Garden Works in Greenwich Park, 1662-1728

BY DAVID JACQUES

THIS PAPER CONCERNS THE GARDEN MAKING in Greenwich Park co-eval with the building of Charles II's new palace in the 1660'S. At this timemost or all of the Tudor gardens were removed, but these will not be

discussed here. The new garden works were the only authenticated scheme inEngland by Andre Ie Nostre, Louis XIV's famous gardener at Versailles, thoughthe scheme was settled by correspondence and he seems never to have set foot inEngland (Plate 11A). There will be a postscript on how the abandoned Charles IIgardens came to be an examplar of a very different style of gardening in the 1720'S.

Part of King Charles II's impecunious though debauched exile abroad was hisresidence in Paris and Saint-Germain-en-Laye from 1651 until 1654. No doubtCharles would have seen the new palaces of the time, for example the King'sFontainebleau and Cardinal Richelieu's Rueil. At this time his mother, HenriettaMaria, and sister, Henrietta Anne, were staying at the Louvre. Charles becamegreatly attached to his sister, who was to provide a useful link to the French courtin the 1660'S.

Charles was keen to form gardens appropriate to a modern monarch, andwithin two years of his Restoration had impressive canals dug at St James's Parkand at Hampton Court, the latter briefly the longest canal in Europe. These canalsappear to have been devised by the paymaster of the Office of Works, Hugh May,who had spent much of the Interregnum in the Netherlands. Charles ,also enlisted ~the services of the elderly Andre Mollet, who had worked for Henrietta Maria inEngland twenty years previously, and his nephew Gabriel; the warrant was datedJune 1661.1 In one document they were described as <his Maties Gardiners andDesigners of all his Gardens' responsible <for altering & making them into theneatest formes'.2 By <desseigneur' was meant <draughtsman', a title and role thatAndre Mollet had fulfilled at other royal palaces, in the Netherlands and Sweden,principally as a designer of parterres de broderie. Hugh May's brother Adrian wasappointed in December 1661 to be <supervisor of the French gardeners employedat Whitehall, St James and Hampton Court, to examine their bills, accounts, &c.,and see that they have due satisfaction; with salary of £200 a year therefor', andthis indicates that the intention was that Andre Mollet should contribute hisdesigns to the reformation of the gardens at all these places.3

1 Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series of the Reign of Charles II, Mary Anne Everett Green,F. H. Blackburne Daniell and Francis Bickley, eds, 27 vols (London, 1860-1938) (hereafter CSPD),1661-2, p. 25.

2 The National Archives (hereafter TNA), T51h4, p. 255.3 CSPD, 1661-2, p. 175·

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In the event, Charles II never gave the Mollets the opportunity to show theirskill in parterres de broderie, and their role was chiefly confined to a further duty,'to keepe His Maties Royall Garden that is to be planted wth fruite trees and flowersin St James Parke betweene St James howse &ye Spring Garden wall'. Andre andGabriel now took on the project for the 'Royall Garden' and accomplished thework in the second half of 1661.

By the start of 1662 Charles II had developed his ambitious ideas for a newpalace at Greenwich, in part a residence for Henrietta Maria, but also, SimonThurley has suggested, to be the first impression for visiting monarchs andambassadors. Until this time there had been few changes to the gardens or park,and those which did happen were confined mainly to plantations intended tosupply fuel to the palace. Sir William Boreman took the lead in this. He had beena minor official, a Clerk of the Kitchen, in the 1640'S, and spent the 1650'S atGreenwich where he had bought land.4 After the Restoration he became Clerk ofthe Green Cloth and Clerk Comptroller of the King's Household. In August 1661he sought permission, which he was given in September, to carry out the plantingof (Boreman's bower' at the south end of the park adjacent to the park wall overthe winter of 1661/2.5 John Rocque's plan of London of 1746,to take one example,indicates the Great Wilderness and the Little Wilderness (Plate 12A).However theplantations were not. really wildernesses but fourteen coppice woods of elms,birch, and other trees. Amongst these plantations were seven walks, requiringchestnuts and 600 elms which came from Lesnes Abbey.

The Queen's House, set in the northern wall of the park, had included a loggia,probably intended as a grandstand for events in the park (Plate SA).New modifi-cations here were commenced from 1662.Charles now desired a cascade down thehillside on axis with the Queen's House. When he was in Paris he may well haveseen the nine-step escalier cascade at Rueil made in the late 1630'S by CardinalRichelieu.6 Other such devices in place at the Restoration included some eitherside of a flight of steps at Vaux-Ie- Vicomte, devised by Andre Ie Nostre forNicholas Fouquet, the minister of finance (Plate lIB). The Greenwich cascadewould have been even grander than these, requiring hydraulic expertise notavailable in England at the time. It should also be remarked that Blackheath, thecommon above Greenwich Park, is not known for being finely watered, andCharles would have had to construct a feeder channel from the Eltham orShooters Hill area some two miles away. This must at least have been investigated,as Charles was to assure his sister Henrietta Anne that water was available forwaterworks?

In late 1661the hillside was shaped into twelve levels under the supervision ofSir William Boreman (Plate 12B).These 'ascents' cost £249 12S6d.8 They were seen

4 Inf. Andrew Barclay, History of Parliament Trust, 28 April 2005.5 A. G. L'Estrange, The Palace and the Hospital; or, Chronicles of Greenwich (London, 1886), p. 63.6 Kenneth Woodbridge, 'The Picturesque Image of Richelieu's Gardens at Rueil', Garden History, 9,

1, Spring 1981,pp. 1-22.7 C. H. Hartmann, Charles II and Madame (London, 1934), p.n8.8 TNA, E351/3428, Sir William Boreman, Works in Greenwich Park, 1 Sept. 1661-10 June 1662; also

CSPD, 1661-2, p. 39.

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on the hillside by Greenwich Castle (later replaced by the Observatory) bySamuel Pepys in the company of Sir William Penn in April 1662. He wrote that hehad (walked into the Parke, where the King hath planted trees and made steps inthe hill up to the Castle, which is very magnificent'.9 The best explanation forthese steps is that they were the preparatory earthworks for a staircase cascade.

Why the cascade project suffered a hiatus at that point is unknown, but Bore-man was not asked to take the matter any further. This does not appear to havereflected badly on him, as in 1671 he was promoted to be the Underkeeper of theHouse and Park at Greenwich.1O However early in 1662 Charles wrote to HenriettaAnne in Paris asking for advice on who might complete his project at Greenwich.At Charles's restoration her marriage prospects had naturally brightened, and shemarried Louis XIV's brother, Philippe, Due d'Or1eans, in March 166011. She wasmuch in favour at the French court and it had been in her honour that Fouquethad held the first of two fetes to show off his newly-completed Vaux-Ie-Vicomteon 12 July 1661 - the second, on 17August, being for Louis XIV himself. Everyonewas highly impressed, and Le Nostre's career was assured. On the other hand,Fouquet's was at an end. Three weeks later, unhappy at the royal scale of hisminister's building and gardening works (perhaps funded by embezzlement),Louis had Fouquet thrown into prison where he would spent the rest of his life.

Henrietta Anne recommended Le Nostre to her brother as the new genius ofgarden design who might complete the work at Greenwich.ll In May 1662 LouisXIV was informed that Charles II wanted to borrow Le Nostre. This was not agood time for him to be taken away from numerous projects at home, and he wasespecially busy at Fontainebleau. Louis remarked that (j'aie tous les jours besoinde Lenostre', but graciously indicated that (je lui permettrai volontiers d' aller faireun tour en Angleterre, puisque Ie Roi Ie desire'.

Charles II must have anticipated Le Nostre's arrival keenly: he made him apresent of five geldings and a mare and in October 1662 issued a warrant to (yeFarmers of our Customes' to permit (Le Nostre our Architect' to import thesehorses into France without payment of customs.12 Despite these inducements,there is no confirmation that Le Nostre ever actually made the journey. On theother hand he did sketch out a scheme based on dimensions sent to him(Plate 13A).13 It is undated, but shows the corner pavilions being planned for theQueen's House in late 1662, and for which the foundations were dug in 1663. Thenew garden was to be in the park which rose southwards gradually, then steeply,to the Castle. A large area was to be sunk for a parterre, to be in view from theQueen's House. Le Nostre proposed three fountains, one on an axis towards therear, and two at the corners nearest the house. The parterre thus had close

9 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds, 11vols (London, 1970-6),III, p. 63.

10 TNA, C274/34, 8 February 1671.11 Lady Rockley (Mrs Evelyn Cecil), A History of Gardening in England (London, 1910), p. 186.12 TNA, T51/Io, p. 137.13 Institute de France, MS 1605, no. 61; reproduced in F. Hamilton Hazlehurst, Gardens of Illusion

(Nashville, 1980), plate 289.

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similarities with Le Nostre's new parterre at the Chateau- Vieux at 5aint-Germain-en-Laye of a very similar date (Plate 13B).The difference was that thehillside at Greenwich had to be cut into, and Le Nostre jotted down numerousnotes on forming the terraces around the parterre. These terraces were to beplanted with walks of trees (Plate 14B), and these were to radiate out to theboundaries of the park (Plate 14A),much as had been planned for Vaux and wasbeing planned for the Grand Parc at Versailles.14

The King seems to have been pleased overall, but noted that there was no signof his wished-for cascade. At the rear of the parterre Le Nostre had sketched in alarge arcade, presumably intended to have a grotto within and a viewing platformabove. Charles wrote to Henrietta Anne: 'Pray lett Le Nostre goe on with themodel and only tell him this addition that I can bring water to the top of the hill,so that he might add much to the beauty of the descente by a cascade of water:Eager to push on, Charles decided to go ahead with the parterre anyway,presumably intending to insert the cascade later.

The undertakers who had been digging the Long Water at Hampton Court,Edward Maybancke and others, must have been moved straight on to Greenwichwhere the vast earthworks were probably underway in the winter of 1662/3.15 JohnRose, who had once worked in France, and who at the time was the Royal Garde-ner at 5t James's Palace, was brought over to Greenwich, and he was the mostlikely person to have set the design out on the ground. Maybancke and his fellowcontractors laboured throughout 1663, and cast up their bills in 'floors', each ofthese being a rod square by a foot deep, which makes about a cubic yard. Theyfilled a pit, taking 690, floors, and excavated 10,000·more floors to create the plainfor the parterre. Levelling to create even slopes on the walks across the park tookover 1,000 more floors. Then resoiling took place. 'Levelling and new mouldingthe said Tarras Walkes wth new fine mould' took 1,160 floors. Finally, PhilipMoore, gardener, supervised the 'Levelling the Plaine in the Parke'. He had over-seen the planting at Hampton Court, and as soon as he could be spared fromthere, in August 1664, he was sent to Greenwich. His job must have been to pre-pare the intended floor of the parterre which would have required detailedmeasurements with a level. Adrian May's site agent at Hampton Court thenGreenwich, Adrian Pratt, purchased 700 large elm trees, 500 of which were for theterraces, and 7,000 lime trees for the park walks and the nursery. John Rose madefinal preparations like grubbing out bushes and levelling banks, and planting andwatering started in January 1663/4. Planting continued until 6 February 1664/5,and watering till July 1665, during which time 294 moles were caught.

By the summer of 1665 Charles II was being forced to accept that his plans forthe new palace were out of his reach, though the buildings then existing wouldbecome part of Greenwich Hospital. Charles II's ambitions regarding his gardensalso had to be abandoned, but not before £3,604 8s 7d had been spent. Thecascade, the fountains and the parterre were left undone, but the earthmoving

14 Hamilton Hazlehurst, Gardens of Illusion, pIs 4, 42.15 TNA, AOI/2481/292, 'Accompt of Hugh May Esq administrator of Adrian May Esq, 1672'.

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and planting were complete, and their remnants may be inspected today.16Likewise, Boreman's (ascents', which were soon popularly known as the (Giant'sSteps', can still be detected in an even more eroded state.

The postscript is from the time of Charles Bridgeman. During the 1720'S hewas the nation's foremost landscape designer, and one of his devices was tominiaturise and formalise parkland features for use in the garden. This includedshrinking the medieval parkland (lawn', an area of lush grass where the deerwould browse, preferably near the windows of the lodge, down to a garden area- this is the origin of the garden lawn. Many of Bridgeman's garden lawns wereflanked by stepped groves, and examples can be seen onhis drawings (Plate 15A).Bridgeman's would-be rival, Batty Langley, produced a book entitled NewPrinciples of Gardening in 1728. In it he illustrates ~n Oblong Lawn' which herecommended (before the grand Front of a Building, into the Park' (Plate 15B).17This is unmistakeably Le Nostre's terraces and open walks at Greenwich.Presumably Langley had no idea that these had been intended to frame exactlythe sort of garden that his New Principles sought to eradicate. Equally, Le Nostrewould have been somewhat surprised to see his scheme in its abandoned statebeing cited as a model for a very English style of gardening.

Dr David Jacques

Dr David Jacques was Head of Historic Parks and Gardens at English Heritage(1987-93) before returning to consultancy, for example on Chiswick House andGrounds and the Privy Garden at Hampton Court. He has just completed sixyears as Programme Director of Landscape Conservation & Change at the Archi-tectural Association. He is author of Georgian Gardens: The Reign of Nature (1983)and The Gardens of William and Mary (1988), and is preparing other books on thetheory of landscape appreciation and design, garden conservation and gardenhistory. He retains an involvement with Hampton. Court over the managementplan, historical research and exhibitions, and is one of the trustees of theChiswick House and Gardens Trust.

16 Paul Pattison) ed.) There by Design: Field Archaeology in Parks and Gardens) British ArchaeologicalReport) 267 (Swindon) 1998)) pp. 42-3.

17 Batty Langley) New Principles of Gardening (London) 1928)) p. xiv and pI. XVI.

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PLATE llA London and the Thames from Greenwich Park,attributed to Jan Griffier, c.1700

PLATE llB Cascades at Vaux-Ie- Vicomte by Israel Silvestre

PLATE 12A Extractfrom An exact Surveyof ... London ... andnear ten miles round)

by John Rocque) 1746

PLATE 12B (Prospectusorientalis) by Francis Place)

c.1675

PLATE 13A Sketchplan for a parterre atGreenwich, by AndreIe Nostre, c.1662

PLATE 13B Parterreat Chateau -Vieux,Sain t-Germain -en-Laye, by Adam Perelle

PLATE 14A Survey ofGreenwich) c. 1710

PLATE 14B (FaciesSpeculae Septen» byFrancis Place) c. 1675

PLATE 15A Detail of a planfor Amesbury) by CharlesBridgeman) 1738

PLATE 15B c.An Oblong Lawn» inBatty Langley's New Principles) 1728