Gardener's World
There is a stone shelter in the grounds of Londesborough Lodge on the Crescent that was used by gardeners to store their tools. The shelter has since been gated off to deter anti-social behaviour. The shelter is described in the Scarborough and District Civic Society’s book, The Streets Of Scarborough by Raymond Fieldhouse and John Barrett as a ‘Hermits Cell’. A hermits cell or hermitage is a folly, a novelty, popular in the 18th and 19th Centuries, often found in the gardens of the wealthy and the aristocracy. A romantic whimsy for those who could afford pineapples (once so expensive that they were hired out by the hour, to adorn the head tables at soirées). The upper classes would employ a member of the lower classes to dress in the white robes of a Druid, adorn a silly hat and live at the bottom of the garden to peep out of the shrubbery. This curious provision indulged the Victorian fondness for indulging melancholy and sobriety, though social historians admit, that little is now understood as to why employing an ornamental hermit would ease the doldrums.
Londesborough Lodge was the Scarborough Villa of The First Earl of Londesborough, who used the residence while taking in the North Sea air and the spring waters at Scarborough Spa. This building, along with The White House next door, previously known as The East Villa, form an important group of buildings on The Crescent. Both of these buildings and the grounds are grade II listed, protected for their special architectural and historical importance.
The idea of the hermit’s cell became popular in the 18th Century and appeared in different building styles in different country estates all around Britain, ranging from simple cave constructions, to timber shack fabrications and out houses.
In some case, such as the hermit’s cell in the gardens of Londesborough Lodge, the resident hermit didn’t exist, he was only hinted at, his abode was there but the hermit was not. A sign would read ‘out to lunch’ or ‘Gone Fishing’. In some stately gardens hermitages had a table and chair constructed outside the hermitage with glasses, a pipe and coat suggesting the hermit was around but just couldn’t be seen. Other garden estates employed a member of the lower class to live in the cell, adopt a Druid’s garb and often to recite a poem or script of classical prose to entertain guests of the estate.
Stone circles or other ancient ruins such as Castles were seen as ideal plunder for constructing hermitages as genuine ruins had an authentic link to antiquity.
Many ancient ruins where uprooted and moved to private gardens to improve its character. They were then decorated with ferns, fossils and perhaps water features.
The ‘Druids Temple’ in the park grounds of New Swinton Hall near Masham is a good example of such a folly. Built by William Danby in 1821 who paid local workers affected by depression to construct a Stonehenge and then paid a hermit to live on site, instructing it to not speak to visitors and encouraged it to grow his hair and beard long and wild to fit the part.
This may account for why the Stone Circle outside of Cloughton was labelled as a ‘Druid Circle’ in the 18th Century. The Stone Circle being on the boundary of the Whitby Strand and Pickering Lythe, is situated near ancient woodland supplying Whitby Abbey. This hermitage trend could have influenced antiquarian Robert Knox to label the Stone Circle as a ‘Druid Circle’, although the Druid was ‘out to lunch’. There are no records of the Stone Circle ever being lived in by a ornamental hermit but in Knox supplied a drawing of a hairy victim tied to one of the stones, forever waiting for the Druids return.
As mentioned in a previous article, classical columns where being duplicated on the porches of the new buildings of commerce. The columns of Jachin and Boaz, according to the Old Testament, stood on the porch way of The Great Temple of Solomon, where upon according to myth, they were inscribed the information necessary to build a civilisation. As the great industrialists industrialised Britain, they seemed to not only want for classical buildings but they also craved wild nature. They would build this wildness in their garden appropriating ornamental hermitages. Both the classical architecture and hermitages symbolised civic virtue, financialsuccess andeloquence.
“When you are sad, a garden comforts. When you are humiliated or defeated, a garden consoles. When you are lonely it offers companionship that is true and lasting. When you are weary your garden will sooth and refresh you.”-Monty Don
The idea of a garden retreat reputably originated by the Emperor Hadrian who allegedly made an Island in the grounds of his estate where he would keep a chair and simple hut so that he would retreat from pressures of running the Roman Empire. The Pope also has such a little house in the grounds of the Vatican. Winston Churchill was said to have places where he could make oil paintings to help him ‘to stave off the black dog’, his name for his depression. Sir John Soane the architect who designed The Bank Of England and Royal Academy buildings in London had his hermitage inscribed with the word of the Roman poet Horace’, ‘dulce est desipere in loco’, meaning ‘a little nonsense now and then is relished by the finest man’, a proverb memorably articulated by Roald Dahl’s character Willy Wonka.
DavWhiteArt.com
There is a stone shelter in the grounds of Londesborough Lodge on the Crescent that was used by gardeners to store their tools. The shelter has since been gated off to deter anti-social behaviour. The shelter is described in the Scarborough and District Civic Society’s book, The Streets Of Scarborough by Raymond Fieldhouse and John Barrett as a ‘Hermits Cell’. A hermits cell or hermitage is a folly, a novelty, popular in the 18th and 19th Centuries, often found in the gardens of the wealthy and the aristocracy. A romantic whimsy for those who could afford pineapples (once so expensive that they were hired out by the hour, to adorn the head tables at soirées). The upper classes would employ a member of the lower classes to dress in the white robes of a Druid, adorn a silly hat and live at the bottom of the garden to peep out of the shrubbery. This curious provision indulged the Victorian fondness for indulging melancholy and sobriety, though social historians admit, that little is now understood as to why employing an ornamental hermit would ease the doldrums.
Londesborough Lodge was the Scarborough Villa of The First Earl of Londesborough, who used the residence while taking in the North Sea air and the spring waters at Scarborough Spa. This building, along with The White House next door, previously known as The East Villa, form an important group of buildings on The Crescent. Both of these buildings and the grounds are grade II listed, protected for their special architectural and historical importance.
The idea of the hermit’s cell became popular in the 18th Century and appeared in different building styles in different country estates all around Britain, ranging from simple cave constructions, to timber shack fabrications and out houses.
In some case, such as the hermit’s cell in the gardens of Londesborough Lodge, the resident hermit didn’t exist, he was only hinted at, his abode was there but the hermit was not. A sign would read ‘out to lunch’ or ‘Gone Fishing’. In some stately gardens hermitages had a table and chair constructed outside the hermitage with glasses, a pipe and coat suggesting the hermit was around but just couldn’t be seen. Other garden estates employed a member of the lower class to live in the cell, adopt a Druid’s garb and often to recite a poem or script of classical prose to entertain guests of the estate.
Stone circles or other ancient ruins such as Castles were seen as ideal plunder for constructing hermitages as genuine ruins had an authentic link to antiquity.
Many ancient ruins where uprooted and moved to private gardens to improve its character. They were then decorated with ferns, fossils and perhaps water features.
The ‘Druids Temple’ in the park grounds of New Swinton Hall near Masham is a good example of such a folly. Built by William Danby in 1821 who paid local workers affected by depression to construct a Stonehenge and then paid a hermit to live on site, instructing it to not speak to visitors and encouraged it to grow his hair and beard long and wild to fit the part.
This may account for why the Stone Circle outside of Cloughton was labelled as a ‘Druid Circle’ in the 18th Century. The Stone Circle being on the boundary of the Whitby Strand and Pickering Lythe, is situated near ancient woodland supplying Whitby Abbey. This hermitage trend could have influenced antiquarian Robert Knox to label the Stone Circle as a ‘Druid Circle’, although the Druid was ‘out to lunch’. There are no records of the Stone Circle ever being lived in by a ornamental hermit but in Knox supplied a drawing of a hairy victim tied to one of the stones, forever waiting for the Druids return.
As mentioned in a previous article, classical columns where being duplicated on the porches of the new buildings of commerce. The columns of Jachin and Boaz, according to the Old Testament, stood on the porch way of The Great Temple of Solomon, where upon according to myth, they were inscribed the information necessary to build a civilisation. As the great industrialists industrialised Britain, they seemed to not only want for classical buildings but they also craved wild nature. They would build this wildness in their garden appropriating ornamental hermitages. Both the classical architecture and hermitages symbolised civic virtue, financialsuccess andeloquence.
“When you are sad, a garden comforts. When you are humiliated or defeated, a garden consoles. When you are lonely it offers companionship that is true and lasting. When you are weary your garden will sooth and refresh you.”-Monty Don
The idea of a garden retreat reputably originated by the Emperor Hadrian who allegedly made an Island in the grounds of his estate where he would keep a chair and simple hut so that he would retreat from pressures of running the Roman Empire. The Pope also has such a little house in the grounds of the Vatican. Winston Churchill was said to have places where he could make oil paintings to help him ‘to stave off the black dog’, his name for his depression. Sir John Soane the architect who designed The Bank Of England and Royal Academy buildings in London had his hermitage inscribed with the word of the Roman poet Horace’, ‘dulce est desipere in loco’, meaning ‘a little nonsense now and then is relished by the finest man’, a proverb memorably articulated by Roald Dahl’s character Willy Wonka.
DavWhiteArt.com
Druids Temple (Folly) Masham
