Merlin, hermits and follies: William Kent at Kew

A fashion for follies

Just as plants in gardens range from the ornamental to useful, the same applies to architecture. Often called follies, purely decorative buildings have always been a feature of Kew Gardens, although not all can still be seen today.

Kew Gardens was formed from both the original Kew Garden and the neighbouring Richmond Gardens. It was the latter site that became enamoured of gothic follies in the early 1700s when both a hermitage and a cave were built by William Kent, followed not long after by over 20 other structures by William Chambers.

The Hermitage

During 1731–1733, Kent was commissioned by Queen Caroline to build a hermitage near the river (in what was then Richmond Garden). Hermitages had become common in gardens in continental Europe some years before, but became popular in English gardens in the 1700s. They were more simplistic than their French and Italian counterparts, which was in keeping with the 18^th century philosophical idea of recreating the innocence of the Garden of Eden. Many hermitages were empty or containing dummies (or busts, like Kent’s), but there were some that had a real hermit such as in Vauxhall Gardens.

E.Currl describes visiting it as follows:

…very Grotesque, being a Heap of Stones thrown into a very artful Disorder, and curiously embellished with Moss and Shrubs, to represent rude Nature.

- The Rarities of Richmond, being the exact descriptions of the Royal Hermitage and Merlin’s Cave with his life and prophecies. Currl, E (1736), p.111-12 -

Although rustic from the outside, the inside was a sophisticated, classical design made up of a central octagon with two ‘cells’ either side, one containing a bust of Robert Boyle (a chemist and the founder of the Royal Society) on an altar. Inside niches of the central room were four more busts of Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, John Locke and William Wollaston (all equally famous scientists at the time, but some less known today). The Queen was a keen patron of the sciences and E. Currl wrote a poem (attributed to ‘A Lady’ ) explaining why the hermitage would have received the Queen's approval.

These are the Worthies whom our Glorious QUEEN Delights to Honour, in this solemn Scene, Here consecrates their Memory to Fame, Uniting Theirs, to Her Own deathless Name.

- The Rarities of Richmond, being the exact descriptions of the Royal Hermitage and Merlin’s Cave with his life and prophecies. Currl, E (1736), p.18 -

Capability Brown and the end of ‘fairie-land’

In the 1760s, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown was eager for the prestige of a royal appointment when he was hired to landscape Richmond Gardens. Although his idea of a natural landscape was similar to William Kent’s, Brown was less enamoured with follies and did not hesitate to destroy all of Kent’s (the hermitage was left as a ruin but Merlin’s Cave was sold for scrap), as well as many of Chamber’s buildings. Only six of Chamber’s buildings survive today (the Ruined Arch, the Chinese Pagoda, the Orangery, and three of his Temples), but nearly all have been relocated or rebuilt.

Brown’s opposition to the formal style of garden was shared by many commentators of the day, and can be seen in the sarcastic Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers by William Mason:

"Come then, prolific Art, and with thee bring
The charms that rife from thy exhaustless spring;
To Richmond come, for fee, untutor’d Brown
Destroys those wonders which were once they own.
Lo, from his melon-ground the peasant slave
Has rudely rushe’d, and levell’d Merlin’s Cave;
Knock’d down the waxen Wizzard, seiz’d his wand,
Transform’d to lawn what late was Fairy land;
And marr’d, wit impious hand, each sweet design
Of Stephen Duck, and good sweet Caroline.”

- An heroic epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight. William Mason (1774), lines 53-62

Today, the legacy of both Kent and Brown is commemorated in the Lake Crossing - a bridge across the lake designed to represent the two styles of their landscape design.

- Melissa Candy -

Library Graduate Trainee