Kew Palace | Author, Jane Lark's stories

I have used follies in my Regency Romances because I love the idea of building something just for fun, just for adult entertainment, be that entertainment innocent or sinful. The Georgian eras were renowned for pleasure seeking, from the pleasure gardens that people paid to attend, like Vauxhall, to the tunnels and rooms dug beneath the Chiltern Hills created for the Hellfire Club. One of the most popular follies for innocent entertainment at the time, was to build a cottage in the garden. Just a single room that could be used for more simple pleasures like stopping for a cup of tea during an afternoon stroll.

I have used the folly in the images below, which is in the grounds of Stourhead, as an example to make up my own cottage folly for scenes in a book. I have always thought it quite impressive that so much detail was built into something people only occasionally used. But that was the whole point of a folly, it was a stupid waste of money, but it was also, therefore, an expression of how wealthy you were because you had money you could afford to waste on such a luxury.

So when I saw the cottage built for Queen Charlotte in the grounds of the palace at Kew, London… Below. Well, what a folly, or you could say what a silly waste of money. Or you could say what an impressive investment in luxury. Royal luxury.

This cottage folly serves exactly the same purpose as the much smaller version at Stourhead, and I love that they are built in a similar style, displaying the same fashion, with a chimney/s and thatched roof. Just like the cottage at Stourhead, the cottage in the grounds of Kew Gardens, is a place to stop while they took some exercise in the grounds, they may have ridden or walked to reach it, and the servants would be there already with a luncheon prepared. It is not a place where anyone can live, or stay, it is literally for a short period of pleasure.

I have to say, this is not the tallest folly I have ever seen, but I think it well maybe the largest.

I have been calling myself an amateur historian ever since I managed to find a potentially lost manor site and had the manor site, and my name as finder, listed by English Heritage a few years ago. So if that is not enough evidence that I have a good eye for these things, then here’s another little tale. My knowledge comes from reading about everything when I visit historical places, then reading everything about the place after I have visited it, studying places all the way back to their origins and finding out about life, about the people who lived there through time and how they’ve lived. So after a life time of this curiosity, as that is all it really is, I spot things, things that look different.

In this tale the unusual thing I spotted was a rectangular pond at the edge of Kew’s ‘village’ green.

A pond on a village green is normal, you might be saying?

Yes it is, I answer, but not the shape. That is the thing. Ponds usually have curved banks. It’s unusual enough for me to think it was more than just a normal pond on a village green. But then there’s this concrete ramp, what was that about? And concrete isn’t old… BUT THE SHAPE – my mind continues to tell me.

When I say village, of course Kew village was long ago subsumed into the heart of London. However, the ancient green, where once residents would have grazed livestock, and cut down hay to feed animals through the winter months, or perhaps used the hay to stuff mattresses or lay across mud floors to carpet their houses, survives. Possibly the green survived, (or was re-established as there are a lot of lines on the image below) because the gates to Kew Palace stand at one end.

The pond is positioned at the edge furthest from the palace and closer to The Thames.

At first, when I saw the concrete ramp, I thought it was something to do with river. Opposite the pond, there’s a road of old houses that were used by people who worked on the river, and the river bank is only a couple of hundred meters further on.

BUT THE SHAPE – my brain kept saying. Because I have only ever seen that shape of pond when the pond was a medieval fish pond. Monasteries particularly used to create and maintain fish ponds because in the medieval period there were many days when religious fasts meant people could only eat fish (usually two days of the week, and during lent and on many saints’ days). So, to ensure there was enough fish to feed everyone at these times they bread fish in a pond at the site. Often they largely contained eels, as eels are large and fleshy and more able to feed a quantity of people.

My mind kept telling me this pond looked very like an ancient fish pond as I walked along the road. Then I saw a board, so of course I had to look, and when I walked around the corner and saw what the information board said… I was once again very impressed by the instinct of the voice in my head. 😀

Hee. Hee. Hee.