| Date | 16 August 2013 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0050 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
Secret garden uncovered
Email Elias with feedback and your memories on observernews@berksmedia.co.uk
I WAS recently given a number of aerial photographs of Windsor and the surrounding area. I was amazed to find some interesting parch marks which showed an area of the Home Park of Windsor Castle which was taken in 1964.
My first thoughts were that these related to some Edwardian recreation area within the park, or perhaps something to do with the Second World War. It turned out, rather excitingly, that these marks were part of a lost garden of Windsor Castle none of which survives to this day.
The answers to my questions were answered in Lady Jane Robert’s Magnus Opus entitled ‘Royal Landscape: The Gardens and Parks of Windsor’. According to Lady Roberts’ research the garden was created in the early part of the 18th Century in around 1713 and was known as the Maastricht Garden. The garden was named after a battle in Maastricht in Holland in 1673. A year later, in 1674, the battle was re-enacted in the Little Park of Windsor Castle by James, Duke of Monmouth.
The area where the garden was to be created was from land purchased by William III in 1698. A high wall was constructed around the garden which was really just a piece of enclosed land at the beginning of the 18th Century. In around 1712 a new plan for the Maastricht Garden was submitted to Queen Anne by the Royal Gardener Henry Wise. An estimate for the garden was submitted by Henry Wise at a cost of £6,874. This included the costs ‘for levelling, new making and planting a division of ground on the north side of the Castle’.
The garden which Wise designed was very ornamental and elaborate in comparison to the garden William III created. The centrepiece of the garden included a canal. The earth from the canal was used to improve and repair Datchet Lane – the road from Windsor to Datchet. Paths and symmetric avenues were lined with newly planted trees which survived into the early part of the 19th Century.
It would appear that the garden was completed but was abandoned soon after the accession of George I in August 1714. The garden then became overgrown and was eventually turned back to pasture and by the middle of the nineteenth century had disappeared forever.
LOST WORLD: Henry Wise’s design for the Maastricht Garden at the Home Park of Windsor Castle as it appeared on a map by Collier of 1742.
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