Uck Island Cottage, the the Tudor Monarchs Into a Formal Garden
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Duck IsLAND CoTTaGE: an HIsTORICAL surface of ye water’ and described two Accountofthe Birp KEEper’s LopceEin pelicans — the gift of the Russian Ambassador St James’s Park. By Tim Knox — and a crane with a woodenleg.’ Hidden in a wilderness at the south-eastern extremity of the uck Island Cottage, the canal was another souvenir of Charles’s picturesque lodge which serves Continental wanderings — a decoy created as the offices of the London after the Dutch manner for the capture of Historic Parks and Gardens ducks for the royal table. This comprised a sys- Trust in St James’s Park,is aptly tem of irregular channels of water surrounded named — it occupiesa site which has long been by shrubberies.* The island encircled by the the haunt of these aquatic birds. Birds of vari- canals became known as ‘DuckIsland’, and ous kinds have been kept here since 1612, when the King created the post of ‘Governor of James 1 began converting the swampychase of DuckIsland’- a sinecure with a small salary — the Tudor monarchs into a formal garden. and bestowed it upon his favourite, the Here, along what is now Birdcage Walk, an Seigneur de St Evremond: aviary was established and waterfowl, both The Decoy was extended and regularised in native and foreign, found refuge in the park — succeeding years, taking the character of an despite the presence, elsewhere in the gardens, ornamental ‘wilderness’ and water-garden of two crocodiles.’ rather than a working decoy. Here William m1 After the Commonwealth, Charles 1 built the first Duck Island Cottage — a ‘tea restored St James’s Park andlaidit out in imi- house’ in a ‘grove beyond and between the tation of the fashionable French gardens he miniature canals’. By 1734 Duck Island was had seen and admired during his yearsin exile. described as‘one of the most enchanting sum- The principal feature of the new formal gar- merretreats imaginable ... a paradise in minia- dens was a long rectangular canal, 2,800 feet ture’, although ‘as the waters in and aboutit long and 100 feet wide, which extended almost are suffered to stagnate and putrify, they the entire length of the park. King Charles become almost as much a nuisanceas an orna- continued his grandfather’s practice of keeping ment”(fig. 1).Throughoutthe eighteenth cen- aviaries along Birdcage Walk and appointed tury it remained a secluded and romantic spot, Edward Storey as ‘Keeper of the King’s Birds’ the canals gradually silted up and its shrub- — a fact commemorated to this day by the beries became overgrown,renderingit ideal for entrance to the park at Storey’s Gate.’ In 1664 wildfowl. John Evelyn found them ‘stocked with numer- In 1733 Queen Caroline revived the post of ous flocks of severall sorts of ordinary and ‘Governor of DuckIsland’ and presentedit to extraordinary wilde fowle, breeding about the her protegé Stephen Duck, the celebrated Decoy, which for being so neere so great a city 3. J. Evelyn, (edited by E.S. De Beer, &c.) The Diary of John Evelyn, and amongst such concourse of soldiers and 1995, pp.399-400;entry of 9 February 1665 4. Duck decoys were introduced from Holland. The c18zh people, is a singular and diverting thing’. Boarstall Decoy in Buckinghamshire, owned by the National Trust, is an interesting surviving example. Evelyn also noted ‘withy-potts or nests for the 5. H.B. Wheatley & P. Cunningham, London Past and Present wild fowle to lay their eggsin,a little above ye (London1891) 11, p.294 6. Thornbury & Walford, rv, p.50; see also the engraved ‘Plan of 1. Larwood (pseud), The Story ofLondon Parks (London 1872) 11, DuckIsland... from a Drawing made in 1734...’, published byJ.T. pp.71-2 Smith in 1807 (GLRoloc. ref. HES479) 2. G.W. Thornbury & E. Walford, O/d and New London 7. James Ralph, A Critical Review ofthe Publick Buildings... about (London 1873) Iv, p.47 London and Westminster (London 1734), pp.52-53 11 ... Unto this all-sin-sheltring Grove Whores ofthe Bulk, and the Alcove, Great Ladies, Chamber Mayds, and Drudges, The Ragg picker, and Hetress Trudges; Carrmen, Divines, Great Lords, and Taylors, Prentices, Poets, Pimps and Gaolers, Footmen, Fine Fopps, doe here arrive... ‘A Ramble in Saint James's Parke’ John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, c. 1763 View of St James's Park, near Duck Island Cottage, in c.1910 (GREATER Lonpon Recorp OFFice) THE LONDON GARDENERor The Gardener’s Intelligencer Volno.1 Forthe year 1995 ‘thresher poet’.’ Bishop Warburton remarked, charm which the presence of the feathered now Mr Duck‘can bothinstruct ourfriend in tribes lends to ornamental water’.* The the breed of the Wild-fowl and lend him of his Society enjoyed the patronage of Prince Albert genius to sing their generations’.’ In later years of Saxe Coburg & Gotha andits printed Duck Island became a perquisite of the prospectus is garnished with the names of its Ranger of St James’s Park, an oddity which noble and distinguished supporters.’ The amused contemporaries. When Charles membership was small and select — a factor Churchill became Deputy Ranger of Hyde ensured by an expensive subscription.” and St James’s Parks in 1739 his friend Sir The newly-founded Society at first con- Charles Hanbury-Williams composed a droll tented itself with measures intended to poem,in imitation of Horace, to commemo- encourage the birds. They petitioned the rate the occasion, imploring ‘O Venus, joy of Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who men and gods. Forsake for once thy blest were responsible for the Royal Parks, for the abodes ... Quit Paphos and the CyprianIsle. exclusion of dogs and proposed that a man be To reign o'er my Duck Island’.° On the employed, ‘constantly on duty...whose sole appointment of Lord Pomfret as Ranger of the business should be to protect the birds’. They Parks in 1751, Horace Walpole quipped that also carried out various improvements on the Lady Pomfret was now ‘Queen of Duck island, such as the provision of nesting boxes, Island’. the shelving of the banks and the planting of In 1771 DuckIsland, withits stagnant ponds reeds and otherplants.” and dense wilderness, was swept away — the In 1840 the Society submitted a ‘Memorial’ ‘stench’ of the waters being the cause of its to the Commissioners seeking permission to suppression — and replaced by a featureless build a house for a bird keeper in St James’s expanse of lawn.” However, some fifty years Park and a grant of£300 towardsthecostofits later, in 1827, the island made a surprising construction. The document referred to the reappearance when the park was extensively ‘considerable sums [that] have been expended naturalised by John Nash. Underhis direction by the Society stocking the ornamental water the formal canal was recast into an irregular in St James’s Park with aquatic birds’ andstat- sheet of water which extended overthe site of ed that ‘the present means of protecting and the former decoy. An ornamental island was regulating’ the collection were inadequate. It reinstated on the site of old Duck Island and wasrequested,as‘essential to the fulfillment of trees and shrubs were planted along the mar- the Society’s objects’, that a cottage should be gins of the water.” erected ‘to serve as the residence of a keeper, The new lake withits island and vegetatio.: upon the banks of the water’. The encouraged waterfowlto return to the park. In Commissioners were remindedthat their con- 1837 the Ornithological Society of London was tribution wouldalso assist ‘the cultivation of a foundedto protect the birds and undertook to new andintelligent interest in the thousands ‘form and maintain a complete collection of who frequent the Parks’." Water Fowl — Swimmers, Divers and Waders The petition was favourably received. The ... kept, as nearly as possible, in a natural state Commissioners agreed to pay for the erection (the lake in St James’s Park forming a great of ‘a cottage on the island...according to the natural cage)’. The Society appealed for sup- accompanying plans’ although it was ‘distinct- port not ‘to the scientific alone’ butto ‘all per- ly understood that the building if erected is to sons who are capable of appreciating the be the property of the Crown and the occupa- 8. R.M. Davis, ‘Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet’ included 14. PRO (Public Record Office) work 16/760. The Society also pro- in The Maine Bulletin, xx1x, January 1929, no.6, p.67 posedto ‘distribute duplicates gratuitously, among such Members... g. W. Warburton(edited by Bishop Hurd), Leftersfrom a Late as may bedesirousof acquiring a collection of aquatic birds’. Eminent Prelate to One ofHis Friends (Kidderminster 1808), p.112 15. Ineluding the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earls of Liverpool 10. Written by Hanbury-Williams in December 1739, quoted by and Orkney, Sir Robert Peel, the Bishop of Norwich and the natu- Walpole to Henry Seymour Conway, 25 September 1740, W.S. ralist William Yarrell. Lewis, ed., Horace Walpole’ Correspondence (Yale 1974) vol.37, p.76 16. worK 16/760. The prospectusincludesa list of birds in the 11, Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 9 February 1751, Walpole’s Collection. These include common,Polish and black swans, bitterns, Correspondence, vol. 20, pp.225-26 purple and night herons, storks, spoon-bills, 10 varieties of goose, 12. Larwood,11, p.213 quoting the General Evening Post 7-9 19 species of duck, mergansers, grebes, cormorants, gulls and May1771. See also Richard Horwood, A Plan ofthe Cities ofLondon gannets. There is also appendeda list of desiderata. Admission to and Westminster (London1819 ed.) the Society was a guinea with an additional guineayearly. 13, J Summerson, The Life and Works ofFohn Nash, Architect 17.