Thomas Hayton Mawson (born 5 May 1861, Scorton, Lancashire; died 14 November 1933, Applegarth, Hest Bank, Lancaster, Lancashire, aged 72), better known as T. H. Mawson, was a British garden designer, landscape architect, and town planner.
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Mawson left school at age 12. His father, who died in 1877, was a warper in a cotton mill and later started a building business. He married Anna Prentice in 1884 and the Mawsons made their family home in Windermere, Westmorland in 1885. They had four sons and five daughters.[1] His eldest son, Edward Prentice Mawson was a successful landscape architect and took over the running of his father's firm[1][2] when his father developed Parkinson's disease in 1923. Another son, John Mawson, moved to New Zealand in 1928 as Director of Town Planning for that country.[1]
To make a living, he worked first in the building trade in Lancaster, then at a London nursery where he gained experience in landscape gardening. In the 1880s he moved back north, where he and two brothers started the Lakeland Nursery in Windermere. The firm became sufficiently successful for him to be able to turn his attention to garden design.
Mawson's first commission was a local property, Graythwaite Hall, and his work there showed his hallmark blend of architecture and planting. He then designed the gardens at Langdale Chase, Holehird,[3] Brockhole,[4] and Holker Hall around the turn of the century.
In 1891 Mawson was commissioned to design and construct Belle Vue Park in Newport, Monmouthshire, Mawson's first win in an open competition. His design was, in fact, designed for the neighbouring field, the site of the then Newport and Monmouthshire Hospital after Mawson misunderstood directions on his first visit. The mistake was not realised until the first site visit, after the contract had been awarded. Between 1894 and 1909 Mawson was commissioned to design and construct Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff.
Later Mawson designed gardens in various parts of Britain, and others in Europe and Canada. In London he designed gardens at The Hill, in Hampstead for Lord Leverhulme. The impressive 800 ft long pergola is now open to the public as part of the West Heath. He designed Rivington Gardens and Lever Park in Lancashire also for Lord Leverhulme.[5] Padiham Memorial Park (1921) was another commission in Lancashire.
In 1908 he won a competition to lay out the Peace Palace gardens at The Hague. He also advised on the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the United States. One of Mawson's more noted plans was for the city of Calgary, Canada. Mawson's vision, had it been implemented, would have changed what was then a dusty prairie town, into a city of the City Beautiful movement.
From 1910 to 1924 he lectured frequently at the school of civic design, Liverpool University.[1] He also contributed articles on garden design to The Studio magazine and its annual The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art. In the 1920s he designed gardens for Dunira, a country house in Perthshire.[6]
In 1923 he became president of the Town Planning Institute, and in 1929 the first president of the Institute of Landscape Architects.
Mawson is buried in Bowness Cemetery within a few miles of some of his best gardens and overlooking Windermere.
More than 14,000 plans and drawings together with 6,500 glass plate negatives and photographs comprise the archive of Mawson documents. They are stored at Kendal Record Office having been offered to the Cumbria Archive Service following the closure of Thomas H. Mawson & Son of Lancaster and Windermere in 1978. As at 2010, the material has not been fully catalogued and conservation is proving difficult.[2]