Red thoughts Green thoughts

Red Thoughts Green Thoughts

Red Thoughts Green Thoughts

Our Lost Felicitie Measure and Loss in the Garden of Eden Tracing Follies in Paris Strategies for preservation of Archaeoloical Remains at the King;s Shipyard in Deptford, London Sayes Court Garden Research Boook

Letter to the London Planning Authority Design Diary Thesis statement

Thoughts in The Gardent, at Deptford Tides

With thanks to Dean William Germano The Cooper Mack Fellowship Photographs courtesy of a collaboration with Katherine Waters

morgan.g.lewis@gmail.com

Our Lost Felicitie Evelyn

The great unfinished project of recreating a Terrestrial Paradise in London was John Evelyn’s lost felicitie. It was an attempt to bind book to garden, to make one an encyclopedic index for the other, and both of the world beyond. Evelyn searched for this original Elysium in the laws of Nature, and in the classical texts and while his attempt produced a remarkable series of writing and experiments he never found the original form he was searching for.

Evelyn’s endeavor is today of great scholarly interest for it is seen as being instrumental in the development of the scientific method and in the formation of a naturalistic approach to landscape design. It could also be seen to be at a high-water mark in a long standing and now marginalised tradition of using the garden as a primary site of cultural enquiry, in writing as much as in horticulture. Gardens are good places to think.

This Great thinking mechanism Aragon

The range of topics that that gardens were used to speculate with was vast. Marvel’s The Garden alone raises a wide range of insights into the metaphysical, spiritual, social and erotic.

Similarly the garden was seen as being able to accommodate almost any use: Evelyn’s garden for example contained theatre, medicinal garden, laboratory, galleries, study, banqueting hall, grove and grotto. Furthermore the conception of the garden was varied; ‘prototype’ or ‘descendent’ of an original paradise and, later mimetic of an imaged condition of global wilderness; its character to was unstable, variously conceived as nature nurtured, tamed or transplanted. Nonetheless within this thicket some common themes emerge: the garden as measured or nature made comprehensible, the garden as lost and therefore in need 7

PREFACE

of recovery, and, perhaps, the garden as metaphor for the cyclical nature of human creativity.

A recent proposal for a new residential development of condominium towers has brought forth the issue of the ground upon which this garden briefly stood. What should be Commemorated and what should be Restored of John Evelyn’s remarkable endeavor in our age?

The isle of Poplars an homage to philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau Whom lived between islands and gave his name to the isle of Ile Saint Pierre Lac de Bienne

Our age is distinct from Evelyn’s. The collection of texts our culture depends upon has much less authority; the centuries between us and Evelyn would seem to have further complicated our conception of nature to the point where it would seem hopelessly confused, and a search for a lost wholes would be treated as risible. Yet much can be Discovered in the texts on gardens of Evelyn’s period and the tradition itslef is a last felicitie.

Within the specific context of the site in Deptford both a role for a new Sayes Court Garden institute and a justification for its inclusion in a masterplan must be found. More broadly, it could be stated that one lesson from Evelyn’s project may be that it was unfinished; the nurturing of a textual tradition and the making of every garden requires careful tending.

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It was a belief of Milton’s generation this Revelation could be read in the book of nature, which, one may assume is a relative of the Humanist formulation of God being present in the signature of all things Even Nature, God’s great artifact, can be conceived as a book Orgil

Paradise Lost, John Milton. Paradise Lost Ed. John Leonard.

London: Penguin Classics, reprinted 2003

The world is made comprehensible through measure and given meaning through loss. These claims are not just made in Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost, but are raised in a manner that suggests their intimate connection. The first claim is made common enough so as to seem almost tautological. The second is a pervasive theme in the Western tradition. However, Milton raises the possibility that the loss of the measurable in the domains beyond our comprehension such as Chaos and Night is the source of fecund creativity, the direction of which is provided in the historical event of the loss of Eden (which is emblematic of a fecund creativity). This essay will focus on how a process that relates so directly to the concrete world, the act of measuring, relates to the much harder to define process of the disclosure of meaning. This well measured verse will be our faithful guide.

Paradise Lost seeks to elucidate justice by explaining our Fall from Grace. Contained within its “Vast Design” is a carefully conceived cosmology, ontology and epistemology which relate to an aetiology of Man’s Fall (And women of course.

Man here is used because it was the epithet for all humanity as used by Milton), all to the purpose of justifying the “ways of God to Men” (i 26). That the first three subjects listed may relate to measure, and it may be added to the crafting of blank verse, is unsurprising, for they are organizational structures of matter, being and knowledge. Organizational structures rely on the separation, position and hierarchy in accordance with an underlying matrix of categories, 10

INTRODUCTION

Vast Design A Rhymed tribute On Paradise Lost Andrew Marvell.

Milton could be said to be engaged with the recovery of tradition as a guarantee of a modernity that had to be discovered.

find we know/ Both good and evil, good lost PL

Introduction

and this is always predicated on the act of measuring for it is this which allows for the description (the separation, position and hierarchy) of entities. It is less clear how justice, in this case God’s, may relate to Milton’s thoughtful design, although the connotations of balance and equitable response which are features of justice indicates they may be linked through measure. More challenging still is why through this design the just response to the sin of transgressing the boundaries of sensible knowledge is the loss of paradise.

Therefore the essay will proceed by first looking at what can be deduced from the measure of the cosmology of Paradise Lost and then seek how this may relate to one of the epic’s primary ambitions of explaining divine justice.

11

Before examining what measure specifically allows for in the poem, it is worth first exploring what measure is constituted of so that there may be points of orientation in later discussion.

At its most general the act of measuring is the comparing of a concept, action or object to another object, action or concept.

A range of complex constructions can evolve from this comparison: 1.i) measure first requires the ability to identify similarities between a pair being compared 1.ii) these differences can be described with more precision and this necessarily requires a standard and a method of application 1.iii) these measured differences are suggestive of a hierarchy The relationship in each adumbrated clause above can be usefully inverted: 2. i) The two compared are identified as two by the establishment of their difference 2. ii) The standard and the method of acts of measuring come out of the act of comparison 2. iii) A hierarchy is always dependent upon measured difference As an example of these clauses it can be imagined how a basic measuring rule can be made by placing two lengths of timber against each other (clause 1.i and 2.i), cutting the excess off one, and marking the half way division of this excess (clause 1.ii and 2.ii) and then used to determine subsequently the respective sizes of poles (2.iii and 3.iii). The application goes well beyond poles, and can be applied to such complex phenomena as language, and from there it is but a short distance to thought.

12

MEASURE

Measure Although described as ‘pre-philosophical’ because it lacked full articulation of conceptual thought highly sophisticated constructions were possible through the use of analogical structures Frankfort, Henri.

Before philosophy: the intellectual adventure of ancient man. Baltimore, Md: Penguin Books, 1949

Figure 1 shows an early example of how the act of dimensioning can extend beyond its usual domain of use, the importance of which is indicated if the density of meanings attached to the word rule are examined. A rule is an object that allows for measure, the rule of law are the methods that govern, and a ruler is at the pinnacle of the hierarchy which governs. The presence of the measuring rod in the stele of the code of Hammurabi (1772 BCE) (Figure 1), written in an age described as pre-philosophical for its lack of articulations of conceptual thought , reveals the extent to which these connections can be found in fundamental actions. On the stele it is the measuring rod, or rule, itself which is being exchanged, suggesting that the rod is metaphorical of the exchange inherent in measure itself and not merely symbolic of the power of the King to control, for example, the Standard measures of the kingdom.

Such formulations as ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, generally attributed to Mosaic Law but found in much earlier codes, indicates how the balance which may be found in say physical actions as the halving of a pole in to two equal portions, or in to the portions proportional to the height of the pole bearers may indicate to an idea of fairness, and may in fact be inherent in the act of division itself. The stele also shows a hierarchy between the Lord and his vassal, the King in this example, in terms of their respective sizes which mirrors their respective authority.

Measure of Jurisprudence Stele of Hammurabi

13

Measure

The “golden Scales� (iv 997) that appear in Paradise Lost, and other symbolization that we are more familiar with such as the blind goddess with outstretched balanced arms, are engaging with a similar idea but privileging balanced measure, usually indicative of harmony between parts as opposed to the act of division and authority itself. Justice requires an accord to be found between parties according to rules that must be in accord with a legitimate hierarchy of authority. The divine authority of Milton’s conception revealed Himself only in His work but may be found through a harmony between parts and the whole.

Autumn Cy Twombly

14

Measure

A fallen world The Angel Standing in the Sun Joseph Turner

It is beyond the scope of this essay, and admittedly the author’s limited understanding of the relevant sources of this well-covered topic, to explore as to how the metaphorical expressions of measure in language, such as the color or largeness of sound found in music, relate one modality of communication to another. But we may observe that this happens all the time. This is remarkable; clause ii indicates that things measured are always relational to themselves and therefore one may initially suppose that it only makes sense to use a ruler to measure dimension of matter and not sound . It may also therefore be observed this type of synaesthesis is critical to higher modes of thought and is allowed for by the universality of measure. In relation to Milton it may be noted that writers he was reading, such as Giardano Bruno (1548-1600), had done extensive work on how the genius of metaphor in language related to the author spotting similarity across different modalities, and on the mystery of transformation with verisimilitude that is at the heart of good metaphor. A century prior to this Humanist writers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) were busy reinvestigating Pythagorian notions of unity between divisions of matter and modalities of communication as evidence of a grand unity. The oft quoted example is that the harmonious interval of musical scales relate directly to the ratio of lengths of string, such that the division of a length of string under constant tension by half results in a tone an octave higher.

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Space First usage in English Milton Paradise Lost

The cosmology of Paradise Lost, and cosmos was a word he tellingly did not use, perhaps for it implied too deep a sense of order, therefore carries within it the significance usually assigned to a story of genesis, although the conflation of the spatial and the narrative was well established, as shown in the designs of numerous medieval Mappa Mundii. However, Milton’s cosmos would seem to contain a number of inconsistencies and ambiguities. Given the general coherence of the creator of this work, one must assume that this is deliberately so, and they may be indications of how much of the cosmos falls within the domain of our comprehension. This is suggested by the most strikingly novel feature of this cosmos, that our earth is but one planet within a larger stellar universe or “opacous globe” (iii 1) that is finite, but within an infinite domain. Connected to our universe on one side is Heaven, via a “golden chain” (ii 10003), that is, of a material that is both luminous and strong, and of a form which tethers something at a proscribed distance. Beneath us lies Hell, the path to which is provided by Sin and Death. The more remote entities of Chaos, Night, Light and the Authority of Heaven also exist in this cosmos but outside of the finite sphere.

However, there is not a clear distinction between that which is lucidly finite and that which is mysterious and infinite. Instead there is a far more nuanced representation of their respective qualities and interactions. The traditional oppositional relationships of most cosmologies, such as the positioning of Heaven and Hell, are never quite opposite in the geometry of this cosmos. For example there is a recurring sense that Hell is indeed below our world and below heaven, “Your dungeon 16

GARDEN COSMOLOGY

Our earth is but one planet within a larger stellar universe or “opacous globe” (iii 1) that is finite, but within an infinite domain Leonard

Garden Cosmology

stretching far and wide beneath…” (ii 1003). Furthermore there is a sense that Hell is not just far away “As far removed from God and light of Heav’n/As from center thrice to th’ utmost pole” (i 73-74), pole referring here to the polar star and the center as either earth or the sun (Milton cleverly side stepped the Gallilean controversy about

Hooke

the center of our solar system), but even “Farthest from Him” (i 247).

However, when Satan leaves Hell and falls into the “abyss”, such is the extent of depth of the abyss that he could have been falling “to this hour” (ii 934). There is clearly something beyond Hell. Milton may have intended this confusion, for while Satan is oppositional 17

Garden Cosmology

to the Authority of heaven this cannot be equally a reciprocal relationship, for nothing can be equal to Him. What lies below Hell is a realm which cannot be comprehensively measured because it has uncertain finitude. This abyss, literally that which is bottomless, consists of Chaos and Night which are respectively only of partial measure. Chaos has space, for it is encroached upon by the creation of the world and guards “That little which is left” (ii 1000) but is seemingly timeless, whereas “Night, eldest of things” (ii 963) would appear to be spaceless but of time. Heaven by contrast, would seem to be of a different order both to Hell and also chaos. It is that which has light and material, recurringly referred to as adamantine and made of saphire but its incomprehension lies in it grandeur, so large as to be “undetermined square or round” (ii1048).

Hell, by contrast, is shown as a world of measured construction (built by an architect), but in a manner that is strangely both precise and disorienting. The description of Pandemonium’s gathering is akin to a scene viewed through the small side of a telescope: “Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed/In bigness to surpass Earth’s Giant sons/Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room/ Throng numberless, like that Pygmaen race” (i 777-780). At first reading one may think the contradictions of this image is a matter of perspective and Satan’s Rebel army is being dwarfed by the hall or suchlike. Yet the phrase “narrow room”, although correctly pertaining to the close packing of the spirits, steers the reader away from this reading.

A dozen lines on the riddle is partly solved, a recurring pattern of Milton’s falling but never fading verse. The demons of hell are described as “incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms/Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large/Though without number still amidst the hall...And in their own dimensions like themselves” (i 790-793). The spirits are incorporeal and therefore incredibly unstable with regards to their actual size; but strikingly their size is always internally consistent. It is measured to themselves and not that outside their domain. Like their blustering rhetoric their size is false conceit, what Milton has suggested in his 18

False Absolute Leonard

Garden Cosmology

bewildering description of their dimension and number is to suggest that this falseness is due to their lacking an external Absolute to be measured against.

Milton uses different rhetorical devices to indicate that our stellar universe is measured but ambiguous because of our position within it. “This pendent world, in bigness as a star/Of smallest magnitude close by the moon” (ii 1052-3) creates an image that exploits the strange sense of scale that perspective provides; the size of our universe is as small as the size of a star next to a moon, but Milton would have known that stars are in fact far larger than the moon and are just much further away.

The description alerts the reader to the ambiguities of Milton’s measured universe and positions the reader as looking at the universe from the limited perspective of Earth. The recurring construction whereby the measure of distance is described through the length of time it would take to travel would seem to reiterate the consistency of our universe with respect to space and time, which could be thought of as the measured division of matter and motion. The architect Mulciber was fabled to fall “from morn/To noon he fell, from noon to dewey eve/A summer’s day, and with the setting sun/ Dropped” (i 742), Satan’s falling would have been “to this hour.” (ii 934) and the distance of the rebel Angels’ perdition is “Nine times the space that measures day and night” (i 50). The last phrase is particularly powerful. The measure at first seems to be inconsistent, for the length of day and night would seem to change throughout the year. However, as Milton would have known, this is due to the tilt of the earth’s axis and not to an elliptical orbit, so the measure is in fact consistent.

It would be incorrect too to imagine that God and Chaos are opposites in their transcendence of an order that exists, above and below or before and after, the play of light and dark that is our universe. Rather Chaos like Night exists within a yet more incomprehensible ocean, resonant of the Archaic Greek conception of Okeanos. The most complete description is provided in book II: “Before their eyes in sudden view appear/ 19

Garden Cosmology

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark/Illimitable ocean without bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth and height/ And time and place are lost; where eldest Night/And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold/ Eternal Anarchy amidst the noise” (ii 892-896). The contiguity of measurement to comprehension is reiterated here, but also the mysterious, at least to our culture, fecundity of Chaos and Night. This would seem strange given that Chaos certainly has a malevolent air in Paradise Lost declaring “Havoc and spoil and ruin are my game” (ii 10009) when declaring support for Satan whom just happens to be rescued by chance. Chaos, while certainly disorderly is that from which God makes worlds as suggested in the line “Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/His dark material to create more worlds” (ii 915-916), which Milton’s cosmos is furthermore conspicuously differentiated from more traditional renderings of the world and its genesis: chaos was not used up in the creation but continues to play a powerful role in our world as the fecund source of new potential but also as a state of disorder that threatens to consume. The cosmos is therefore structured less as irreconcilable differing order or as Manichean oppositions, but as a series of “worlds within worlds” (ii 1002) in a continual process of creation, but all in accordance with a single Authority.

Milton underscores this idea in terms familiar to the doctrine of Monism: “Such to perfection, one first matter all/Endued with various forms, various degrees/Of substance, and, in things that live, of life/ But more refined, more spirituous, and pure/ As nearer to him placed, or nearer tending” (v 473-476) (my italics). What is suggested here is that in the beginning all was one which was then separated into various forms with different measures of divine substance arranged spatially towards Him or oriented towards Him. Although the universe is made up of distinct spheres the material it would seem to consist of a measured continuum of divine substance, and this explains both its unity and our oblique comprehension of it.

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Garden Cosmology

Pull and Push Wittgenstein House

A useful distinction could be drawn between the ratio and the proportion of a measure here. The ratio describes the internal consistency of an arrangement but not to how this arrangement refers to that which is outside of it, which is rather a matter of correct proportion. For example, the number of doors to windows in a room may be at a ratio of 3:1 and the proportion of the windows are at 1:1. Now if the dimension of the windows change so they are taller at a ratio of 2:1, the ratio of number of doors to windows remains the same. However the proportions of the windows and of the whole room have changed. The example is not without faults but it is striking that this relates measure quite specifically to rhetoric devices. In medieval Aristotelian thought the concepts of logos and ratio are coupled as are proportio and analogia. That which is harmoniously rational was supposed to be that which has internal unity while also being analogous to that which was outside of it.

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How does this cosmology relate to the central quest of Milton to explain the question of why “some rise by sin, others by virtue fall”? Milton’s question was carefully asked for it came partly out of frustration with the incomprehensibility of God, and therefore may contain an echo of the reason for the Fall; the sinful transgression in search of the wrong or excessive knowledge. In the epic it is Sin and Death that not only negotiate the distance between the chaotic realms of the Okeanos and our universe but that are also the punishment for transgression. This suggests that chaos is introduced through Eve’s actions. This is stated implicitly in book seven also: “But knowledge is as food and needs no less/Her temperance over appetite to know/In measure what the mind may well contain, /Opresses else with surfeit and soon turns/Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind” (vii 126-130) (my italics). The pun on measure turns the seeming contradiction of whether the search for knowledge is good or bad into a command about how the search should be conducted.

Measure here is suggestive both of that which is of limited quantity but also that which the mind can only contain - we should restrict our knowledge to the measured and finite. This was stated more specifically in book five, “Our knowledge and the scale of nature set/ From center to circumference whereon/ In contemplation of created things/ By steps we may ascend to God (v 509-511). We should actively pursue the investigation to knowledge but to do so in a measured way but accept that our knowledge is scaled to the domain of nature which is the domain of our universe. This would suggest that the act of sinning involved the transgression of those bounds, into the realm of either the abyss or the absolute.

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KNOWLEDGE AND SIN

The loss of Man is therefore first one of memory and the story hints at the dangers of disobedience in forgetting, but perhaps also the reward of creativity.

This may bear some relation to Plato’s conception of anamnesis, whereby the gaining of knowledge is an act of recalling, a type of creative-remembering

Knowledge and Sin

Tree from a fresco at the Villa Lante based upon murals at Pompeii depicting gardens. The centered tree bearing fruit, which both hides and obscures is a recurring artistic motif that takes center stage in the Genesis story. The earliest known example would seem to be th well known Ram in a thicket of Sumer.

The searching for something in our memory the process can feel uncannily like creativity. We know feels there are a cluster of possibilities for an answer, and we know what doesn’t fit; we may not be able to work out what fits, but must search for close possibilities (ie analogies) until one is correct.

The tree “as the only symbol of our obedience” (iv 428) possibly supports this reading too. The tree is a primary symbol of temporal regenerative nature, for it changes with the seasons more than any other living creature as well as symbolizing both birth and decay in its fruit. As the most natural, in the sense that it embodies the essence of something, part of nature in Paradise Lost it is perhaps discomfortingly close to chaos, its progenitor.

Characteristically the garden is described as being without measure, as “wilde above Rule or Art” (v 297). Speculatively it could be noted that both death and seasons were brought into the world with the Fall, as if the cycle of regeneration characteristic of both Nature and chaos were both its punishment and reward

However Milton’s conception is more nuanced than stating that Nature contains the autochthonous evil of chaos. After all, as is explained to Adam, the Earth and Heaven “Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought” (v 376) and God deals not in chance but in order. Boldly put the sin was not that of the tree but that of Eve, it was a matter of choice not chance. For it to be a matter of choice, and for God’s omnipotence to be preserved, He must have had foreknowledge without foreordaining the Fall.

This is possible because God transcends our conceptions of time “past, present, future he beholds” (iii 78) but presumably He does not act within it, but through design. An analogy could be made with our memory; we can recall what has happened 23

Knowledge and Sin

and yet we are unable to intervene in it. If a speculative turn may be taken, this may be a useful analogy because it reminds us how embedded our comprehension is in the linear path of time, but also of the significance of memory in Paradise Lost. The cause of Eve’s sin is not her desire to harm but her forgetfulness in the face of Satan’s flattery. The loss of Man is therefore first one of memory and the story hints at the dangers of disobedience in forgetting, but perhaps also the reward of creativity. Understanding is always a temporal phenomenon, most evident when listening to the sounds of music. However, even the way in which we read the words on the page is an issue of attention and not optics, for we have to focus on each word individually and hold the rest of the text in our memory, and this is a somewhat cyclical process. Creatively finding knowledge however involves the reformulation of ideas and order, and therefore requires a certain degree of disorder, or forgetfulness. That the Fall was a choice of invention, would

Creatively finding knowledge involves the reformulation of ideas and order, and therefore requires a certain degree of disorder, or forgetfulness.

Furthermore, it may be observed that the synthesis of measured systems in artistic compositions tends to strive for either balance or mysterious chaos

Henri Rousseau

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certainly correspond for the need for man to start making his own artifacts (not least clothes) upon leaving Eden, and also bring the reading of the Fall closer to that of the myth of Pandora’s Box, with which it may share a heritage. This admittedly loose explanation may elucidate the importance of loss in the story, for the dangers of creativity are that a new, false path may be taken as opposed to that laid out by tradition. This danger can be ameliorated if we are oriented towards the path of what was lost.

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Paradise Lost provides a highly differentiated cosmology infused with allusions to a range of other authors and also a range of other modes of representation. The cosmology however is quite distinct from our own, and from the preceding century.

By examining the way the garden of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli (1560-1575), designed by Pirro Ligiorio for Cardinal d’Este , is structured Milton’s cosmology will not only be placed in the context of the Renaissance the degree to which the insights into measure may be universal can be unearthed. Examining a garden has the benefit that it is speculating with the properties of nature embodied and not articulated. Whether or not nature was a measured artifact of God or a foil to human artifice or neither was a critical argument in the Renaissance and EarlyModern periods and therefore this relationship is important.

This garden is at the zenith of Italian humanist gardening and is of undeniable thematic richness but was chosen in particular because it places the metamorphosis of water (the okeanos) in parallel, although in opposite orientation to, the metamorphosis of myth and not perpendicular to it. This suggests a possible parallel with the schema of Paradise Lost which includes the chaos of the okeanos as a creative element.

Figure 2 shows the plan of the garden from a print by Duperac (c. 1525–1604), made shortly after its completion in 1575. It is beyond the purview of this essay to explicate the full range of mythical allusions made in the garden, the conceptions that lay behind these allusions or the history of its perspectivised design procedure. What is of interest is the primary schematic ordering: the garden is organized in bands running up a hill, with a path perpendicular to these bands. The path runs straight from bottom to top progressing towards the Sun’s Southern 26

VILLA D’ESTE

The Villa d’Este in Tivoli (1560-1575), designed

by Pirro Ligiorio for Cardinal d’Este

The first band opposes the confusion of the labryrinth at the periphery, with the highly ordered garden subdivided into four and subdivided into four again at the center Why four? Speculating possibly erroneously, and without reference: the quarter division is symbolic of temporalspatial division: eg the four corners of the earth (of such importance to the domain of rulers as to be the epithet inscribed on the stele of Mesopotamian Kings) or the four rivers of Eden.

Four relates to not just the four seasons but also the four points of cardinal orientation, the left,right, forward and backwards of directional systems, and of course the right angled way of building a house

Villa d’Este

Villa d’Este: Engraving, made shortly after its completion (1575), Dupérac Below: 3 Horizontal bands of symbolic metamorphosis

27

Villa d’Este

zenith and ending at the palace-cloister complex at the summit,.

The first band opposes the confusion of the labryrinth at the periphery, with the highly ordered garden subdivided into four and subdivided into four again at the center . Above this band lies the first symbolic strand, which was broadly symbolic of

the Okeanos of Greek myth, and consists of a stream of water running laterally from an Eastern source which combines water organ and chthonic spring in the East to a calm pool of Neptune

Gandy

in the West through a swirling central region dominated by sweating metae sudans. The changing states of water are symbolic of the metamorphosis of matter. The water reappears in the next symbolic strand which takes Ovid’s metamorphosis as its theme. This strand runs from the theater of history,

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What is most critical to the topic of measure is that the garden is not just portrayed perspectivally in Duperac, but was designed as such by the painter-architect Ligorio Coffin, David R. The Villa d’Este at Tivoli.

Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1960

Carl, Peter. “Architecture and Time: A Prologomena” AA Files, 22 (Autumn 1991): 4865. I am indebted to Peter Carl for both introducing me to this garden and for articulating how the structure of this garden relates to Renaissance theories

centered on a stream that represents the Tiber and replete with a cast of miniature monuments of Rome in the West to an architectural set-piece consisting both of the chthonic oracle of Sybil and the celestial fountain of Venus in the East. In the center of the strand, embodied in sculpture, are a range of characters representing both forms and artes taken from the aforementioned Latin poet’s masterpiece.

It is a garden of careful composition and wildly rich in allusion. For concision this essay will focus on the general intent of this design strategy. The two symbolic strands are arranged spatially in a manner which sets up analogies and makes them broadly analogous: the water organ of Apollo and the spring at the Eastern beginning of the sequence are analogous with the fountain of Venus and the oracle of Sybil at the end pointing to the transformation of music into song. The E-W transformation of matter through water is reciprocal with the W-E transformation of history into poetry through myth. What is most critical to the topic of measure is that the garden is not just portrayed perspectivally in Duperac, but was designed as such by the

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Perspectival paintings relate their composition to a matrix of measured lines, usually so that the final image corresponds to human vision. Perspectival designs may never be seen as such but certainly privilege an ordered and symmetrical composition where the dimensions of all the parts, which at a discrete level are usually comprehensible, are neatly coordinated into the whole, even though this, as may be the case here, be too extensive to be comprehensive to anyone but the patron or architect. One further significant feature of perspective is that its measured coordination allows for the conflation of different forms of representation. Gardens, painting, theatre sets and buildings can all be coordinated so that they align with each other, as can be seen in the spectacular gardens replete with perspectival follies and paintings of the period. Furthermore they can also all be coordinated to look like the view through a window – and ultimately the view through a window comes to be seen as another mediated form of reality, particularly where the view itself began to look like paintings as was the case at the Villa d’Este. The closeness between the arts and that of art to life, and the easy manner in which this mimetic relationship could be inverted, seems prevalent in the late Renaissance. It is in part due to the coordination that perspective allows. The notion that the world was a stage, and the stage a world became a “working reality” supported not just by the relationship between actors and audience in the theatre but by the relationship between the perspecitival scenae frons and the world beyond, which in any event increasingly adopted in their facades the modes of the scenae frons. The potential dangers of this reflective emetic bond are explained by the Renaissance scholar Stephen Orgel, 30

PAINTING THEATRE

The notion that the world was a stage, and the stage a world became a “working reality” Carl, Peter. “Architecture and Time: A Prologomena.” AA Files, 22 (Autumn 1991): 60-65.

Peter Carl impressively charts the emancipation of representation from its primary context: “With the invention of theatre re-enactment takes on a character that is more global and reflective”

Painting and Theatre

Man exists only as far as he is separated from his surroundings Pnin, Vladimir Nabakov

another mediated form of reality, particularly where the view itself began to look like paintings as was the case at the Villa d’Este. The closeness between the arts and that of art to life, and the easy manner in which this mimetic relationship could be inverted, seems prevalent in the late Renaissance. It is in part due to the coordination that perspective allows. The notion that the world was a stage, and the stage a world became a “working reality” supported not just by the relationship between actors and audience in the theatre but by the relationship between the perspecitival scenae frons and the world beyond, which in any

Set design of Pastoral and perspectiva; scenes Inigo Jones

event increasingly adopted in their facades the modes of the scenae frons. The potential dangers of this reflective emetic bond are explained by the Renaissance scholar Stephen Orgel, in relation to the relationship between the masque and the Stuart court of England. He writes “Its transformations were those of the human mind, the imagination expressing itself through perspective, mechanics, the imitation of nature, creation a model of the universe and ringing to under rational control.”

In contrast with the masques of the Stuart Court the cosmos of Paradise Lost includes within it a world beyond that of measured, artistic control. It includes firstly an idea of fecund chaos, from which order arises, and secondly an incomprehensible higher absolute towards which both art and life are oriented towards.

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Painting and Theatre

The Banqueting Hall Whitehall Inigo Jones

in relation to the relationship between the masque and the Stuart court of England. He writes “Its transformations were those of the human mind, the imagination expressing itself through perspective, mechanics, the imitation of nature, creation a model of the universe and ringing to under rational control.”

In contrast with the masques of the Stuart Court the cosmos of Paradise Lost includes within it a world beyond that of measured, artistic control. It includes firstly an idea of fecund chaos, from which order arises, and secondly an incomprehensible higher absolute towards which both art and life are oriented towards.

There is no confusion as to what is paradigmatic in Paradise Lost; were made in God’s image, not him in ours. We can place the Villa d’Este in this regard between the masque and Milton.

It is a tightly organized composition but it also acknowledges the cthonic as source and the transcendent as end, for the

32

“Its transformations were those of the human mind, the imagination expressing itself through perspective, mechanics, the imitation of nature, creation a model of the universe and ringing to under rational control.”

Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power, Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1975

Painting and Theatre

water emerges from dark spring and ends as celestial droplets in the fountain. The upper horizontal strands returns to the Eastern direction from whence they came, indicating this process to be cyclical. The Garden d’Este is primarily attuned towards a Renaissance ideal of searching for origins as the vessel of renewal, in distinction to Milton’s composition it is less interested in questioning, the act which always precedes the search for knowledge. The correct path to the summit is clear, and thus offers no real choice to the visitor, nor does it follow the transformation of matter and thought articulated in the horizontal strands, rather it runs perpendicular to them. The correct path here is dead straight.

The elaborate intervals of the masque were in some ways “antidramatic”, creating a model of the universe that is imitative of nature and sharply, mechanically controlled; as opposed to the paradigmatic setting of the globe theatre(therefore privileging image and measure which reaches its apotheosis in perspective) Lutwig Wittgenstein wrote while designing his family’s Viennese house, “when I place the ruler on the table, may I be measuring the ruler and not the table.” (Wittgenstein, Lutwig. The Wittgenstein House. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000).

This was, characteristically, a serious point. After all, the table may be a better measure as it conforms to human proportions, use, the pragmatics of construction etc.

It was certainly the case that in the Early Renaissance there were more luscious renderings of the idea that the cycle of the seasons were analogous, and perhaps something more, to the gifts of wisdom and understanding and which may provide an interesting parallel to the manner in which Milton is thinking with nature.

The most famous example of this earlier tradition would be Botticelli’s Primavera of 1482. The painting has a wide range of interpretations, which in itself is testament to the enormous richness and remarkably condensed allegory of the work and it should be born in mind many of the varying interpretations may be more complimentary than is often thought. It is commonly agreed upon that the primary characters in the foreground are engaged with acting out a scene relating to the wisdom attained by the serene Venus a few paces further in the background.

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Painting and Theatre

Sandro Botticelli, 1444/45-1510, Deimling, Taschen, New York, 2004, and The Nature of Things, Lucretius, translated Alicia Stallings, Penguin Classics, 2007

Although it hardly does the painting justice it should be briefly stated the common critical ground: the scene on the Right shows Zephyrus, the biting wind of March kidnapping Clovis, whom he maries and in doing so transforms her into the deity Flora (third character from the right), representative of Spring and eternal bearer of life, and in this painting, producer of flowers on the ground. This is seen as being analogous to the scene on the left which shows a more diffident Mercury, engaged with the plucking of hanging fruit in opposition to the focus on the planting of flowers on the left, drawing alluring glances from the dancing Graces.

The strand of interpretation that is being most relevant to our discussion here cites the inspiration of the poem as coming from Lucretius De Rerum Natura, (which was incidentally also a primary source for John Evelyn’s garden in Deptford), in particular, the lines “Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus’ boy/The winged harbinger, steps on before, /And hard on Zephyr’s foot-prints Mother Flora, /Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/With colors and with odors excellent”would seem particularly relevant.

34

Lucretius De Rerum Natura, (which was incidentally also a primary source for John Evelyn’s garden in Deptford), in particular the lines “Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus’ boy/The winged harbinger, steps on before, /And hard on Zephyr’s foot-prints Mother Flora, /Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all/With colors and with odors excellent” would seem particularly relevant.

Painting and Theatre

What is of interest is how The Graces, emblems of a fecund creativity, engaged in the cyclical motion of dance, would seem

to have a very direct relationship with the turn of the seasons, which here critically acknowledge the role winter plays. We may also note that the whole scene takes place in a kind of garden ‘playspace’ in the tradition of the garden masque, with knowledge being attained not just temporally but also against a backdrop of trees. The argument put forth by Milton, over a century and a half later has a different conception of the role nature plays in thinking. For Milton it is the transgression of the boundaries of knowledge that is part of Eve’s sin but critically acknowledges that Chaos and Night, ancestors of Nature are the source of fecund creativity and are engaged in an always ongoing

process of creation and destruction. What the comparison brings to the fore, is that both works show nature not as something that is either fecund and benevolent or as frigid and dangerous but that which is cyclical and that this cyclical nature is analogical on a very primary level with the way we think. Of course for Milton, 35

The comparison with Ligorio’s work also brings into focus the distinctly modern measures inherent in Milton’s. The end point of the upper horizontal strata at the Villa d’Esta is the fountain of Venus and poetry. This goal, perhaps the purpose of the cycle of human finitude, is the unity of measured division, the balanced harmony of metaphor implicit in poetry and love (Venus), which in its proximity to the water organ and spring is shown to be closely related to the chthonic chaos from which measured entities came. Milton, like most Renaissance thinkers believed in a primordial unity that has been differentiated through measure and that this was a type of creation “one first matter all/Endued with various forms, various degrees”. (v. 473v.474) but the endpoint is a lot less clear. In Milton’s story the value of the “good lost” (ix 1072) is beautifully expounded but also free choice is acknowledged as a creative act of humans.

Furthermore the future of man after his being cast out from Eden is dimly unknown. Similarly so many of the sentences and scenes of his epic work have a protracted deferment of meaning and rest upon conditional clauses that will be disclosed later, enunciating a feeling of searching expressive of a pressing desire for orientation, that may be found in the past but could also be disclosed in the future. He could be said to be engaged with the recovery of tradition as a guarantee of a modernity that had to be discovered.

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CONCLUSION

Milton, like most Renaissance thinkers believed in a primordial unity that has been differentiated through measure and that this was a type of creation “one first matter all/ Endued with various forms, various degrees”.

To annihilate all that’s made with a green thought in a green shade Andrew Marvell

Experiment is the interrogation of nature Robert Boyle Knowledge is the demesne of nature Francis Bacon

Red Thoughts

Signature and motto: Explore Everything Keep the Betst Evelyn

Devising methodologies of discovery was a topic that fascinated Milton’s era, and for his contemporaries such as Descartes (15961650) and Newton (1642-1727) measure became not just that which marked the division of the whole and allowed it to be put back together again, but also that which allowed for the consistency of the undisclosed experiment.

Quincunx The Garden of Cyrus Thomas Browne

Alternatively stated: the act of creation always involves a return to the essences found in origins. After all, what we know as separated oppositions such as light and dark, preserve their original pre-separation condition which can thus be recovered by their unity, which can possibly even be found in the creative act of discovery. This is why measured compositions so often seem to seek their dissolution in balance, for measure describes the separation from the original state of unity

This is the essay’s primary theme. To adumbrate what is being alluded to: the creation of order is akin to the disclosure of meaning and both are understood temporally, and they must be ordered towards re-creation in order to restore the Good Faith implicit in the Fall. This in accordance with older traditions of justice, where man must keep faith with the traditions of the past in acts of restitution – ie a 37 balance which restores harmony.

Red Thoughts

Trees at Fontainebleu

Carl, Peter. “Architecture and Time: A Prologomena” AA Files 22 (Autumn 1991): 48-65 Carl, Peter. “Ornament and Time: A Prologomena” AA Files 23 (Summer 1992): 49-64 Coffin, David R. The Villa d’Este at Tivoli. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1960 Frankfort, Henri. Before philosophy: the intellectual adventure of ancient man. Baltimore, Md: Penguin Books, 1949 Milton, John. Paradise Lost Ed. John Leonard. London: Penguin Classics, reprinted 2003 Orgel, Stephen. The Illusion of Power, Political Theater in the English Renaissance. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1975 Wittgenstein, Lutwig. The Wittgenstein House. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000

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Tracing Follies

Buttes-Chaumont 19th C. Engraving

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Tracing Follies

TRACING FOLLIES

“To put together into one garden all times and all places” was the desire of the 18th Century Landscape Architect Louis Carmontelle when he set out on his most ambitious project, the Parc Monceau. Its chaotic and disjointed plan shows an assemblage of diverse fragmented follies connected by the loosest and most meandering of paths. When I first came across the plan in a book of European gardens it seemed impossible to understand its spatial hierarchy, or what the purpose of this strange collection of disparate elements were originally conceived for. There was something compelling about a composition that appeared so evasive, and so different to the garden-as-room plans I had been looking at up to that point in my thesis.

Although I went to Paris from London to explore the whole works of Carmontelle, it was the desire to walk in the garden at Monceau that was foremost in my mind. The garden comprised a network of follies in a miniature landscape, now enclosed by the majestic urban plan of Paris. The follies, some genuinely antique and some replicas, were of unclassifiable age and placed in unintelligible order, at apparently random spacing. Roman temples were to be found next to Gothic arches and Egyptian tombs. Its creator, Carmontelle, stated that he designed this collection of pastiche fragments as “a tour of the world and its history”. This was not an effort to achieve an encyclopedic comprehension but its reverse; to achieve an environment that was “simply a fantasy”.

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Tracing Follies

Le Temple Parc Monceau

And the ultimate purpose of this disorienting fantasy? In the archives of the MusĂŠe Carnavalet were the letters and images that showed how the garden had been the stage set for the most licentious and pleasurable of acts of court. Here, in the decade before the Revolution, the French aristocracy played and courted in a setting that, for its time, so shockingly transgressed conventional boundaries of time, taste and the borders between the natural and the architectural. Its irrational, spasmodic plan sought to avoid any focus or aim beyond its own satisfying gratification.

The making of this simple fantasy was a complex endeavor.

To promote his ideas to his aristocratic patrons, Carmontelle, a brilliant draftsman, designed a new means of cinematic representation known as a transparency. These transparencies were long watercolor drawings, sometimes surpassing forty feet, designed to fit inside a clever mechanical device that allowed for their movement behind a screen within a box that looks uncannily like a television. It is probably the earliest form of animation. The device had the ‘fidelity of an echo’, according to Carmontelle, and showed in great detail the bucolic pleasures that would be on offer were a garden to be commissioned. The court 42

Tracing Follies

delighted in watching themselves at play, and the devices were so popular they even came to be substitutes for the building of new landscapes. Carmontelle, who could always project further than most, also spoke of his intension for them to be true memories of his age. They are the most beautiful records of the Ancien Regime that was to crumble so swiftly only a few years later.

Le pyramide Parc Monceau

Seeing the original watercolor transparencies, although unfortunately static, was invaluable. They are a combination of the experience of experiencing a place through walking and through the watching of a film. Like cinema they present a scene through a view that moves through time. However, like walking, the scene is a continuous movement that follows a path through a landscape at eye height. There are no cut-shots or short-cuts; the fragmentation happens in the follies, not in the ground between them. It was an appealingly humane way of exploring the world and this mode of representation confirmed to me the importance of the continuity of ground in supporting this world of diverse fragmentary experiences. It also illustrated how impactful new ways of representing nature were on the development of landscape design, a trend that continues in our own time and our seemingly hopeless tangled portrayals of nature.

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Tracing Follies

A transparency and its machine

I visited a number of other historic gardens, landscapes and archives during my nine days in Paris, from the 17th century Jardin de Luxembourg to the forests of Fontainebleu brought to fame by the Impressionists, to the Parc Villette of the 1980s.

The experience had a wide impact on the development of my thesis, which includes the development of a temporary garden in South London as part of a hypothetical intervention into a speculative master plan. Prior to receiving the Mack Fellowship I had been focused primarily on the particular garden that had been on my site. The trip opened me up to a French tradition that was new to me - the garden as a fantasy landscape that could be enjoyed through theatrical play. Furthermore it showed how a fragmented ruined architecture could speak of a past that has been irrevocably lost as well as how those fragments could play a critical role as an element in a new composition.

The most personally rewarding aspect of the trip was being afforded time to think in gardens more broadly. I returned to the Parc Monceau time and again, and although joggers have replaced the languorous lovers and the follies appear more as quaint testaments to an age of ruinous artifice than the acts of provocation they once were there was something stimulating in watching how they gave an air of fantasy to the garden.

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Tracing Follies

The most charming of all the places I visited was a chance discovery, late in the day, on a walk through the suburbs in the North East on the edge of the city, of the park Buttes-Chaumont.

A bizarre and fantastical 19th century creation, the park involved the excavation of a large chunk. At its center, surrounded by a moat, lies a fantastical phantasmographic extrusion of rock replete with temple, drawbridge and winding path while around the perimeter is a cliff like enclosing bowl with waterfall, railway and steep grassy slopes.

In “A feeling for Nature at the Buttes-Chaumont” the French surrealist writer Aragon writes of his visit, by chance, of the garden at night. The night “who looks at herself in gardens as in mirrors” gives these “absurd places a sense of not knowing their own identity”, but also imbues it with a certain grander, making the “garden as just the palace you need, great thinking mechanism.” The last expression summarised how I found the gardens I visited and perhaps what they should be in general.

I very much hope to continue research into this topic. I am deeply appreciative of the Mack fellowship for allowing for such stimulating and generous experiences in such a busy year.

Buttes-Chaumont c. 1920

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Tracing Follies

Fontainebleu

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Tracing Follies

Parc Monceau 1779

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

What are the implications for historical understanding of the proposed strategies for archaeological preservation on the site of Convoys Wharf in Deptford, London?

Convoys wharf in Deptford, South London is a forty acre site rich both in history and potential for commercial development. It has an extensive set of predominantly subterranean extant remains from the last five hundred years. They are of primary archaeological and historical interest but are threatened by plans for the sites redevelopment. This paper will describe the status of the archaeological remains and how they relate to the history of the site’s past and go on to suggest the degree to which they will likely be compromised by the proposed construction of residential towers. This will involve a technical evaluation of the possible means of construction, and an examination of other strategies for preserving or generating historical understanding. The degree to which historical interpretation generally is dependent upon its material embodiment is raised by the example of Convoys Wharf and this broader topic is explored in the conclusion.

Convoys wharf contains both the principal part of the former Deptford Royal Naval Dockyard, inaugurated by Henry VIII in 1513 and almost the entirety of Sayes Court Manor and Garden, which came into prominence in the 17th century. The dockyard subsumed the garden in the early 18th century and was itself closed in 1869. From that point on until the 1990s the site was used for the storage of various goods. For the duration of the First and Second World Wars it was re-occupied by the Royal Navy. In preparation for a planning application that has now been submitted and is currently under a contentious review significant archaeological excavations have taken place across the site over the last three years. The report on the excavations has not been made public but the impact of the new development on the remains is partly suggested

by Figure 9.

The majority of the site’s remains pertain to the Royal Naval Dockyard, which is of significance to local and national history. The town of Deptford grew around the dockyard as can be discerned from William Lambarde’s remarks in A Perambulation of Kent, first published in the 1570s that Deptford “was of none estimation at all until King Henrie the eight advised (for the better preservation of the Royal fleete) to

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

The town of Deptford grew around the dockyard as can be discerned from William Lambarde’s remarks in A Perambulation of Kent, first published in the 1570s that Deptford “was of none estimation at all until King Henrie the eight advised (for the better preservation of the Royal fleete) to erect a storehouse, and to create certaine officers there.”

Quoted in Duncan Hawkins with Antony Francis and Christopher Phillpotts and Andrew Skelton, “The King’s Yard: archaeological investigations at Convoy’s Wharf, Deptford 20002012” (London: Planning application DC/02/52533/X, May 2013)

erect a storehouse, and to create certaine officers there.” The dockyard was one of the homes of the Royal Navy in the 17th century and used for the building, maintenance and launching of ships of national importance until the late 18th. As well as numerous warships the explorers Drake, Raleigh and Cook on his journey to discover Australia set out from Deptford. In the seventeenth century it became the national headquarters of the naval administration and an internationally renowned center for maritime innovation and education. It continued to be a significant site of naval research until it closed in 1869.

Another significant part of the site’s history, albeit one more compressed, pertains to Sayes Court. The Court is predominantly notable for the garden of the internationally famous horticulturalist and diarist John Evelyn, who lived there from 1653 to 1704. Evelyn was one of the founder members of the Royal Society and was friends with Samuel Pepys and Christopher Wren. His work deeply influenced the English tradition of landscape design, the development of horticulture as a science, and the development of aesthetic theory, particularly the strand developed by Locke. John Evelyn developed a vast and highly experimental garden at Deptford in order to observe and test his theories of nature which were particularly advanced with regards to tempering the climate and improving air quality. His gardens included an orchard, an arboretum, a kitchen garden, a lake, a medicinal garden, a laboratorie garden and a small “private garden, of choice flowers and simples.” The manor house was also home in 1698 to the future Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great who had been sent to London to learn shipbuilding. This is particularly of significance because the future Tsar laid out St Petersburg partly on the model of towns like Deptford.

The attached plans (Figures 1-7) indicate the changes across the site over the last four and a half centuries. The extant archaeological remains across the site are harder to understand but do broadly present a full description of the significant site features (Figure 8). Many of the significant features such as the great basin and the slipways are composites of brick, stone and timber work from different periods.

With the exception of a 19th century storehouse at the center of the site, the archaeology sat until the recent excavations below a cap of 51

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

concrete poured across the site in the 1960s, and most of it still sits below grade. Incidentally many of the remains, the double dry dock in particular, are very well preserved but have the status as archaeological ruins because they sit below grade, even though they have always done so. For the purpose of concision instead of looking at the effect of the development on the entire set of remains on the site I will be looking at two sets in particular: the remains of the Tudor Storehouse and the remains of Sayes Court Gardens. (Their location is shown in Figure 8.

Photographs of the remains are shown in Figures 10-15). These two sets of remains vary greatly in their scale and their relationship to a historical narrative, and are being treated with divergent approaches in the master plan of the proposed new development. The Tudor Storehouse is being preserved in-situ below ground but will be entirely built over and remain inaccessible, potentially forever. The remains of Sayes Court garden will be given to a newly created Sayes Court institute dedicated to the advancement of Evelyn’s ideas but there will be no statuary responsibility for their preservation.

The 16th century Tudor Storehouse was absorbed at successive stages in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries by larger warehouses, and these remains are pertinent for range of reasons. The first is that it is the oldest set of remains of a building on the site and it is the only structure scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 (where it is listed as the Tudor Naval Storehouse) and this status has led to a particular strategy to their preservation. The Tudor Storehouse is also important as the dockyard’s point of origin, for although there were slipways on the site in medieval times it was the storehouse, built on Royal command, which allowed for the fitting out of ships that marked the transformation of the site into a dockyard. Its subsequent development over the last five hundred years in many ways mirrors the development of the entire site. It has many layers of overlaid walls which, like the rings of a tree, suggest its age and changing context.

The archaeological description of the Tudor Storehouse has been summarized as: the “storehouse constructed in 1513 took the form of a rectangular building, approximately 50m long and 10m wide, aligned north-west south-east. It was constructed of brick with an undercroft; 52

Evelyn’s work deeply influenced the English tradition of landscape design, the development of horticulture as a science, and the development of aesthetic theory, particularly the strand developed by Locke.

Vittoria Di Palma, “Fragmentation, Multiplication, Permutation: Natural Histories and Sylvan Aesthetics from Bacon to Evelyn,” in Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished: Essays Presented to Robin Middleton, edited by Barry Bergdoll and Werner Oechslin (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006), Chapter 4

“private garden, of choice flowers and simples.” Evelyn, John, Elysium Britannicum: 16201706, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

a map of 1623 indicates that at that date there were two storeys above ground, while a plan of 1688-98 suggests that an attic storey and chimneys tack were also added. Limited archaeological excavation of the brick foundations in 2000 identified the buried remains of the north east wall, surviving below ground to a height of at least 2.1m, measuring 1.2m-1.7m wide at the base and tapering upwards to 0.72m.

At a height of 1.44m above the base of the wall an 18th century timber floor was discovered; archaeological layers beneath this floor are thought to include the remains of earlier floor surfaces of the 16th and 17th centuries.” After the initial building of the storehouse the warehouse was gradually extended in a piecemeal fashion. In the 18th century a regularized Georgian façade wrapped the enlarged warehouse complex.

Evidence of this later warehouse has also been found.

The developer has not, as of yet, been forthcoming in explicitly stating the details of what will happen to the remains of the Tudor Storehouse but it will be capped and built over. The SARM states that the foundations for new buildings will take into account the significance of the local archaeological remains. “There will be no piling through areas of high archaeological significance, and piling will be avoided where possible in areas of medium significance” . However although the remains are listed the evaluation of the significance of the uncovered remains lies with the historical consultants Alan Baxter Partners. They have described the remains as “currently not visible or accessible, and are badly damaged and hard to display” . Therefore it has been deemed appropriate to build over them but in accordance with their status they will be preserved in situ by being “stabilized, recorded, protected, covered” .

Although the details are unforthcoming as to how it will be achieved a decision has been made to use an engineered mitigation strategy over a full avoidance mitigation strategy. Such a strategy would typically involve drawings of the specific engineered solutions chosen for the different ruins of the site and a description of the active monitoring component for the site. If these have been prepared they are not yet in the public domain. Nonetheless it would be useful to speculate on whether there is a technical strategy that could preserve the remains beneath the towers and what the effects of this would be in order to 53

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

evaluate this strategy.

Construction could damage the remains in multiple ways. They could be directly damaged through the preparation of the soil for foundations.

Many are close to the surface and as the first phase of any construction project would typically be to scrape away at least 300mm of the top soft soil of a site they could be damaged in this uncovering. Another threat comes from the possibility that foundation piles will directly bore through the remains. On such a large plot even with transfer beams it would be impossible not to place foundations somewhere across the remains. While it may be technically possible to place regular sized piles in between the walls of some of the ruins there would still be significant risks to this procedure because the location of much of the archaeology is still unknown and the boring of piles could destabilize the soil surrounding the remains nearby.

A particular problem that would seem to be technically insurmountable would be how the foundations for a lift core could avoid the historical remains. Lift cores typically have bored cast in-situ foundations. Each pile generally has a diameter of more than 2m. In the case study example of Blue Bridge Lane in York in any part of the scheme where there was a lift core there had to be total archaeological excavation and recording, and in archaeologically sensitive parts of the site only low height buildings with few lift cores were permitted. In contrast the building on top of the Tudor Storehouse at Deptford contains a tower that may be up to 30 storeys in height.

A slower but more corrosive form of damage could occur if the water levels across the site are changed by construction. The site is flat, on a flood plain, crossed by underground streams and next to the tidal Thames; as a result the soil is highly saturated. The wooden remains of the slipways and the timber tie-backs of the basin in particular wall are dependent upon a level of saturation being maintained, and some of the remains will likely decompose if the water level is lowered. However construction will likely begin with dewatering operations to improve the solidity of the ground and this will inevitably change the water table of the site. Even if this is avoided the boring of foundations and the shoring 54

Although the details are unforthcoming as to how it will be achieved a decision has been made to use an engineered mitigation strategy over a full avoidance mitigation strategy.

M.J. Davies and Kasia Gdaniec and M. Brice and White, Mitigation of construction impact on archaeological remains, (London, Museum of London Archaeology Service for English Heritage, 2004) pg. 35

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of numerous new buildings may alter the flow of water across the site.

The ruins could be protected in changes to the water table by a process known as containment. Containment protects in situ archaeology by placing a geotextile membrane at a proscribed distance away from the remains. This protects the soil within which they are entombed.

The membrane can even extend below the remains, although this is technically challenging. They have been proven to be successful in protecting a specific area of soil from changes in groundwater elsewhere.

However, there are numerous technical difficulties that may make this impossible in the case of the Tudor Storehouse. One is the enormous scale of the site and its proximity to other remains. This would make a full enclosure difficult. Another technical difficulty would be that the soil may require water coming in and out in order to contain the correct chemical composition and fabric membranes do not generally allow for this. One solution would be to enlarge the solution devised for the Rose theatre in London, which like the remains of Convoy’s Wharf in Deptford is on a waterlogged site on the South side of the River Thames (Figure 16). The theatre combines containment with a sprinkler system that maintains a water saturation level. However this system requires monitoring by installed instruments, which would likely not be possible in the case of the Tudor Storehouse because the remains will be inaccessible. It would therefore seem likely that their entombment will lead to their decay, although this is not the acknowledged aspiration.

The remains of Sayes Court are smaller and more recent than those of the oldest parts of the Tudor Storehouse, and do not correspond so closely to the evolution of the site generally. The excavation identified “the plan of Sayes Court, as modified in the course of its history, with ground floor walls surviving up to a metre high in places. The front door of the building in the Southwest wall opened into a central hallway, with a pair of rooms either side. The hallway led to the back of the building and a further four rooms. A cellar occupied the northwest part of the building, accessed by a stair in the north corner and later by a flight of stone steps added onto the northwest wall.” Alongside the foundations of the sixteenth century house remain, are walls pertaining to the nineteenth century workhouse that was built over the footprint of 55

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

the house. The history of the manor house prior and subsequent to its occupation by Evelyn is confused and not illustrious. With regards to the garden: “There is no archaeological evidence for the garden layout or planting, but a part of the foundations of an inner garden wall were recorded during the excavations.” Photographs of the current state of excavation are shown in Figures 14 and 15.

The plot of land the remains of Sayes Court manor house sit upon, but not the site of the garden, are to be given by the developer to the Sayes Court Garden Institute, a community charity supported by the Royal Horticultural Society. The institute aims to promote the work of John Evelyn and has space outside of the development that it may use as a garden for this purpose. It is testament to the appeal of ruins and the desire to root John Evelyn’s work on the site that the institute will be placed on the ruins, despite the fact that historically they relate to a rather small and unconventional domestic residence rather than the exciting garden. The archaeological consultants CgMs did not hire a garden archaeologist but even if they had, and some seeds or other traces had been found, the importance of the significance of the site of the garden to the narrative of Evelyn could be questioned. After all, Evelyn’s garden was always in a state of flux and experimentation and Evelyn is generally famous for his contributions to horticulture and intellectual history. The significance of his work lay in his ideas and his experiments, which are only partly ever site specific. (Figure 10 illustrates an iteration of his famous garden). It is as yet unclear what the institute will do with the remains of the manor house, although, unlike the developer who is bound by the commitments they have made to the local planning authority they will not have any statuary obligation to preserve or maintain them.

The example of the Tudor Storehouse and Sayes Court both suggest that the historical understandings of remains are as influenced by their setting as by their physical conservation. It is a different experience between seeing the remains of the Tudor Storehouse first hand and next to the remains of a slipway, and understanding them through an article.

Similarly the interpretation of the remains of Sayes Court will be sharply different if it is placed next to a restored garden or a residential tower.

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

The position of an archaeological find in three-dimensional relation to the other objects in a dig is critical for its interpretation. Similarly the relationship between SCG, the storehouse and the other dockyard remains is critical to a wider historical understanding.

The nature or importance of the ruins relationship to each other is not addressed directly by the developer in their archaeological summary.

However the rectilinear plan of their proposed development (Figure 9) ignores what could be called the overall plan formation of the remains.

If the top layer of soil was scraped away it would be easy to understand where the slips, buildings and waterways were and are on the site and you would be able to see how they relate to each other. This is an important aspect of their value that has been overlooked. The iteration of plans of the site shown in Figures 1-7 reveals that the plan form of this site remained remarkably consistent for at least four hundred years, and the archaeological record is rather like a palimpsest of an overlay of the maps, showing the most durable features.

Generally what has remained is what was permanent and important over the site over its history and one way for this aspect of the archaeology to have been acknowledged would have been for the new plan to both learn from and reflect this. The overall plan form of the remains is after all a reflection of the dockyards reciprocal development with the natural and urban topography of the site. For example the row of slipways and dry docks at the river’s edge establish a primary relationship between the site and the bend in the river. The very reason for establishing the site here marks a moment on the Thames where the tidal reach is particularly striking and high. Historically the Southern and Eastern side of the site has contained smaller buildings and has a tighter urban grain, appropriate to the side of the site addressing the high street and center of Deptford. By contrast the larger buildings at the center of the site respond to the scale of the basins and slipways they fronted and address the scale of the river and not the town. The remarkably consistent routes from the site entrances to the water reflected the basic shape of a site with just two points of entry and a long face to the river.

This historical plan formation has not made its way into the site’s 57

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

redevelopment. In addition there does not seem to be an attempt to establish a relationship between the excavated parts to the whole dockyard or to its urban or natural setting. This may be a result of the fragmentary approach to archaeology taken by the developer. In the appendix of the planning documentation there is a description of the process of archaeological investigation: “Following preliminary archaeological investigation in 2000 by Pre-Construct Archaeology, a 5% sample of the total site area was evaluation trial trenched by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) from January to April 2010 to determine the quality and extent of any surviving archaeological deposits. This was followed between May 2011 and May 2012 by a programme of archaeological excavation and recording by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).” Critically “Remains were mapped and recorded, rather than archaeologically dismantled, and then carefully backfilled. Areas of modern disturbance were utilized as ‘windows’ on underlying deposits”. The intention was always to investigate the archaeology in a very discrete way, where each section was analyzed in turn and then an overall picture could be built up. The conclusion of the investigation was to preserve many of the remains in-situ but not to expose them or establish visual links between them. This would seem to be a result of the mode of investigation.

There are other aspects of the archaeological dig process which perhaps compromised the conclusions reached. When the archaeologists came across composite remains which contained evidence from numerous periods they did not archaeologically dismantle the most recent layer to access those beneath. In many parts of the site such as the wall which held back the Orfleteditch stream, one wall had been built over another for centuries. The archaeological team on the discovery of the 18th century stream wall stopped their excavation on its discovery despite maps indicating that a medieval river wall was likely to lie beneath.

The decision not to dismantle the remains in order to reveal further layers underneath them was in keeping with the overall approach not to destroy the remains themselves so that they could be kept for study by future generations. The approach was instead to first uncover, then record and then rebury selected archaeological fragments, in a manner which understood the contingency of the situation. However, such an 58

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

approach gives precedent to only the outer surface of the remains, which is typically the more recent layer. What lies below them, both earlier and perhaps more significant is as a consequence left untouched and undiscovered.

An examination of the process which led to this approach to the archaeology, and its interpretation is pertinent to the broader question of this essay. Although the investigation was undertaken by MoLA, a semi-public body “All phases of archaeological investigation were overseen by CgMs” . CgMs are a firm of planning consultants, whom controlled the scope of the investigation and the interpretation of the data. There is a curious, possibly suspicious, approach to the contingency of the overall process. The archaeological investigation although extensive was still far from all-encompassing and in some respects quite limited, predominantly so that it was completed in time for the developer’s application. Nonetheless the report from the archaeological investigation will not be made public until 2015. This is despite the planning authorities having to determine the application in early 2014. For the purpose of this evaluation a very limited report has been prepared by CgMs, which is not peer reviewed, and this report was then interpreted by the firm of historical consultants Alan Baxter Partners. This evaluation of the remains is itself then reviewed by the statuary body overseeing the planning application. In this case the overseeing body is the local borough of Lewisham and the London Mayor’s office of planning who are advised by the national body English Heritage.

This complicated arrangement is spelt out in such detail because this range of groups interpreting this limited report illustrates the common way in which we assess these remains. Alan Baxter Partners have assessed the significance of the remains according to three criteria. The criteria in this case are “archaeological interest”, “architectural interest” and “historic interest” . Briefly stated the archaeological interest is “An interest in carrying out an expert investigation at some point in the future into the evidence a heritage asset may hold of past human activity…These heritage assets are part of a record of the past that begins with traces of early humans and continues to be created and 59

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

destroyed…”. Artefacts with an architectural interest are those which are important for revealing “the design and general aesthetics of a place.

They can arise from conscious design or fortuitously from the way the heritage asset has evolved…Artistic interest is an interest in other human creative skill, like sculpture.” Historic interest is in “past lives and events…Heritage assets can illustrate or be associated with them...”.

This framework broadly coincides with the way local and national policy evaluates archaeological assets in that it is recognized that remains can be subject to competing interests, although the policy guidelines tend to treats remains in a more instrumental manner stressing their value as “heritage assets”. The pertinent planning guidance is found in the National Planning Policy Framework (2012), the Historic Environment Planning Practice guide (2012); the London Plan (2012) and the Borough of Lewisham Core strategy (2004) and Unitary Development Plan (2011) and they are remarkably consistent with regards to two themes. One is that the treatment of historical remains are particularly important in new developments because “Heritage assets with historic interest not only provide a material record of our nation’s history, but can also provide an emotional meaning for communities derived from their collective experience of a place and can symbolise wider values such as faith and cultural identity” . The second consistent point is that “Heritage assets are irreplaceable and therefore any harm or loss should require clear and convincing justification.”

However the role of using heritage assets to form communities, or a sense of place, is problematic. The proposal displays a full range of responses to the remains of the site that lie between the in-situ but inaccessible preservation of the Tudor Storehouse and the accessible but loose interpretation of the Sayes Court remains. Cobbles and paving stones found on the surface of the site will be reused in the parks to be built for example, and in the mouth of the basin a new pond will be formed to commemorate the site’s relationship with water. We will have to wait to see if any of these approaches generate a feeling of connection between the site’s previous use and status as the hub of an industrial community and its new incarnation as a luxurious residential neighborhood. It is certainly easy enough to imagine that none of them 60

The significance of his work lay in his ideas and his experiments, which are only partly ever site specific.

Batey, Mavis, A celebration of John Evelyn: proceedings of a conference to mark the tercentenary of his death (London, Surrey Gardens Trust, 2001)

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

will. Even if the entire set of Tudor Storehouse remains were uncovered, placed next to new towers they would only partially speak of a now lost world of ship-building. It would therefore seem evident that only certain aspects of the past are materially embodied, only certain aspects of this communicates to later users, and only under certain conditions. Given this variable nature the piety that surrounds the remains is perhaps surprising.

These approaches towards heritage assets has furthermore led to a rather bizarre strategy towards the remains of the Tudor Storehouse on the Convoy’s Wharf site, which is consistent with policy and some academic guidance. It would seem perverse to cover these remains in order to save them from natural decomposition, only to allow for the construction of new buildings that runs the substantial risk of damaging them. Another perversity would seem to be the requirement to study them piecemeal now, in order for them to be buried so that they can only be studied more fully at some indeterminate point in the future in an indeterminate way.

This state of affairs perhaps hints at a deeper confusion our culture has with the remains of our past. The methods of evaluation used by both Alan Baxter and the governing body, and the decision to preserve but not use the remains of the Tudor Storehouse indicates the degree to which the primary value of archaeology is deemed to be its value to professional scholarship. While the generation of a sophisticated and detailed knowledge of material remains and what they pertain to is indeed a valuable thing, it can come at a public loss to experiencing remains firsthand.

This scholarly approach corresponds with the desire to see these remains as irreplaceable and immutable. The approach has been to view these remains the way a historian treats the books of an archive, as sources that are valued for the manner in which they speak of their time of formation, and not of their subsequent history. However a more appropriate response might be to celebrate and accept their decomposition and to allow it to continue. After all a lot of their appeal to the general public, and the archaeological open days to the site were very popular, lies 61

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precisely in the remains showing the wear of time. Their decomposition allows in many ways their original form to show clearly as only the durable structure remains, and while the remains themselves hint at the methods of construction and uses of their original culture the marks of time show the distance between that age and ours. In many ways it literally authenticates their primacy in the shaping of a place. As the French essayist Claude Roy stated “the truly clear things show the shadow of what they once were”. Such an approach to the monuments of the past would however be to accept our own culture’s finitude and our inability to stop decay.

“Heritage assets with historic interest not only provide a material record of our nation’s history, but can also provide an emotional meaning for communities derived from their collective experience of a place and can symbolise wider values such as faith and cultural identity”.

Lewisham Council, “Unitary Development Plan 2011” (London, 2011) “the truly clear things how the shadow of what they once were” Roy, Claude, La France de Profile (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1952), Introduction

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Bibliography Duncan Hawkins with Antony Francis and Christopher Phillpotts and Andrew Skelton, “The King’s Yard: archaeological investigations at Convoy’s Wharf, Deptford 2000-2012” (London: Planning application DC/02/52533/X, May 2013) Alan Baxter and Convoys Properties Ltd, “Convoys Wharf, CW014 Heritage Statement” (London: Planning application DC/02/52533/X, May 2013) Vittoria Di Palma, “Fragmentation, Multiplication, Permutation: Natural Histories and Sylvan Aesthetics from Bacon to Evelyn,” in Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished: Essays Presented to Robin Middleton, edited

by Barry Bergdoll and Werner Oechslin (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006) M.J. Davies and Kasia Gdaniec and M. Brice and White, Mitigation of construction impact on archaeological remains, (London, Museum of London Archaeology Service for English Heritage, 2004) Batey, Mavis, A celebration of John Evelyn: proceedings of a conference to mark the tercentenary of his death (London, Surrey Gardens Trust, 2001) Evelyn, John, Elysium Britannicum: 1620-1706, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Lewisham Council, “Unitary Development Plan 2011” (London, 2011) Roy, Claude, La France de Profile (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1952)

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64

h gauges in the Great

Basin: excavation

Excavation of the Basin entrance

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

Basin: entrance

gauges in the Great

9LHZ RI WKH êOOHG LQ HQWUDQFH WR WKH %DVLQ ZLWK WKH

Excavation of the Basin entrance

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

66

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

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Basin: stone gate entrance

Fig 76 Stone shaft in Rennie’s gate in Area 2

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

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Moving pier

Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

Olympia Shed: Late 19th Century

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

From Left: Slip Cover, Rigging House, Great Dock Cover, 19th Century

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

Basin: timber basin gate

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Archaeological Remains of the King’s Shipyard

Looking South South East over the 18th century treasury towards Canary Whard

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Sayes Court Garden Reasearch Book

Lecture given to the Royal Horticultural Society: The Restorative Concept of Elysium: The Background to John Evelyn’s Gardening at Sayes Court, August 27, 2012, by Laird

The Garden Restored “To make a garden is to found a place of our lost felicity...it is the common term and the pit from whence we were dug, we all came out of this parsley bed” (Evelyn) “Like another Virgil [Evelyn] was appointed for retrieving the calamities of England and re-animating the spirit of his countrymen for planting and sowing of woods – for him it is owing that gardening can speak proper English” (Switzer wrote of Evelyn 1707) The garden at Sayes Court, and the chronically unfinished text the Elyssium Britannicum, could be seen as part of a single millenarian project to create a terrestrial paradise. Evelyn in the Elysium Britannicum was interested in simultaneously evoking the mystery of gardening, “from the preparation of soil to the blooming of flowers” (Laird) alongside the more empirical project of classification and observation. It was a project that believed the key to the Restoration relied upon the combining of the fruits of Classical, Christian and contemporary learning.

The term Restoration had three distinct meanings: the recreation of paradise on earth conceived in terms of the fall of Adam, the restoration of the correct landmanagement that had existed in pre-civil war England, and a restoration of the intellectual heights reached in the Classical age. With regards to this final meaning could we suppose The transplanting of the ruins of Rome into the gardens of England could be understood as a project to claim the history of classical and Renaissance Italy as one’s own, and became the means of reinvention. Could such a reclamation be repeated in our own age?

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Lecture given to Royal Horticultural Society. The Restorative Concept of Elysium: The Background to John Evelyn’s Gardening at Sayes Court, August 27 2012, by Laird

Garden Gallery “See What Delights in Sylvan Scenes appear Descending Gods have found Elyssium here” Pope “Landscape is the idealisation of use” Evelyn quoted in the Landscape Garden Gardens were used for the display of private collections of antiquities, art and other curiosities, often in free standing wooden cabinets. The categorisation of objects was often in flux depending on what Evelyn was currently working on, and the route visitors took was more or less proscribed. One implication was that the placement of human art in a natural setting related the art work to the ruin, and to the surrounding nature, and called up the question of the constituent characteristics of the artificial and the natural and

what their relationship

should be.

A garden cannot exist without the explicit design of humans, nor without living creatures. The paragone between art and nature was a fertile area for discussion in the Renaissance and the garden was the testing ground for exploring the inherent tension that was perceive to exist between the two. It is arguably still a point of confusion. On the one hand nature could act like an artist and create scenes that appeared consciously designed such as the Roman campagna. In turn art works were conceived as bringing out the fullest of nature, and even its real character by selectively framing particular moments.

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http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9058/the-john-evelyn-cabinet-cabinet-on-standbenotti-domenico/. Item held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Lon number W.24:1 to 23-1977

don, Museum

Garden Laboratory “Experiment is the interrogation of nature” Robert Boyle “In everyone of these Transplantations, the chief Progress that has hitherto been made, has been rather for the Collection of Curiosities to adorne Cabinets and Gardens, than for the Solidity of Philosophical discoveries” Hunt, 82 The garden as laboratory was the true descendent of the garden as cabinet of curiosity. While the garden as a whole was seen to embody the project of cataloguing, which may never have been intended to be comprehensive of the true abundance of nature, the elaboratorie (sic) garden was the primary site for the observation of constructed experiments.

Above all the observation of the effects of sight was of interest and the construction of the perspectival vistas of the garden were designed as experiments as much as a pleasurable conceit.

Aesthetics

was

both

the

subject

matter

and

a

major

consideration in the design of these experiments. The Royal Society originally endorsed a position on design which advocated using plants and objects in a manner which drew out their intrinsic physical characteristics and not as cultural symbols. Over time this led to the dismissal of the disposition of collected objects as a method of enquiry but it should be noted that many of the more speculative experiments of the time were rooted on one level to an interest in the paragone between art and nature, and thus of the potential of both aesthetics and science to bridge both.

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Lecture given to the Royal Horticultural Society: The Restorative concept of Elyssium: The background to John Evelyn’s gardens at Sayes Court. August 27 2012 by Laird

Fragmentation, Multiplication, Permutation: Natural Histories and Sylvan Aesthetics from Bacon to Evelyn in Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished; Middleton page 241, by Vittoria di Palma

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Essays presented to Robin

Garden Theatre During the 16th and 17th century there were persistent crossover between gardens and theatres. Theatres contained both sets and plots sets in gardens, and gardens contained theatres, and both were popular with the Court and the general populace. Symbolic motifs and structuring devices such as perspectival vistas were shared. This relationship indicates their analogous characteristics and perhaps hints at a future reciprocity between them.

Gardens,

like

theatrical

sets

or

paintings,

were

understood to be constructed representations and, like the theatre understood to be both within and without the world. This reciprocity may rest on how a garden always makes explicit the landscape within which it is situated in a way that is analogous to the theatre’s relationship with the wider world. Both the theatre and the garden relied upon a physical and temporal boundary between them and their environment.

It is worth noting the shared heritage of both the axial vista and the stage set in the development of perspective in Renaissance painting.

Gardens were the setting for courtly performances, ranging from balls to masques, sites of play and plays. Within the Court where members both took part and observed plays they were venues in which the relationship between projection and self-realisation was explicitly played out. Gardens were in the words of Evxvelyn “theatres of pastimes” and were intended to be pleasurable win a way that was uniquely varied in both content and sensuousness. The degree of propriety was always a matter of judgement. A charge levelled at many theatrical gardens was that the “conspectus of conspicuous amusements” had overflown into luxurious hedonism 85

The Garden as site of Recollection “Prolifus wanders through marvellous landscapes where he learns to remember...”

Collona’s Hypnertomachia Evelyn used his garden as a place to think. In particular the summer pavilion on his moated island and the grove were designed as venues of recollection and imagination, and as such designed according to Cicero’s rules on the design of a site for memory. The desire to replicate the classical idea of thinking of certain spatial settings as mnemonical was common at the time.

Authors such as Giulio Camillo took the Classical idea further in designing memory theatres. Within this venue a full compendium of knowledge could be displayed, embodied in paintings, objects and antiquities and placed on the tiered seating stands. In such a memory theatre the audience takes the place of the actors and the world takes the place of the audience. This further reinforced the analogous relationship between world and stage summed up in the term theatrum mundi

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A page from The Elysium Britannicum, The British Library

Garden as Nature Whole “Knowledge is the demesne of nature” Francis Bacon The separation of a variety of programs into discrete gardens at Sayes Court does not result in a fragmented overall form. It is in contrast to gardens such as Monceau’s at Carmontelle, where the principle of separation and willful contrast are pushed to the limits, in that the need for coherence between the parts is successfully resolved.

From the Renaissance to the early 18th Century gardens changed from being structured through iconography and vertical topography to being constructed through a singular view. This link is established in the etymology of the word landscape, or landschip as it was known in Dutch, from where the term originated, which was first a term for paintings and then a term for the territory. A landscape painting was a construction of difference all combined into one horizon. we could speculate that in the case of Evelyn’s garden the raised terrace, travelling between the house and the avenue, acts as a vantage platform, and this view allowed this garden to be understood as a visual whole, as well as place where parts were experienced in sequence. The garden as a whole could be understood as a set of gardens spiralling around the raised terrace.

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Deptford 2013 with superimposed 17th C.plan of Sayes Court Garden showing location of Evelyn’s attempt at a terrestrial Elysium

Sayes Court Garden 1405 – Sayes Court first mentioned in records. Possibly built on site of 11th century castle of Gilbert de Magiminot 1568 – Sayes Court Manor is rebuilt. Archaeological investigation reveals brickwork compatible with this date 1653 – John Evelyn took up residence at his wife’s ancestral home. Modernises house and lays out plans for “one of the most celebrated gardens of the age” (English Heritage) 1654 - John Evelyn begins writting Elyssium Britannicum 1664 - Sylva published which encouraged the growing of groves in London streets and great estates, in part to provide timber for the Navy 1685 - Sayes Court Garden extensively re-designed 1694 – John Evelyn moved out of Sayes Court. Tsar Peter the Great lived in the manor house whilst studying ship building in the Dockyard.

1698 - Tsar Peter the Great lived at Sayes Court for three months 1706 – Evelyn dies and the estate is broken up, manor house was used to house the parish workhouse from mid 18th century 1759 – The manor house rebuilt or repaired, some of earlier fabric retained 1830 – The Royal Dockyard expanded and Sayes Court entirely absorbed by the complex 1848 – The building was restored to Evelyn family and used as factory and emigration depot 1856 – Sold to Admiralty and served as Pensioners Pay Office 1869 – William John Evelyn, descendant of John Evelyn, purchased part of the site. Clears and creates public recreation ground called Sayes Court Gardens, laid out by Octavia Hill’s sister’s Kyrle Society (pre-runner to the National Trust) 1886 - The gardens were given to the public for use for the local community. It was the first open space given to the City of London other than Leicester Square 1914 – The gardens were leased by the War Office and built over 2013 - The developers Hutchison Whampoa put forward a redevelopment plan for the entire Convoys Wharf sit, including the area where the gardens had once been

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Sayes

Court

Garden

extant

remains

Museum

of

London

archaeology

museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/NewsProjects/Archive/News11/SayesCourt.htm

http://www.

Graham Clements Planning Decisions Unit Greater London Authority The Queen’s Walk London SE1 2AA 14th January 2014 Dear Graham Clements, I am writing to outline some concerns I have about the proposed development of Convoys Wharf, Prince Street, London SE83JF by Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL). As a local resident I have written previously about the designs put forward by Aedas architects and HWL. Despite assurances that Terry Farrell architects and the developer would look at the scheme with new eyes this application is similar to the last withdrawn one in its fundamental aspects. There have been only marginal changes to the density, the use-type and the phasing of the site. In addition there are very limited commitments to developing the considerable assets of the site and there are only limited commitments to developing the non-residential aspects of the scheme such as the working wharf. This is despite all of these issues being highlighted by Lewisham planners, English Heritage and the local community as unsatisfactory in previous applications. They remain unsatisfactory for the reasons I outline below. I would like to see this wonderful site redeveloped. Nonetheless I urge this scheme to be turned down to encourage a better application to be put in. Alternatively I would urge the planning office to seek substantial revisions to certain aspects of the scheme, in particular its commitment to community projects, before it is passed.

Comments on the masterplan A common refrain at the community planning meetings that preceded this application went somewhere along the lines of “why three thousand units?” The fundamental premise of this application is to develop the site as a high density residential development. I would question both the use-class and the density. The developer’s quest for this high density has not only resulted in a questionable urban design but meant there is little space on the site for the restoration of Sayes Court Garden, the working wharf, the extant remains of the dockyard, green space, etc. It also places pressure on the local council that has not been resolved. A justification for this density is not provided in the application. My understanding is that although there is a presumption in favor of development in planning it is the prerogative of the developer to show that the scale and type of development is the correct one for a given site. This should particularly be the case for a development like this one that is drastically at odds with the density of Deptford generally and quite distinct from the previous use of the site.

The masterplan being put forward is also sharply at odds with the one prepared by Ricky Burdett and Lewisham council, reflecting the reality that from the beginning the aspirations by developers has been at odds were with the type of development the site was asking for. This may account for the distinctly rushed and vague quality to all of the applications put forward so far.

There appears to be a presumption by the developer that this application is a revision of the earlier scheme designed by Aedas that was itself a revision of one by Richard Rogers Partnership and therefore if this density was suitable for the first applications it is suitable for this one. However, it is ambiguous the degree to which this density was ever acceptable to the council or people of Lewisham and London. Even if this is the case the initial application is well out of date. Since the first application a large number of new developments in Deptford Creek, Surrey Quays, Deptford East and Greenwich West have completely transformed the housing situation in this part of London. Furthermore, Lewisham is one of the most residential and least diversified boroughs of London. The borough and Deptford in particular, needs spaces for employment and culture as well as housing.

It is disingenuous to believe that HWL need to build at this density in order to do anything at all, when in fact they stand to make vast profits on this scheme. I stress this point to suggest that what the developer is doing is not normal, but is, in fact, rather exceptional to the history of the site and to the needs of the area. As the public stand to lose the remains of the dockyards, and as there are many potential risks to the area in allowing a development of this scale to go ahead, only a scheme with exceptional provisions for the local community should be allowed to go ahead.

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There are issues with the quality of the urban design of the master plan. This master plan, in keeping with previous applications, advocates large housing blocks with raised internal courtyards. These blocks are to be arranged in a grid with wide streets between them with parking on the street or ground floor. The urban grain is considerably wider than most of Deptford or London and it raises doubts as to whether the character of this new estate will feel like a neighborhood or will lack all sense of intimacy. In addition the raising of the internal courtyards of the blocks both compromises the street frontage and stresses the lack of public access to the gardens. This will likely nurture the impression that this is a developer island not all connected to the rest of Deptford.

Developing the site’s assets Many of the new large-scale residential communities built next to the river such as St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall are completely lacking in a sense of place or community. This site has a wealth of assets that could connect this development to its context - the extant archaeology, the history of the site, the Olympia Shed and the connection to the High Street to name a few but the application has largely failed in making use of them I would question that the developer has done a sufficient job in making use of the site’s remarkable history to either benefit of the public or to improve the character of the new development. The treatment of the site’s remains is piecemeal and ersatz, when the remains are extensive, visceral and evocative of the site’s importance to Deptford and its connection to the river. The park above the double dry-dock and the tiny shallow artificial basin are replacing an artifact with a quite incorrect representation of it. This does not do the site justice and the developer should provide assurances that more imaginative ways of integrating the remains with the development are explored.

The report on the status of the site’s built heritage by Alan Baxter is littered with superficial conclusions and would frankly seem to be an exercise in retrospective justification for a generic design. A glaring example would be point 4.3.2. in the document CW014 Built heritage which declares the plan form of the dockyard site to be of little architectural interest and their archaeological interest to be moderate. In fact the plan form of this site remained remarkably consistent for at least four hundred years and is a beautiful reflection of the dockyards reciprocal development with the natural and urban topography of the site. This is of continuing importance. Due to the closing in 1869, the dockyard is unique it still maintaining its extant tudor routes/layout.

It is worth talking to Chris to cite NDS papers etc. Peer review absent from Baxters’ conclusions. Listing by WMF highlights “international significance For example the row of slipways and dry docks at the river’s edge establish a primary relationship between the site and the bend in the river. The very reason for establishing the site here marks a moment on the Thames where the tidal reach is particularly striking and high. Historically the Southern and Eastern side of the site has contained smaller buildings and has a tighter urban grain, appropriate to the side of the site addressing the high street and centre of Deptford. By contrast the larger buildings at the centre of the site respond to the scale of the basins and slipways they fronted and address the scale of the river and not the town. The remarkably consistent routes from the site entrances to the water reflected the basic shape of a site with just two points of entry and a long face to the river.

These relationships are clearly evident in the remains that exist on the site. In fact the value of the archaeological record on this site lies not in the recovery of precious objects or the documenting of processes but precisely in the way that as a whole it shows the consistency and changes of an important dockyard over time. (It should be added that these changes chart the fortunes of Deptford and correspond with a remarkably rich collection of extant textual documentation, namely maps and models, making them all the more understandable). If you scraped away the top layer of soil, as the archaeologists did in stages, you would be able to easily mark out where the slips, buildings and waterways were and are on the site, and how they relate to each other. I visited the site in a stage of its unmasking and it was very exciting to feel this.

I would argue these latent plan configurations remain relevant and should have been used to make an urban plan with far more nuance. The urban plan put forward starkly ignores this historical pattern in favor of a plan

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marked by homogeneity of block size that doesn’t even reflect the needs of primary traffic circulation.

The application The response I have previously been given to the accusations that the application is hazy, even in comparison to much smaller schemes in other parts of London, has been that the application is for outline planning and that certain aspects of the scheme will be clarified in much greater detail in further applications. Given this is the case it would seem that HWL is trying to have it both ways in gaining permission for minimum building heights as it prevents knowledge that will come to light from significantly changing the form of the buildings.

An example of where this would be particularly problematic would be in the parts of the scheme to be built over the discovered archaeology, which is of course the majority of the site near the river. The details of how the archaeology will be preserved in its entirety “in-situ” underneath many of these housing blocks is unresolved in the application and potentially unresolvable. My training as an architect made me think this unlikely so I recently informally consulted with structural engineers of Arup in New York on this issue. Incidentally they are experts in this type of work because a large part of the financial district of Wall Street, which dates back to the 17th century, is built on land reclaimed by the filling in of quays. Often during the construction of new buildings in the district they discover the remains of old ships and slipways, which have to be either moved in their entirety as archaeological objects or given a wide birth. In their opinion not only is it highly unlikely the foundations could be designed so that the extant remains were not piled through but that also the development would impact upon the water table of the site and this would have a grave impact on the preservations of these remains unless accounted for with some kind of membrane barrier, a ground water management system, and a continuous series of archaeological inspections. This would be enormously expensive and may not even be technically possible. We are still waiting to see the CgMs report In addition the book “Mitigation on Construction Impact on Archaeological Remains” (2004, Museum of London Archaeology) states the importance of this issue and states that periodic access to the remains to assess their preservation is the only responsible strategy. This does not seem to be accounted for in the current application which despite all the extra excavation omits some of the specific archaeological information contained in the 2010 application (which had rather useful excavation drawings and photographs of the older digs) in favor of a more general assessment. The status of the archaeology of the site is still emerging and it would seem that the height of the towers and blocks would have a direct bearing on what is permissible and therefore their minimum height should not be resolved at this stage. The developers in my opinion should be asked to provide a much more detailed Scheme of Archaeological Resource Management statement even in this outline application, as in this case it is particularly important to judging the plausibility of this proposal.

There are some issues with the proposed phasing. The coordination of the phasing is vital to allowing the scheme to grow in the correct way. The Working Wharf for instance is listed as a site to be used by the construction contractors until well into phase 2. This would seem to be unnecessary considering the large amounts of other space available on the site. It fits with the pattern of the developers and the design team of consistently neglecting it as a real concern despite them being urged to find tenants for the site by the PLA and others. The working wharf should be one of the most critical components of any master plan as a place that will both continue the previous use of the site and provide jobs for the local community. Leaving its development until the final phase will make it harder to find tenants, delay its development, and potentially place its priorities behind those of the residential buildings that will be being built along its edge in the third phase. I strongly urge for the working wharf to be working at least by the end of the first phase and for more specific assurances to be provided to ensure its’ flourishing.

Suggestions A good way of conveying the site’s rich history would be to support the two brilliant projects that have been raised by the local community for the site; the interpretative restoration of Sayes Court Garden and the rebuilding of the Lenox ship somewhere on the site. This would have the added benefit of connecting the new development to the surrounding community, providing employment and raising of public awareness of this important history and the local area. A similar argument could be made for the restoration of the Olympia shed to public or semi-public use. To credit the current application there are feints in the direction of supporting a

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Sayes Court Garden institute and the restoration of the Olympia Shed. However, I would urge the planners to ensure that these suggestions become much more concrete. It would seem for the community projects to be successful they should have their own autonomous buildings and be given sufficient space.

It would greatly benefit Deptford if these community projects had access to their parts of the site, and for the Olympia shed to be developed, during phase 1 so they have time to develop and can be working before the construction of phase 2 goes on around them. I would also argue that the future planning of the site should be structured so it is possible to defer the granting of planning permission for phase 2 if the community projects tied to phase 1 are not sufficiently supported. I would also suggest deferring planning permission for buildings above extant archaeology until the archaeological report into the recent discoveries is published. In addition interim uses should also be explored for the entire site, as access to the river has been restricted for far too long.

As a comment on future applications I think it would have been easier to both judge the overall master plan and to ensure the quality of the design of each phase if the developers had been asked to submit an application for phase 1 of their design along with their outline master plan. Once HWL are given outline master planning permission it may become much harder to bargain with them for quality design and construction. The local community has shown itself to be particularly concerned with the future of this site and I urge the creation of an effective mechanism to be implemented at this stage so that any further planning applications include their input.

I would suggest to the mayor’s office to also place this development in the context of recent trends in London’s property market. London faces many more of these large developments on historic sites. They are often backed by foreign capital that generally plan to sell units off-plan to foreign owners, leaving the areas themselves blank and empty and doing little for London’s housing shortage. There would also seem to be a trend for developers to get vague applications passed by holding a site empty until their outlandish requirements are allowed to pass.

HWL were advised by Lewisham and prior to that the GLA to take another look at the site and have returned with a scheme that has only superficially changed. Granting permission in this case would only seem to be encouraging that kind of behavior among developers.

This proposal comes at a critical moment in the development of Deptford. In the last few years there have been some great new institutions, such as the Lounge and the Laban, built in the area as well as some noticeably badly designed housing developments - the disastrous development between Creek Road and the Laban is only a few minutes walk from the site. I strongly believe this site should be developed, but I also feel it should be developed in a way that matches its situation and potential. It would be a tragedy if impatience with the current development process led to this scheme being expedited without due diligence. The consequences would be felt for decades and it would be a terrible lost opportunity for London and the local community.

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DESIGN DIARY

April 8 The development of the Convoys wharf masterplan is certain but is only approximately defined.This project seeks to intervene in the masterplan to negotiate a future for the site which establishes a community garden which builds upon the legacy of John Evelyn, preserves and protects the site’s archaeological remains and connects the future community to the river and to the rest of deptford.

This will be acheived at one scale by a manipulation of the site’s phasing and schematic plan. This will give space to a conditional architecture of moveable enclosures; walls and fences with openings to the sky, the horizon, and the ground; that move from the scale of a room to that of a landscape. At another scale it will be acheived by the building of moments of architecture at threshold points in the site, which reflect the history and future of the parts of the site they touch. These are moments of stillness in the site’s unceasing development.

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November 12 The thesis aims to design a series of experimental gardens on a large site in Deptford, South London which has an uncertain future and a rich past. The

garden consciously revisits the concepts of nature

and experimentation developed in the 17th century as a way of testing current responses to how we perceive our world. In particular, how do we engender feelings of empathy towards plants, and how do we engender

feelings of immensity in the face of landscape? Each phase of the garden will test an explicit proposition,

and the next phase of it will draw empirically upon the conclusion’s reached in the previous phase. The design

is the experiment; it will be tested both scientifically and aesthetically and will resist completion.

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November 21 Those who build first project into an uncertain future. The contingency of both the past and the future is often not admitted.

This development is absurd with respect to both the future and the past, being unresponsive to either the ruins on the site or the possibility of different needs and uses as the site develops.

However it also priveleges the value of the new and the old over the uncertainty of the present.

A garden is always under renewal and is never finished.

Evelyn’s

garden

illustrates

the

connection between the process of gardening and the development of the scientific experiment, which too is provisional.

The experimental garden for this site is designed to

comment

on

this

connection.

It

seeks

in

particular to explore the perception of plants, and to have a character which celebrates the momentary, the temporary, and the contingent.

Each phase of the garden will test an explicit proposition, and the next phase of it will draw empirically upon the conclusion’s reached in the previous phase

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Dec 8: Building in time The masterplan for the development of Convoys Wharf is an extreme example of two features of every architectural project: the necesity of destroying the remains of the past and of projecting into an uncertain future.

This masterplan has a fixed approach to the past and future. It will only be open to marginal changes of plan or use in the future, and will destruction or long term entombment of archaeological remains. There is remorse in the destruction of the remains as well as faith in the newness of the development. I see this not as conflicting tendencies but symptomatic of a tendency to deny the importance of the uncertain momentary present. They both understand time as linear; history as the past and the future as new. Time is not understood as a cycle of growth and decay.

Any response to the development must deal with the uncertainty of the planning process. It must therefore acknowledge the contingency of both the remains of the past and our projections of the future.

My projected response is a garden, which like all gardens is always under renewal and is never finished. It seeks to celebrate growth, decay and contingency in contrast to the follies of the future.

It takes inspiration from John Evelyn’s famous garden on the site. Evelyn, a prestigious antiquarian and scientist, established a firm connection betwen the process of gardening and the development of the experimental methodology. The experiment is fragmentary and provisional but also underlies our perception of progress.

I have been setting up the framework for a garden of experimentation. The framework is a series of garden rooms with specific characters and function. They are designed with varying degrees of durability so as to be able to deal with changes in time.

The experimental garden seeks in particular to explore the perception of plants, and to have a character which celebrates the momentary, the temporary, and the contingent. Each phase of the garden will test an explicit proposition, and the next phase of it will draw empirically upon the conclusion’s reached in the previous phase.

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Building in time The situation is a 40 acre site along the river front in Deptford, London that is being redeveloped to allow for the building of residential towers. It is typical of much contemporary urban development. The plan fails to offer the cultural or public institutions necessary to home the ten thousand future souls the plan foreshadows. Furthermore it does not acknowledge the possibility of future changes in use, the site’s remarkable history, or its rich urban and natural context between a lively town center and calm river. It will take at least twenty years to build during which the site, which links the town to the river, will be inaccessible.

A richer type of urban development is possible. That which is neglected in the current development strategy must be taken as an opportunity for intervention. This thesis puts forward the outline design for two interventions for public institutions rooted in the histories of the site for which there is already considerable community support. They are designed to allow for uses of the site as present and can surreptitiously take advantage of any changes to the master plan during its long fulfillment. Both interventions too are conceived as fragments that are made whole by the new development.

The first history is the site as a dockyard. For three hundred years it made ships of war and discovery and this past is preserved in the great archaeological remains and cuts in the earth that stretch beneath the site’s surface. These speak eloquently of the site’s place at a bend in the river and articulate the work of shipbuilding upon which the community at Deptford was built. There is a desire to rebuild a 17th century large wooden ship and the designed intervention is for the design of a riverside basin that connects the shipbuilding shed to the river.

The second history lies in the 17th century when the site was home to John Evelyn’s attempt to create an earthly paradise, through the planting of gardens, the conducting of experiments on nature, and the writing of natural histories. A noble, unfinished project it is deemed by scholars today as being instrumental in the development of the scientific method and naturalistic landscape design. Its historical embodiment is very different and has the status of a discovery preserved in a book. It was part of a long standing tradition of using the garden as a place to think upon. This tradition is restored in the building of a library for the study of gardens adjacent to a series of gardens.

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While the interventions proposed are specific to the site’s history, the strategy is more broadly applicable to planning discourse. It could be speculated that the developments failings are rooted in the combination of a planning process which is vague and overdetermined coupled to a conspicuously capitalist type of speculation which is predicated upon a persistent faith in the new, and thus defers the contingent reality of the past, present and future. However, while this type of development is predicated on finding a path as risk averse as possible it is evident that in practice these developments are often highly volatile propositions subject to years of delay. Exploiting this delay must be seized upon by those wishing a more negotiated type of urbanism.

Within architectural discourse this thesis suggests that the garden and the ruin, themes explored more in architectural speculation explored in the 1719th centuries than in the 20th should be revisited with conviction. It should be noted that Modernism, for all its creative brilliance, failed to create convincing urban contexts as well as few profound speculations upon landscape design or material remains.

Collectively this suggests that a failure to fully accept the complexities of time may be deeply embedded in modernity and a richer conception may be necessary to design better cities, or at least urban design should acknowledge the role of ruins and gardens to a greater degree. A connected speculation is that our culture’s strange relationship to the remains of the past and to nature, whereby we show increasing remorse at their destruction and yet sacrifice them quicker than ever in favor of future growth, is akin to a belief in an eternal springtime only. One value of gardens and ruins is their celebration of the valence of the other seasons.

Red Thoughts

The garden and the city have interesting analogies and oppositions. One could apply the fecund comment “Cities give direction to nature� to the garden, although of course the garden is generally more directly oriented towards universal conditions, topography, the path of the sun, and the city more towards historically derived forms. In opposition while the metaphor of a city being more akin to language, full of old and new constructions, rings true one would hardly apply this to gardens which are naturally oriented more towards issues of eternal recreation than diurnal constructions.

Trees at Fontainebleu

This investigation suggests a deeper relationship between logos and physis, with nature being the background from which meaning is disclosed. Whether this is an appropriate theorization is questionable, but it is clear that culture certainly developed against a backdrop of the natural world and is infused with its structures of time and form and this alone makes it a rich resource. Perhaps the most valuable insight comes from Milton, who asked the most dangerous questions of his day, convincingly makes the case that the creative quest for knowledge, is both gift and curse, marked by disobedience; it is not so much a quest of questioning, but an instruction that the direction of questioning should be oriented towards what is lost. This is what this book hopes, in a very limited way to do; to uncover what is held in the history of this site.

THOUGHTS ON THE GADEN, AT DEPTFORD 112

A garden is the most poetical description that can be made of solitude John Evelyn

Tides

A collaboration with Katherine Waters

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this is in part not all