Banbury Country Park is owned by Cherwell District Council and you can read their Masterplan Summary from 2017 by pressing control and click here Appendix 1.pdf
Interesting articles about Sylvia Crowe include:
Who are we?
The Friends of Sylvia Crowe Country Park is an informal, constituted and not for profit group of individuals and organisations that would like to see Banbury's country park renamed Sylvia Crowe Country Park. We formed in January 2026.
Our reasons for this campaign are:
- Dame Sylvia Crowe was from Banbury and is buried there, less than a mile from the country park
- Her career in Landscape Architecture was spectacular: she was a pioneering and influential figure.
- The country park in Banbury contains several examples of 20th century infrastructure - pylons, Banbury's flood defence system, small lakes. Her career included several examples of setting 20th century infrastructure in a naturalistic setting - power stations, nuclear power stations, reservoirs - and these projects form a large part of her legacy and are of national and international importance. The country park in Banbury is therefore perfect as a place to commemorate her.
- In Banbury, there is very little to acknowledge or commemorate her success.
- We believe that the renaming of the country park would be a great way of encouraging local and national interest in all that she achieved.
We hope you would like to sign up to our campaign. It's free. please use our contact form or write to us on our facebook page.
Who was Sylvia Crowe?
Dame Sylvia Crowe (1901-1997) was born in Banbury. After training at Swanley Horticultural College, she set up her own landscape and garden design company. In 1937 she won a gold medal at Chelsea Flower Show. She maintained her connections with Banbury throughout her life. Her funeral was held at St Mary’s and she is buried at Hardwick Hill cemetery.
After service as an ambulance driver in World War II, she resumed her career in landscape architecture and garden design. Her commissions took her to all parts of the UK and overseas. She became well known and sought after as a landscape architect who could make new industrial installations and public infrastructure – power stations, nuclear power stations, reservoirs, motorways, hospitals and pylons – sit well in their surroundings. She completed several commissions for agencies such as the Central Electricity Generating Board, Harlow and Basildon new towns and Rutland Water. Her contribution was often unnoticed: the public could not always see that a landscape architect had been at work and this was her great skill.
She became the Forestry Commission’s first consultant landscape architect and gave advice on planting schemes for vast tracts of woodland, especially in Scotland, encouraging the use of mixed trees rather than rows of conifers in their plantations.
She became President of the Institute of Landscape Architects between 1957-1959, and was the Architects’ Journal “Woman of the Year” in 1990. In the same year, she earned the Royal Horticultural Society’s Victoria Medal of Honour, to add to her many other national and international awards. Sylvia Crowe wrote several books that are considered still relevant to today’s designers and architects and seen as classics within the discipline. The Landscape Of Power is perhaps the best known.
Create Your Own Website With Webador