Sheila Haywood: Pioneering Landscape Architect

By Paula Laycock

A pioneering British landscape designer's life and work illuminate mid-20th-century projects from townscapes to industrial sites, revealing influence, challenges, and enduring contributions to the profession.

This is the first major study of the life and work of Sheila Haywood (1911-1993), a pioneer of 20th-century landscape design in Britain. Among her many projects, Haywood drew up the 1959 landscape master plan for Churchill College, Cambridge, and it was the chance discovery of some of her plans in the Churchill Archives Centre that sparked an interest in finding out more about her work. While she was well respected in her profession, she seems to be little known today. This book seeks to redress that imbalance.

The book offers a rich insight into the story of the people and events that influenced her, and of her life and considerable achievements. A former assistant to Geoffrey Jellicoe, Haywood played a key role in the development of the profession of landscape architecture. She was highly influential in her field and her work in the extractive industries in particular, was trail blazing. She worked alongside other notable female landscape architects including Brenda Colvin, Sylvia Crowe and Susan Jellicoe and, such was the respect in which she was held, that she was invited (though declined) to take on the prestigious role of President of the Institute of Landscape Architects.

The 1950s to 1970s were an age of growing opportunity for landscape architecture in Britain, particularly in a rural context, when large scale enterprises expected to obtain, and generally to follow advice from, an independent landscape architect. Perhaps surprisingly, in what many might have expected to be a male oriented profession, Haywood was one of a number of prominent female landscape architects operating at the top of their profession who were developing new approaches to the landscaping of the New Towns, factories, sewage works, power stations and quarries. This book offers not only a new insight into their achievements, but also into some of the challenges they had to face.

Neither Haywood's field photographs nor her collected papers have made their way to an archive. Nonetheless, her stepson in France has been tracked down, and original records have been located in various archives across the country. The detailed research that has been carried out during the writing of this biography has brought together the many strands of her life story and, importantly, has confirmed her contribution to her profession. The text is interwoven with comments from prominent landscape architects and others and offers case studies of some of her most prestigious and highly varied landscape designs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1914427513
• ISBN13: 9781914427510
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Windgather Press
• Length: 176 Pages