1. The Shropshire HER and Historic Parks and Gardens
Apley Park PRN AP: SA0804_146
The Shropshire HER aims to cover all elements of the historic environment, including historic parks and gardens.

2. In the early 1990s, we commissioned Paul Stamper to identify all the parks and gardens that had ever existed in Shropshire. His Report was the 1993 Gazetteer.
This identified 286 Parks and Gardens. For each entry Paul wrote a Description with key sources and this was accompanied by a 1st edition OS County Series map extract, with the extent of the park marked where possible.
Each park or garden was assigned an HER Record Number and the gazetteer entries were then loaded as records into the HER.

3. More detailed studies of 52 of the Parks were the commissioned by English Heritage
and ourselves, and this report became the “Compendium”.

4. There are currently 290 records of Parks and/or Gardens in the HER.
35 of the Parks are solely medieval parks.
35 are Registered Parks/Gardens
45 sites in the Compendium are not Registered Parks/Gardens

5. Enhancement of the Existing Parks and Gardens records.
Enhancement by a Volunteer in early 2014.
This was focussed on those that were neither Registered or covered by the Compendium Reports ( about 200 records). It involved:
Adding the Parks and Gardens UK ID No.
Populating the Summary field with the Parks and Gardens UK Summary where better than ours.
Adding the PRN for the House to the name of the house in the Summary.
Refining the Monument Type classification – e.g. Landscape Park or Deer Park rather than just Park.

6. Further Enhancement work devised but not implemented
This would be focussed on the 45 “Compendium” records to ensure that all the information in the Compendium reports is fully integrated into the HER. Four stages have been identified:
1. A Volunteer reads the existing Compendium description and lists on a form
The House that the Park/Garden served
The park related Buildings, Structures and other features identified in the text
The Sources
2. The Volunteer then uses the HER database and GIS to identify the PRNs of those features in their List that already have their own HER records.
3. Using the PRNs, the Volunteer links the Park record to all the existing park-related features in the HER, so that the end-user can move seamlessly between them. The list will also be used to create new records for features not previously recorded on the HER.
4. The Volunteer will check the 1993 Parks and Gardens Survey file notes against the list of Sources compiled in Task 1, and add the additional Sources to the records for the Park.

7. All we need now are the Volunteers
If you would like to help, please get in touch. Learn new skills! - such as GIS.
See some great Aerial Photographs
Lilleshall Hall PRN AP: SA0707_050
Buntingsdale Hall PRN AP: SA0908_183
Acton Reynald PRN AP: SA0805_018