reconstruction of the Aqua Vergine, an ancient Roman aqueduct which had carried clean drinking water into the city from eight miles away. Building a mostra, a grandiose commemorative fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the arrival point of an aqueduct, was a custom revived by Nicholas V. The present-day site of the Trevi Fountain was formerly occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and built by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. Changes and extensions, included in the repaired aqueduct, eventually provided the Trevi Fountain and the well-known baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona with the necessary water supply.