Tudor and Stuart Royal Gardens

By David Jacques

Explore the Royal Gardens of the Tudors and Stuarts, and how these unique landscapes played key roles in international diplomacy. This will be of particular interest to those studying garden design, post-medieval archaeology, social and political history, as well as royal court studies.

Monarchs, no less than their subjects, want to impress their guests. This book is about gardens as one aspect of creating favorable impressions – soft power – in particular through the royal gardens of England in Tudor and Stuart times. It addresses the backdrop of palaces, parks and gardens that were unspoken statements of authority and cultural achievement that gave status and credibility to the country’s representatives.

Garden history from this perspective has been neglected hitherto; neither have the royal gardens been assessed as a collection in which monarchs favored chosen sites for indulging their stylistic passions. Research on their forms and designs have in the past been accumulated piecemeal, without any sense of overview.

This book contains a new analysis enabled by gathering information from numerous archaeological investigations, historic texts and the available visual material, together with extensive original research in the National Archives and elsewhere. Reconstruction drawings flesh out the narrative in the early years when maps, drawings and prints were so very scarce and are reproduced alongside the available material and the more abundant prints and paintings as the Stuart era draws to a close.

Radical new understandings of the medieval garden in England serve as the starting point for a fresh narrative of the history of internationally significant English gardens in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will be of interest to architectural, garden design, social and political historians of the period and to a wide readership of those fascinated by how statecraft, foreign influences, and native innovation interwove for two centuries in our royal gardens and parks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Jun 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781914427367

David Jacques

David Jacques is a garden historian. He has published several garden history books, including 'Gardens of Court and Country: English Country 1630-1730' in 2017. He has conducted practical conservation work for the Garden History Society, worked as Inspector at English Heritage and then as a consultant at both English Heritage and the Historic Royal Palaces Trust. He was awarded an OBE in 2022 'for services to garden history and conservation'.

Book preview

FIGURE 0.1. Design for the Hampton Court parterre by Daniel Marot, 1689. At the time it was anticipated that dignitaries would arrive by coach at the east front and their entourages would have access to the Fountain Garden in which William III was to have a spectacular display of 13 fountains set in several acres of broderie (Yale Center for British Art, image B1977.14.6212/Public Domain)

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© Windgather Press and David Jacques 2024

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Front cover: Kensington Palace from a coloured print of c. 1702

Contents

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List of figures

List of colour plates

Acknowledgements

Foreword: Royal gardens in national symbolism

Prelude: Medieval gardens

Part 1: The Tudors

1. Henry VII (1485–1509)

2. Henry VIII (1509–1547)

3. Edward VI (1547–1554)

4. Mary I (1554–1558)

5. Elizabeth I (1558–1603)

Part 2: The Stuarts

6. James I & VI (1603–1625)

7. Charles I (1625–1649)

8. Interregnum

9. Charles II (1660–1685)

10. James II & VII (1685–1688)

11. William III and Mary II (1689–1702)

12. Anne (1702–1714)

Postscript: To the present

Bibliography

List of figures

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0.1 Frontispiece. Design for the Hampton Court parterre by Daniel Marot, 1689

0.2 Arbour, frontispiece to Dydymus Mountaine’s The gardener’s labyrinth, 1577

0.3 Latticework, in Thomas Hyll, A most briefe and pleasaunt treatyse, 1558

0.4 Spring by Pieter Breughel the elder, pen and ink, 1565

0.5 Shelley Hall moated garden, existing with a dovehouse in 1519

0.6 ‘Marlborough mound’ in William Stukeley, Itinerarium Curiosum, 1776

0.7 Frontispiece to The Life and Death of Fair Rosamond, eighteenth century

0.8 Julian’s Bower turf maze at Alkborough, Lincolnshire

0.9 Vallery, Burgundy, by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau: print study, 1576

0.10 Location of the royal gardens mentioned in this book

0.11 The remains of Woodstock Manor and ‘Rosamund’s’

0.12 Windsor Castle in the fifteenth century

0.13 Westminster Palace in the fifteenth century

1.1 Woking Place, c. 1500

1.2 Blois, Loire Valley, by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, 1576

1.3 ‘Richemont’ from across the river, by Anton van den Wyngaerde, 1558

1.4 Eltham Palace, c. 1480

1.5 Draught of the Tower Liberties, by G. Haiward & J. Gascoyne, 1597 (re-engraved, detail)

1.6 Havering House, plan by John Symonds, 1578

1.7 Saint-Germain-en-Laye by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, 1570

1.8 Design for a labyrinth by Filarete, Trattato d’Architettura, sometime 1460–1464

1.9 Ideas for knots from The English Husbandman by Gervase Markham, 1613

1.10 Richmond Palace, c. 1503

2.1 Greenwich Palace from the park by Anton van den Wyngaerde, 1558

2.2 Wressle Castle, Yorkshire, as at 1540

2.3 New Hall (Beaulieu), Essex, as at 1530

2.4 Bridewell from the ‘Agas’ map of Civitas Londinium, c. 1557

2.5 Hampton Court as left by Cardinal Wolsey in 1529

2.6 York Place, Westminster, as left by Cardinal Wolsey in 1529

2.7 Whitehall in 1535

2.8 Whitehall on the ‘Agas’ map of Civitas Londinium, c. 1557

2.9 Whitehall water stairs and palace by Anton van den Wyngaerde, c. 1544

2.10 Sundial at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, by Nicholas Kratzer, c. 1525

2.11 Hampton Court, Great Orchard and tiltyard as at 1540

2.12 Hampton Court tiltyard towers by Anton van den Wyngaerde, c. 1558

2.13 Hampton Court, the New Garden as at 1535

2.14 Hampton Court from the river by Anton van den Wyngaerde, c. 1558

2.15 A Prospect of Hampton Court on the east side, c. 1660 (detail)

2.16 New Hall, copy of view of the house by Lorenzo Magalotti, 1669

2.17 Nonsuch as at 1548

2.18 Greenwich Palace as at 1548

3.1 The Encampment of King Henry VIII at Marquison MDXLIV, copied 1788

4.1 Mansions on the Strand on the ‘Agas’ map of Civitas Londinium, c. 1557

5.1 Whitehall Palace as at 1582

5.2 Westminster, by John Norden, 1593 (detail of St James’s Park)

5.3 Woodstock Park, Description of Rosamonds Bower by John Aubrey, 1670s

5.4 Nonsuch, vignette on John Speed’s Surrey Described, 1610

5.5 Montargis, the garden gallery by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, 1576

5.6 Nonsuch as at 1582

5.7 Acteon being turned into a stag by Virgil Solis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1563

5.8 Beddington Place as at 1600

5.9 Theobalds House as at 1600

5.10 Formwork for hedges in La Maison Rustique by Gervase Markham, 1616

5.11 Fürstliche Lustgarten zu Hessem, engraving by Matthäus Merian, 1654

5.12 Knot designs in Sebastiano Serlio’s Five Books of Architecture, 1537

5.13 Circular and square mazes in Thomas Hyll, The gardener’s labyrinth, 1577

6.1 Theobalds Park as at 1605

6.2 Hatfield House as at 1611

6.3 Somerset House as at 1605

6.4 Somerset House, survey by Robert Smythson, probably in 1609

6.5 St Germain-en-Laye, Chateau-Neuf, by Allesandro Francini, 1614

6.6 Richmond Palace garden enlargement 1611

6.7 ‘River goddess’ by Salomon de Caus in Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, 1615

6.8 Grotto work by Salomon de Caus in Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, 1615

6.9 Parnassus by Salomon de Caus in Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, 1615

6.10 Sketch of a water garden, probably by Mountaine Jennings, 1611

6.11 Colossus by Salomon de Caus in Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes, 1615

6.12 Richmond by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1638

6.13 Hortus Palatinus compartiment, Heidelberg, by Salomon de Caus, 1620

6.14 Oatlands Palace as at 1620

6.15 ‘Grænwich’ from the park by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1637 (detail)

7.1 St James’s House as at 1630

7.2 St James’s House, gateway by Inigo Jones, 1627

7.3 Plan of Edinburgh by John Gordon, 1647 (detail of Holyrood Palace)

7.4 Holyrood Palace, John Mylne’s sundial, 1633, engraved 1822

7.5 Wilton House, 1630s parterre by Isaac de Caus in Wilton Garden c. 1645

7.6 Saint-Germain-en-Laye Chateau-Neuf, parterre by Jacques Boyceau, 1638

7.7 Wilton House, bird’s-eye view by Isaac de Caus in Wilton Garden c. 1645

7.8 Wilton House, roof of the grotto by Isaac de Caus in Wilton Garden c. 1645

7.9 Wilton House garden by Lorenzo Magalotti, 1667.

7.10 Wimbledon Manor, reconstructed from a Parliamentary Survey of 1649

8.1 The Brass Statue of King Charles ye 1st at Charing Cross, engraved before 1675

8.2 Wenceslaus Hollar’s plan of London, c. 1658 (detail of Somerset House)

8.3 John Lambert satirised as ‘The Knight of the Golden Tulip’, reproduced 1886

8.4 Hampton Court, Privy Garden and Bowling Green as at 1670

9.1 William Morgan, London &c. Actually Survey’d, 1682 (vignette of Somerset House)

9.2 Royal Garden at St James’s by André Mollet, 1670 (two parts)

9.3 The so-called ‘Pepys Plan’ of Greenwich Park, c. 1675–1680

9.4 ‘Prospectus Orientalis’ by Robert Thacker & Francis Place, 1676

9.5 Hampton Court Palace, the Great Avenue through Bushy Park, as at 1664

9.6 William Morgan, London &c. Actually Survey’d, 1682 (detail of Upper St James’s Park)

9.7 Whitehall Privy Garden, Father Hall’s chandelier sundial, installed 1669

9.8 Audley End, ‘The Mount-garden side’, by Henry Winstanley, c. 1685

9.9 Whitehall Palace Privy Garden and fountain, c. 1685

9.10 W. Collier’s map of Windsor, 1742 (detail of earthworks by castle)

10.1 The Parish of St James’s by Richard Blome, c. 1689

11.1 Het Loo, reconstruction of how it was in 1690 by Kees J. van Nieukerken

11.2 Kensington Palace garden in 1690

11.3 Whitehall Palace, bird’s-eye view by Leonard Knyff, c. 1695

11.4 Hampton Court, initial ideas for rebuilding by Works, 1689

11.5 Hampton Court, Fountain Garden as at 1690

11.6 Hampton Court glass case of 1701 recorded in c. 1715

11.7 Hampton Court, etching of Privy Garden by Sutton Nicholls, c. 1696

11.8 The Royal Palace of Kensington, bird’s-eye view of c. 1726

11.9 Richmond Lodge in John Laurence’s A New System of Agriculture, 1726

11.10 Windsor Castle, Maestricht Garden design by Claude Desgots of 1698

12.1 Hampton Court, bird’s-eye view from the west by Leonard Knyff, taken 1702

12.2 A Prospect of…. Westminster and St. James’ Park, by Johannes Kip, 1710 (detail)

12.3 St James’s Palace and Park, c. 1702 by Leonard Knyff & Johannes Kip, 1707

12.4 Woodstock Park in Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire, 1682

12.5 Blenheim Palace by John Boydell, 1752

List of colour plates

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1 Jan van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece, 1432

2 A deplorable Mapp of Raglan Castle, by Laurence Smythe, 1652 (detail of castle gardens)

3 Kenilworth Castle, visualisation of how it may have been in 1420

4 Pleasure garden with a maze, by Lodewijck Toeput, c. 1579–1584

5 The Family of Henry VIII at Whitehall, c. 1545 (two details)

6 Hampton Court pond yard, the Henrician walls with Reigate stone capping

7 Topcliffe Castle, Yorkshire, the Maiden’s Bower, photographed 2013

8 Hampton Court, a re-creation of King’s beasts in the Chapel Court

9 Ashby Castle, Leicestershire, garden tower

10 An Ichonography of Lewes, by James Edwards, 1799 (detail of Lord’s Place)

11 Basing House, the restored garden photographed in 2007

12 Windsor Castle terrace shown on John Norden’s map of Windsor, 1607

13 Kenilworth Castle, the Earl of Leicester’s garden re-invoked in 2009

14 Kenilworth Castle, example of a knot

15 Palatium Regium… appellatum Nonciutz by Joris Hoefnagel, 1568, engraved 1582

16 Nonsuch, the Diana fountain from the Lumley Inventory, c. 1592

17 Nonsuch, the needle of Semiramis from the Lumley Inventory, c. 1592

18 Etruscan water jar with Herakles and the Hydra, c. 525 BC

19 Jeu de mail, as illustrated in the Alchetron encyclopedia

20 Holdenby House, earthworks survey, 1981

21 Richmond Palace, proposal for water gardens by Constantino de’ Servi, 1611

22 Kenilworth Castle, copy of a fresco once at Newnham Paddox, c. 1620

23 Hortus Palatinus, Heidelberg, by Jacques Fouquier c. 1615

24 Anna D(ei) G(ratia)… Regis at Oatlands by Paul van Somer, 1617 (detail)

25 Gladiator cast by Hubert le Sueur from an original at the Villa Borghese

26 Commodus as Hercules cast by Hubert le Sueur from an original in the Vatican

27 Somerset House from the Thames, copy of an original by Cornelius Bol, c. 1650

28 Nonsuch Palace, approach from the north-west, c. 1620

29 Hampton Court canal, possibly by Hendrick Danckerts, c. 1670

30 Greenwich Park, scheme for a parterre by André Le Nostre, probably 1662

31 View of the Old Cheesecake House in Hyde Park, by Thomas Sandby, 1797

32 Whitehall Fountain Garden with domed seat by Christopher Wren, 1675

33 The Long Walk, Windsor Park, by William Daniel, c. 1829

34 Hampton Court and a proposal for a ‘Trianon’, by William Talman, c. 1698

35 Hampton Court, the portico at the north end of the tunnel arbour

36 Hampton Court wilderness on a plan of the palace grounds, c. 1712

37 Het Loo, the ‘King’s Fountain’ restored

38 Hampton Court, the Flower Pot Gate onto the Kingston Road

39 Hampton Court, arbour in the Great Fountain Garden, constructed 1701

40 Hampton Court Privy Garden on a plan of the palace grounds, c. 1712

41 Hampton Court, ironwork screens by Jean Tijou

42 The North Prospect of Windsor Castle, by Leonard Knyff, c. 1707

43 Design for Kensington Gardens (the ‘Sandby Plan’) (detail), c. 1726

44 Kensington Gardens, alcove by Christopher Wren, 1705

45 Kensington Gardens, the Orangery by John Vanbrugh, 1704

46 Hampton Court, Fountain Garden, unexecuted plan, c. 1703–1707

47 Kensington Gardens and Plantations wth Hyde Park, probably by Charles Bridgeman, c. 1710

48 Hampton Court House Park, plan of chaise rides, 1710

49 A General Plan of Hampton Court, by Charles Bridgeman (attrib.), c. 1712 (detail of gardens)

50 Hampton Court, Lower Wilderness on survey of c.1712 (detail)

51 Bushy Park, Arethusa Fountain

52 Hampton Court Lion Gate piers by John Vanbrugh, 1712

53 Windsor Castle, a design for the Maestricht Garden, 1712

Acknowledgements

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In composing a previous book on Royal Gardens in 1992, Sir Roy Strong identified 10 royal garden makers from Charles II to another Charles on whose garden at Highgrove he himself had worked. That was an effective tactic that bypassed the patchiness of the information then available, but this book, with access to a mountain of further research, fills the gaps back to the fifteenth century and explains why so much money was spent on royal gardens from the time of Henry VII to that of Queen Anne.

One indispensable aid has been The History of the King’s Works (HKW), which was commissioned in 1951 by the Ministry of Works, responsible inter alia for the Royal Palaces. The HKW covered the activities of that office from medieval times until 1851. This book has a rather less ambitious aim to cover just over two centuries of royal endeavour, but embraces other topics because a history of gardens is rather more than just a subset of the history of buildings.

The Tudor period has been investigated by Simon Thurley, who envisaged The Royal Palaces of Tudor England (1993) as a ‘social history of royal building’, hence the subtitle Architecture and Court Life 1460–1547. He set out how the court was itinerant for some months of the year, and how the availability of hunting was often a factor in the choice of houses acquired for the Crown’s use. Thurley’s series of studies of the Tudor royal houses, down to his St James’s Palace (2022), has been immensely helpful to the understanding of those places, as were St John Hope’s Windsor Castle, John Dent’s The Quest for Nonsuch, John Cloake’s Palaces and Parks of Richmond and Kew, Jane Roberts’ monumental Royal Landscape: The Gardens and Parks of Windsor, and the scholarly new edition of John Nicholl’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I. The labours of Daphne Ford in recording Hampton Court in particular must be mentioned amongst the many sources employed by Thurley, and by me.

Amongst my fellow labourers on the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, I should mention Paula Henderson’s study on the architecture of the gardens, John Phillips of the Carshalton and District History and Archaeology Society for his advice over Beddington and Nonsuch, and Edward Martin concerning moated gardens. I am grateful to Sally Jeffery for our many and fruitful exchanges over John Rose, George London and Stuart royal gardeners generally. Annie Heron of Historic Royal Palaces and Jan Woudstra of the University of Sheffield helped with images.

I have been fortunate to be a consultant to Historic Royal Palaces from 1993 and closely involved in some of their projects, in particular the restoration of the Privy Garden at Hampton Court in 1993–5 and the research towards the HRP’s contribution to the Lancelot Brown celebrations in 2016. During all that time I was on HRP’s Gardens Panel, and collaborated with Thurley, his successors as curators, and the curatorial staff, and worked alongside Brian Dix, Jan Woudstra, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, and several others. As a consultant to English Heritage, I worked with Anna Keay and John Watkins in the re-invocation of the garden at Kenilworth Castle in 2009.

My own studies on the gardens of William of Orange and Queen Anne complemented Roberts’ Windsor; David Green’s Henry Wise; an exhaustive study on Kensington Gardens by Peter Gaunt and Caroline Knight; and The Survey of London. Help from the late lamented Susanne Groom, a former curator at Historic Royal Palaces and immensely well informed over statuary and the Tijou ironwork, plus her active encouragement generally, has been much appreciated. Thanks to Warwick Hawkins for proofreading. I must also gratefully acknowledge a great number of other authors whose specialised works have been keenly digested over many years and which will be found in the Bibliography.

Gratitude is extended to those galleries, libraries and museums that supply older items for academic books on a Creative Commons or Public Domain basis, and thus ameliorate the tedious grind of image assembly, foremost amongst which have been the Royal Collection Trust, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the King’s Maps collection at the British Library (made available through Flickr), the Yale Center for British Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, and the US Library of Congress. Thanks also to those institutions and individuals placing material with Wikimedia Commons. Where no credit is given under an illustration it is either an item from my personal collection, or a drawing by me.

Foreword: Royal gardens in national symbolism

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This book concerns the ‘soft power’ that gardens lend to creating favourable impressions – specifically the royal gardens of England in Tudor and Stuart times. Overt signals of the monarch’s public persona would include magnificent pageants and banquets, costly jewels, gorgeous apparel, impressive collections of paintings, furniture and plate, the best horses, the grandest houses, the most extensive forests – and the finest parks and gardens. The backdrop of palaces, parks and gardens that were unspoken statements of authority and cultural achievement gave status and credibility to the country’s representatives.

Medieval diplomacy often involved monarchs meeting face-to-face in order to affirm their personal guarantees on treaties, the last great example of which was Henry VIII’s meeting in 1520 on neutral ground at Ardres, south of Calais (the Field of the Cloth of Gold), with François I, King of France. Cardinal Wolsey had improved Hampton Court sufficiently by 1522 to be able to host Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

More usually, in that century, it would be the king’s trusted representative who would be received with pomp and festivity. There would be a procession, pageants, feasting, entertainment, hunting expeditions and hospitality at the palaces. Increasingly, though, the arts of effective communication, both back to one’s government and forth to one’s hosts, were prized as the stuff of diplomacy. Resident envoys were found in England as early as the reign of Henry VII, and stealthily became the norm thereafter.

The need for diplomacy, or wars if it failed, arose for several reasons. Territorial rivalries and successions to thrones were constant concerns in the Tudor and Stuart periods, religious divisions dominated the seventeenth century across Europe, and ensuring commercial access to trading partners was often contested between nations from the Commonwealth period in the middle of the seventeenth century and thereafter. The style of diplomatic endeavour would adapt to meet the new challenges, and so would the face of a country as presented to foreigners.

The diplomatic and political purposes of ‘early modern’ royal gardens have never been adequately explored. However, the king and then Parliament appreciated the part they played in national symbolism, so the Treasury spent great sums on them, and they were shown to envoys and tourists as a matter of national pride.

The chapters below have been ordered by dynasties – Tudor and Stuart – and then by reign. This was partly a matter of following the narrative, but it is also true that the personality of a monarch would often be stamped on their properties. It may be noted that although garden making was usually the prerogative of the senior male of a family, the Royal Gardens were several times directed by queens – Elizabeth I, Anna, Mary II and Anne.

A Prelude looks principally at the fifteenth century and describes the tradition of its purposes, layout and forms, and dispels several myths about medieval garden features, including those relating to labyrinths, knots, mounts and topiary. The royal gardens inherited by the Tudors are then introduced.

The Tudor era was dominated by the personage of Henry VIII who not only amplified traditions in making galleries and knots from his father’s reign, but started the recurring phenomenon of fortified gardens. In his reign too, several of his banqueting houses were for the entertainment of foreign dignitaries. This tradition continued through his daughter Elizabeth’s reign.

The greater, grander, Stuart garden features such as avenues, canals and fountains were aggrandised in competition with those abroad. The Hampton Court of William of Orange was an advertisement of national power and his personal authority. His taste resulted in some exquisite ironwork and stone carving, and led him to experiment with a very early steam pump for achieving one of his unfulfilled goals of the highest fountain jet in Europe.

The Royal Gardens organisation

The earlier keepers of the gardens and orchards had either been specialist gardeners answerable to the housekeepers, themselves overseen by the Lord Chamberlain (responsible for the royal household ‘above stairs’), or were the under-housekeepers for whom the gardens were just one of their duties. Garden projects over and above these duties needed a warrant to the Lord Treasurer to provide a named person with the monies to carry out the works.

In late Stuart times the Royal Gardens had their own organisation, distinguished from that of the Office of Works (which can be shortened to just ‘Works’); but always it operated in tandem with it. When Charles II embarked on planting projects in the Royal Parks of St James’s, Hampton Court and Greenwich in 1660 he adopted the French model in appointing a Supervisor of the Gardens, Walks, &c. Warrants were issued to the Treasury to pay Adrian May, the Supervisor, directly, and also André Mollet, the keeper of the Royal Garden in St James’s Park, and the keepers of the Pall Mall, and (humorously) the duck decoy in St James’s Park. Meanwhile Works carried out maintenance on the built elements.

William and Mary appointed a Superintendent of all the Royal Gardens, after the model established in their gardens in the Low Countries. This was the Earl of Portland, whose remit was the newly made or improved ones at Kensington, Hampton Court, the Little Garden at Windsor, Richmond Lodge and the riverside Terrace Walk at Whitehall. He headed an administration that was theoretically independent from that of Works, and overseen by the Treasury only. Queen Anne did not maintain that post, and supervised the Chief Gardener of all her gardens, Henry Wise, herself. However, that was a high point in the status of Royal Gardeners. After her demise, Wise, and his successors in the several royal gardens from 1738, were overseen by a Surveyor of Gardens and Waters.

Prelude: Medieval gardens

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The term ‘garden’ refers to the ‘garth’, or enclosure, required around areas valued for their contents or their privacy. It is the same word at root as ‘garten’, ‘jardin’ and ‘giardino’. Every early garden manual starts with advice on how to form its defence, either by water, hedge or wall. Gardeners, those persons responsible for this protection and the care of whatever was inside, could at times be vineyard attendants, fruiterers, herb gardeners or makers of arbours.

Pioneering work by Alicia Amherst in A History of Gardening in England (1895), and by John Harvey in Mediaeval Gardens (1981), has traditionally formed the bedrock of the modern understanding of medieval gardens. On the archaeological front, perhaps the greatest source of new insights since the Second World War came from the Moated Sites Research Group, which first identified moated gardens. Christopher Taylor, and others at the Royal Commission for Historic Monuments in England, continued from the 1980s to record many medieval and post-medieval landscapes, including recognising garden earthworks for what they really were. Taylor pointed out that several of the more elaborate schemes were effectively designed landscapes. Rob Liddiard and Oliver Creighton, also archaeologists, have told us much about the uses and layouts of medieval deer parks.

Garden and herber

Medieval gardens of pleasure existed to provide rest and pleasures to the senses. The English term often used was ‘herber’ (‘herbarium’ in dog Latin, such as in the accounts), which was turfed and not the equivalent of a ‘herb garden’. Its true meaning was suggested by its proper Latin translation, viz. viridarium (green place). One would level the ground, sterilise it with boiling water, lay turf, tamp it down and plant it around the edges with taller flowers and ornamental trees.¹ Smaller flowers could be dug out of meadows and planted as plugs into the sward, giving the mille-fleur or flowery mead effect, and later in the year the grass would be suppressed by rolling. The trees would be planted for shade and delight, as well as their fruit. Shade-giving structures within the herber could be adorned with climbers. Vines could be trained onto supports and rails, though as they grow higher the fences could be heightened and over-arched to become tunnels (Fig. 0.2), and then elaborated with aviaries to bring birdsong into the garden.

John Lydgate, a prolific poet from the first half of the fifteenth century, described a herber with bench seats and a fountain:

FIGURE 0.2. Arbour, frontispiece to Dydymus Mountaine (i.e. Thomas Hyll), The gardener’s labyrinth, 1577. Poles of ash and whips of willow would support the climbing plants, traditionally vines (The British Library Board, ref. 41.a.6/Public Domain)

Alle the aleis were made playne with sond,

The benches turved with newe turvis grene,

Sote herbers, with condite at the honde,

That wellid up agayne the sonne shene,

Lyke silver stremes as any christalle clene... ²

In the second half of the fifteenth century the ‘herber’ became a garden construction of withy, timber or even brick, whilst the word transitioned through changes in spoken English into ‘arbour’. The old herbers were increasingly referred to as ‘orchards’. The seclusion and simple pleasures of the Tudor ornamental version remained as described by William Lawson, a late representative of Elizabethan gardening: ‘the principal end of an orchard is the honest delight of one wearied with the works of his lawful calling’.³

The surround to a whole garden might be just a simple hedge, in which case it would probably consist of pleached quickset (hawthorn), entwined with brambles and dog roses. A more decorative version might have eglantine (sweet briar).

The more prominent plants that lent the herber its character were often the ancestors of common garden plants used today – violets, heartsease (pansy), daisies, strawberries (wild), cowslips, periwinkle, rose campions and wild red campions. Around the edges one might find taller bulbs and roots, including roses, the Madonna lily (bulbs sold by the quart), borage, stocks, wallflowers, purple fleur-de-lys, hollyhocks, ‘female’ peonies, columbine, marigold and lavender (Plate 1).

Fruit trees that were planted into the turf might include the Pearmain and Costard cooking apples, or cooking pears such as Caillou Rosat (Rosy pebble) and Pesse-pucelle. There might be the bullace plum, sweet cherries, (black) mulberries, medlars, peaches, quince, and service trees. Filberts (a type of hazel) were common, walnut trees less so. Shrubs valued for being evergreen were juniper and savin.

The structure of an arbour overarching the sanded alleys was usually of willow, and planted over with climbers. These could be (white) bryony or honeysuckle, but the tradition was vines. An alternative to willow since Classical times was suckers of ‘English elm’, which will root themselves readily when plunged into the ground. When not pruned, these suckers shoot fast and straight into a very considerable tree, which over time became widely used in field hedges. They were an obvious choice for planting alongside walks.

If the area enclosed consisted of cultivated beds these would probably have been protected by posts and rails with a latticework infill (Fig. 0.3). The white and red roses would most likely be found entwined in it. The beds grew herbs for the pot and for physick (medicine). They could also be annuals to which no use had yet been ascribed, but which were worth the trouble for the sake of their beauty. Some of the more traditional flowers such as the lily (a bulb) and the peony (a perennial) were, though, better admired in the herber growing through the grass.

The cultivated