Henry Moore Foundation
The Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green in Hertfordshire is one of the most extraordinary open-air sculpture experiences in Britain. Established to preserve and promote the work and legacy of Sir Henry Moore, one of the twentieth century's most celebrated sculptors, the foundation occupies the rural estate where Moore lived and worked for most of his adult life. Visiting feels genuinely unlike any other art destination in the country: rather than gallery walls and hushed interiors, the experience is of walking through meadows and gardens where monumental bronze figures recline, stand, or loom from grassy banks, encountered sometimes suddenly and always with a sense that they belong precisely where they are. The relationship between Moore's work and the English landscape — gentle, undulating, organic — feels entirely intentional, because it was.
Henry Moore first came to Perry Green in 1940, having fled London during the Blitz. The village and its surrounding countryside became his permanent home, and over the following four decades he transformed the estate into a working compound of studios, workshops, and spaces designed entirely around the making and contemplation of sculpture. He died in 1986 at the age of eighty-eight, having spent his final years here. After his death, the Henry Moore Foundation — which he had established in 1977 — assumed stewardship of the property and opened it to guided visitors. The estate has been carefully maintained as it was during Moore's lifetime, which means that tools, maquettes, and personal objects remain in the studios as though the sculptor has just stepped out for a walk.
The physical character of Perry Green is one of the foundation's great assets. The estate covers approximately seventy acres, taking in meadows, orchards, hedgerows, and kitchen gardens, all set within the quiet agricultural countryside of east Hertfordshire. The main house, Hoglands, is a modest whitewashed farmhouse that was Moore's family home, while the property around it gradually grew to include a series of purpose-built studios — the Bourne Maquette Studio, the White Studio, the Sheep Piece field — each designed for different phases of the sculptural process. Wandering between these spaces, visitors encounter both finished monumental works positioned in the open air and the working detritus of a long creative life still visible through studio windows.
The sculptures themselves are the overwhelming reason to visit. Major works such as Large Reclining Figure, Sheep Piece, and Goslar Warrior are sited outdoors where they can be approached, walked around, and experienced in changing light. Moore was deeply interested in the relationship between landscape and the human form, and at Perry Green this connection becomes visceral and legible in ways that museum settings rarely allow. The textures of the bronzes — rough and smooth by turns, catching rain and sunlight differently at every hour — reward slow and close looking, and the scale of some pieces is humbling in person in a way photographs fail to convey.
The surrounding area reinforces the pastoral quietness of the visit. Perry Green is a small hamlet in the civil parish of Much Hadham, a village with a handsome high street of historic houses that lies a short distance to the west. The broader landscape is classic Hertfordshire: gently rolling farmland, ancient hedgerows, and quiet country lanes. The River Ash runs nearby. It is not far from the market town of Bishop's Stortford to the north-east, or from the A120 for those travelling by car. The nearest railway stations are at Bishop's Stortford and Sawbridgeworth, though neither is particularly close, and the estate is most conveniently reached by car.
Visiting the Henry Moore Foundation requires booking in advance, as access is by guided tour only during the open season, which typically runs from May through October. Tours are small in number to protect the site, and they sell out, particularly in summer. The grounds are naturally uneven — lawns, field paths, and the occasional slope — and visitors should wear comfortable shoes. A shop and a small café or refreshments area are usually available. The experience typically lasts around two hours and covers both the outdoor sculpture landscape and selected studio spaces, offering an intimacy with a working artist's world that is genuinely rare.
One of the most quietly remarkable aspects of Perry Green is how much it conveys about the creative process rather than merely the finished product. Moore kept thousands of maquettes — small working models in plaster, bronze, and other materials — and many remain visible in the studios, allowing visitors to trace the evolution of ideas from a handful of clay to a figure weighing several tonnes. The foundation also manages Moore's archive and operates an extensive grants programme supporting sculpture and education worldwide, meaning the estate is not merely a memorial but an active institution. There is something moving about standing in the meadow where Moore himself walked among his giants, on a clear morning with the Hertfordshire sky wide overhead.