a Grand Tour in Surrey [pt 2]
As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, Painshill Park is quite a large estate, and there is a lot to see in it - our visit was about five hours long. Our first stop was the walled garden, which is full of pretty colours from the wonderful flowers. Charles Hamilton was a keen collector of plants and imported exotic species, turning Painshill Park into one of the greatest gardens of the eighteenth century.
Lots of the plants in the walled garden are American, because the original garden had been planted with seeds sent by John Bartram, a farmer and plant collector from Philadelphia, who sent subscribers boxes of mystery seeds at a cost of five-guineas (you can't do that anymore!). There were several mysterious plants in the walled garden that we didn't recognise, like this odd berry plant - anyone know what it is? It looks a bit like buddleia, but with berries instead of flowers. It caught my eye, because the berries look like beads.
The route from walled garden takes you through a peaceful meadow and past a vineyard on a sloping hill overlooking a large lake. This lake is the centrepiece of the estate, which Hamilton himself created artificially, although it's been suggested that he may have had the the help of Batty Langley, who advertised that he could provide "Engines for raising Water in any Quantity to any height required, for the service of Noblemen's Seats, Cities Towns &c."1 The lake was created with an elaborate series of locks and waterwheels that brought in water from the River Mole, although these are all now redundant as the lake has become a natural one that can sustain itself through rainfall and surface drainage.
Past the vineyard, you come out into the Amphitheatre, which isn't a theatre at all, but a manicured lawn, based on a plan by the map-maker John Roque, surrounded by trees and shrubbery beds bordered with round box hedges. (These border hedges appear all over the estate, often in long, attractive lines, but there's something comical and cartoonish about them, too.) The Amphitheatre is rather pretty, resembling a semi-formal garden, with lots of layers of green shapes to look at, and a couple of elegant cedar trees.
At the other end of the lawn is the delightful Gothick Temple, also attributed to Batty Langley. Although called the Gothick Temple, it has a distinctly Moorish feel, largely due to the colour and pattern of the interior, especially the pretty lotus design on the ceiling.
It's an utterly charming little pavilion, right on the tip of a hill, with carefully framed views stretching across the valley to the tip of the Turkish Tent which sits on a hill at the other side of the lake (more on that in a later post). It's the perfect place for a fairy-tale wedding, or perhaps for a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It's also a good place to stop and ponder the view:
1This information came from Headley & Meulenkamp's Directory of Follies; other information found via the BBC's Long View, here and here.