The Hafod estate in west Wales is a remarkable landscape of the late eighteenth century designed according to the principles of the picturesque. It was seen as an exemplary treatment of the aesthetic of the sublime, in its day visited by most of the international set of romantic thinkers and artists who were disputing and redefining modes of looking at people and land.

Designed and built by Thomas Johnes, an English gentleman on the rural periphery of Wales, its story takes in enlightenment aspirations of the control of nature, the gaze of the colonial, the politics of nationhood and the creative power of the constitutive imagination.

It was neglected and lost, but is now under rediscovery by historians and archaeologists - a process that is opening up complex questions of conservation, reconstitution and cultural ownership.

Research notes on the picturesque:

• >> Hafod - A house, three figures and a landscape

• >> History - The alien, closeness and a grand unified theory

• >> The House - Masonry, timber and the Gothic

• >> The Three Figures - Voice, odour and the body

• >> The Landscape - Site, location, looking

• >> The Picturesque - Eyes, ears, juices

• >> The Pioneer - The expedition, the outpost and the internal colony

• >> Looking Backwards - Templates, grids, images, letter boxes

Decoys:

• >> Thomas Johnes - one

• >> Thomas Johnes - two

A contemporary dilemma:

David Austin on Hafod and the question of a conservation ethic - video microlecture - [link]