How the Elizabethans Revolutionised Garden Design Quarrendon
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Left The Quarrendon earthworks beside the River Thame near Aylesbury. Looking west, this air view shows the remains of park and Buckinghamshire County Council warren in the foreground, with the ornamental PHOTO: garden behind. Quarrendon How the Elizabethans revolutionised garden design In the late 16th century, leading courtier Sir Henry Lee, anticipating a visit by Queen Elizabeth I, created a new garden and park on his manorial estate at Quarrendon on the edge of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The result was something exceptional even by the standards of that dynamic age: an artificial landscape suffused with the spirit of the English Renaissance and Reformation. Main picture The River Thame. current archaeology 218 31 31-35 Quarrendon CA218.indd 31 4/4/08 14:49:07 Buckinghamshire County Council PHOTOS: This page: top oday, the earthwork remains of Aylesbury is a booming London-commuter left The ruins of the the Elizabethan estate extend for town, and there were plans for major urban medieval chapel that was almost a kilometre on the north expansion north of the River Thame. The Berry- incorporated into Henry bank of the River Thame, oppo- fields area west of the site and the Weedon Hill Lee's landscaped garden. Above right Among the site Aylesbury, situated partly area east of it were both designated ‘major devel- recent threats to the site Ton the flood plain of the river and one of its opment areas’, and a new ‘western link road’ is the damage done to tributaries, and partly on rising ground to the was planned to join the two proposed housing earthworks by tree-throw. north. The scale, complexity and complete- schemes. The Tudor courtier’s vision was about Above Quarrendon ness of the remains are, according to leading to be engulfed by 21st century urban sprawl. earthworks looking east, with the River Thame on gardens archaeologist Paul Everson, ‘especially the right, its tributary outstanding’, allowing us, through careful Courtier, soldier, poet in the upper foreground, survey and analysis, to explore the mind-set of Henry Lee (1533-1611) had inherited his father’s and the ornamental the political elite of the Elizabethan Age. estates in 1550, had been knighted in 1553 garden in the centre. Despite the legal protection provided to a during the ceremonies surrounding the coro- ‘scheduled ancient monument’ a few years ago, nation of Queen Mary I, and had then married the remains were under multiple threat. The the daughter of one of Mary’s privy councillors. earthworks were rutted by farm vehicles, dotted Later, under Elizabeth (1558-1603), he served with feeding troughs and silage dumps, and as MP for Buckinghamshire, held a number of damaged by tree-throw and burrowing animals. senior royal offices, and finally became a Knight The site was affected by fly-tipping and the theft of the Garter in 1597. His greatest distinction of remaining masonry from its ruined medieval was to be the queen’s champion for over 30 church. But the greatest danger was posed by years, and to have devised in 1570 the annual urban expansion. Accession Day tournaments held in Whitehall current 32 archaeology 218 31-35 Quarrendon CA218.indd 32 4/4/08 14:49:30 Quarrendon Main image The RCHME earthworks survey of Quarrendon. The the left, beyond the tributary, is the deserted medieval hamlet 'Quarrendon 1'. The the right is another, 'Quarrendon II', but his became landscaped parkland with a warren of pillow-mounds on the skyline. In the centre are the water gardens, the chapel, the almshouses, and the mansion itself. every 17 November. these are technically Courtier, soldier, and poet, Henry Lee was a ‘DMVs’ (deserted medi- typical figure of the Elizabethan elite: descended eval villages) is open to from 15th century Warwickshire merchant question, as both seem graziers, he had risen to the top through loyal to have consisted only of service to the Tudor dynasty. Educated, cultured, ‘small groups of farmsteads loosely organised This page, top left modern in outlook, a supporter of the ‘new’ in around irregular greens’; they might more The central part of the religion, his aim was to turn Quarrendon into a accurately be described as hamlets or ‘ends’ in earthworks complex looking west. model country residence that reflected his rank, a pattern of settlement characteristic of adjacent Top right The pillow- wealth and taste, and also provided a proper parishes in the Vale of Aylesbury. mounds of the warren setting for entertainments to delight and divert on the skyline formed a queen (though whether Elizabeth actually A landscaped garden and park a visual border to the visited, as planned in 1592, is uncertain). By contrast, Henry Lee’s late 16th century garden 16th century park. Above Another of the Like many others at the time, the Quarrendon and park formed a designed layout in a landscape multiple threats to the estate was transformed during the 16th century setting with carefully planned vistas. An existing site: silage dumps. by enclosure, depopulation, and the introduc- medieval church and moated manor house were tion of sheep. A comprehensive earthwork linked and incorporated into elaborate formal survey carried out by the Royal Commission gardens. These included a water garden with on the Historical Monuments of England (now ponds and islands. Broad terraces two metres English Heritage) in 1989-1990 revealed two high and 10-12m across formed the walkways, deserted medieval settlements at either end of and these were surrounded by water-filled the site, some 800m apart – ‘Quarrendon I’ to canals. A diagonal subsidiary channel prob- the east, ‘Quarrendon II’ to the west. Whether ably served a water-mill, providing a central current archaeology 218 33 31-35 Quarrendon CA218.indd 33 4/4/08 14:50:05 focus for the garden combining vantage-point. Ahead he would have utility with ornament. There were seen the west end of the church, the also almshouses built immediately new almshouses, the formal gardens south of the church and integrated to the right, the great house straight into the formal garden design. ahead, and the warren on the skyline The almshouses seem to have been beyond. Looking up and down stream of a standard measurement (60m) he would have seen sheep and cattle that is replicated by the terraces grazing the rich pasture that was the in a ratio of 1:2:3. ‘An interest in source of Henry Lee’s wealth. A more geometric form and symbolic ratios thoughtful visitor might reflect that appears to permeate this construc- these ‘leas’ (meadows) were a pun on tion,’ comments Paul Everson. the family name, and that the mill in National Portrait Gallery National Portrait ‘Behind it may lie an interest in the : the formal garden and the warren on golden mean, both as a geometric the hillside together represented the concept in itself and as a principle PHOTO estate name, Quarrendon, meaning understood in contemporary philo- ‘mill hill’. sophical thought to organise and regulate the Above Sir Henry Lee Formality, symmetry and geometry are universe.’ Henry Lee is known to have been by Antonio Mor, 1568. features of design often symbolic of reason, interested in such speculations. Courtier, soldier, poet, order and civilisation. They had this signifi- royal favourite, and Major works of hydraulic engineering made Queen’s champion, Lee cance in the Renaissance. The obvious contrast it all possible, with water captured and brought was a leading figure of is with ‘wild’ nature. But Paul Everson has to the garden in a 1.5km long channel from the the Elizabethan Age. detected something more: a possible reference tributary stream to the north and the rising to the conflict between Protestant and Catholic, ground to the east. The effect was to trans- ‘new’ and ‘old’, in the layout of Quarrendon’s form the valley bottom as a whole, draining garden and park. Why were the almshouses it of excess water and converting it into rich included in the formal garden design? The Eliza- meadow-land. bethan elite, like their medieval forebears, still In contrast with the formal gardens west of measured status through the number of a man’s the mansion, there was parkland on the rising dependants, and, though a tatty hamlet would ground to the east, including an extensive rabbit have been out-of-place in the new conception, warren formed of pillow-mounds, the earliest of a standard-length terrace of new almshouses which formed a line on the skyline, much like planned as part of the overall design was a tactful prehistoric barrows. ‘There is a clear contrast,’ reminder that Henry Lee was a lord as a well as a explains Everson, ‘between the controlled, landowner. The building of almshouses was also man-made formal gardens lying entirely to the an increasingly fashionable way of displaying west of the moated residence and the ostensibly Protestant charity. ‘natural’ designed landscape lying to the east of Again, the contrast, is with the warren. Is the the house, which comprises a large open space ‘wild’, rabbit-infested park east of the house with its skyline perhaps defined by thick hedges intended as a reminder of Sir Henry’s role as except where it is occupied by the warren.’ The Lieutenant and Ranger of the royal manor of western and eastern facades of the mansion Woodstock, where he was responsible to the may, he suggests, have been designed to repli- queen for the management of park and game? cate this contrast between ‘two worlds’. Perhaps. However, as Everson explains, in Eliza- bethan times the creation of a rabbit The language of landscape Henry Lee’s late 16th warren as a garden feature sometimes Reading the symbolism successfully century garden and signified adherence to the old religion.