Which nations are covered?

All four UK nations. England (Historic England), Scotland (Historic Environment Scotland), Wales (Cadw) and Northern Ireland (Department for Communities), reconciled into one schema, 2,729 designations in total.

Is the English register statutory?

No. Historic England's Register of Parks and Gardens is non-statutory. A registered park or garden is, however, a material consideration in the planning system and carries weight in decisions and at appeal, so it acts as a real constraint on development.

What do the grades mean?

England and Wales use grades I, II* and II, with grade I the most significant. Northern Ireland uses A, A* and B. Scotland's Inventory does not grade its sites. We keep each nation's own grade rather than mapping them to a single scale.

How current is the data, and how is it licensed?

Records are refreshed monthly from the custodians' registers. Everything is served under the Open Government Licence v3.0, with the originating custodian's attribution returned on every record.

Read-only over REST at /v1/heritage. Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch a single designation by its stable id. The /types vocabulary endpoint is free for evaluation, and access is an annual licence rather than pay-per-call.

Are the boundaries polygons or points?

Each designation carries an EPSG:4326 polygon for its registered extent, reprojected server-side from the source's native grid. A centroid lat/lng is also returned for simple mapping and distance checks.

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Registered Parks and Gardens

Designed landscapes of special historic interest from the four UK registers, reconciled into one schema with grades and EPSG:4326 polygons. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

2,729

Designations

Nations

EPSG:4326

Geometry

OGL v3.0

Licence

Overview

About this dataset

A registered park or garden is a designed landscape judged to be of special historic interest: formal and landscaped gardens, public parks, cemeteries and the planned grounds of country houses and institutions. This dataset holds 2,729 such designations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each returned as a mappable polygon and a single stable record.

The four nations register these landscapes under different regimes. Historic England maintains the Register of Parks and Gardens (grades I, II* and II). That register is non-statutory, but a registered park or garden is a material consideration in planning decisions and carries weight at appeal, so it acts as a real constraint. Historic Environment Scotland keeps the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, a statutory material consideration with no grade. Cadw registers Welsh sites under the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (grades I, II* and II). In Northern Ireland the Department for Communities maintains the Register of Historic Parks, Gardens and Demesnes under the Planning Act (Northern Ireland) 2011 (grades A, A* and B).

We reconcile these four registers into one schema with one stable identifier per designation, while keeping each nation's own grade rather than forcing a false equivalence between them. Every record is reprojected server-side to EPSG:4326 (WGS84) from its native grid and served read-only over REST. Query /v1/heritage by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch a single designation by its id.

Each record returns under the Open Government Licence v3.0 with the originating custodian's attribution, so commercial reuse stays clean. The dataset sits on the same identity and geometry model as listed buildings, scheduled monuments and other heritage designations, which lets you test a site against every heritage constraint in one pass.

What's included

Everything in the box

Four registers, one schema

Historic England, Historic Environment Scotland, Cadw and the Northern Ireland register reconciled into a single record shape, with one stable id per designation.

Grades kept honest

Each nation's own grade is preserved: I, II* and II in England and Wales, A, A* and B in Northern Ireland, and no grade for Scotland's Inventory. We do not map them to a single false scale.

Spatial query

Query by point, radius, bounding box or polygon, or fetch one designation by its id, over /v1/heritage.

EPSG:4326 polygons

Every boundary is reprojected server-side from its native grid to valid WGS84 geometry, with a centroid lat/lng for simple mapping.

Clean OGL provenance

Every record carries the Open Government Licence v3.0 and the custodian's attribution, ready for commercial reuse. Non-OGL sources are excluded by design.

Welsh bilingual names

Cadw records carry the Welsh-language name alongside the English name where the source provides one.

Data fields

What each record carries

schema14 fields

reference: string// The custodian's register entry number for the designation.

nation: enum// UK nation the designation belongs to: ENG, SCT, WAL or NIR.

source: string// The custodian that maintains the register entry.

name: string// Name of the registered park or garden.

name_cy: string// Welsh-language name, where the source provides one (Cadw records).

designation_type: enum// Designation class. Constant for this dataset.

designated_date: date// Date the landscape was first registered.

date_precision: enum// Precision of the served dates: day, month, year or none. A year-only source value is never served as an exact date.

category: string// National grade or status: I, II* or II (England and Wales), A, A* or B (Northern Ireland), or ungraded (Scotland).

local_authority: string// Local planning authority the site falls within.

area_hectares: float// Registered area of the designed landscape in hectares.

centroid: object// Representative point of the designation as lat/lng in EPSG:4326.

licence: string// Licence the record is served under.

attribution: string// Per-custodian attribution string to display on reuse.

Sample response

Straight from the API

response.jsonapplication/json

{
  "id": "design.heritage.ENG.registered_park_garden.1000123",
  "reference": "1000123",
  "nation": "ENG",
  "source": "Historic England",
  "name": "Stourhead",
  "name_cy": null,
  "designation_type": "registered_park_garden",
  "category": "I",
  "designated_date": "1987-05-12",
  "amended_date": null,
  "date_precision": "day",
  "local_authority": "Wiltshire",
  "area_hectares": 1072.5,
  "centroid": {
    "lat": 51.0991,
    "lng": -2.3210
  },
  "source_url": "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000123",
  "licence": "OGL v3.0",
  "attribution": "Contains Historic England data, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."
}

Use cases

What people build with it

Site due diligence

Check whether a development site sits within or beside a registered park or garden before committing to a scheme, since the designation is a material planning consideration.

Developers

Planning constraint checks

Screen applications against designed-landscape boundaries and grades to flag where heritage weight will shape the decision.

Planners

Valuation risk

Identify properties whose setting includes a registered landscape, where consent constraints can affect value and saleability.

Lenders

Underwriting setting risk

Flag insured assets within historic designed landscapes where works and repairs may face additional consent requirements.

Insurers

Portfolio heritage screening

Run a property portfolio against every registered park or garden in one pass to surface heritage exposure.

Investors