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English Heritage Re-Create Tudor Garden at Kenilworth Castle

1st May 2009

Over 400 years since it was lost to the world, English Heritage has reconstructed the pleasure garden created by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester to impress Queen Elizabeth I. Working from a detailed 16th-century description of the garden, painstaking archaeological investigation and historical research, English Heritage assembled a team of experts to re-create the Elizabethan garden at Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire. Visitors will experience the sights, scents and sounds of the garden as it was when Queen Elizabeth I and her suitor Robert Dudley first walked there in July 1575.

The amazing new Elizabethean garden at Kenilworth garden.

credit: English Heritage.

The re-creation of an Elizabethan garden on such a scale is a world first and a triumph of British craftsmanship, involving stone masons, master sculptors and the specialist carpenters who worked on the reconstruction of London's Globe theatre. A bejewelled aviary with pheasants and canaries, carved arbours and obelisks, wild strawberries, perfumed plants and pear trees, are among the highlights. A carved marble fountain is the spectacular centrepiece of the garden. Standing over 18ft (5m) high, the fountain includes two figures, 'Athlants', supporting a sphere from which jets create a curtain of water. The panels around the basin are carved with sensual scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and, as with the original 16th-century fountain, secret water 'jokes' or jets are installed to cool those too 'hot in desire'.

Although it was designed as a private or 'privy' garden, closed to all but the queen's closest companions, one day the gardener allowed Robert Langham, an official in Leicester's household, to sneak inside. Langham described the garden in great detail in a letter chronicling the lavish 1575 Kenilworth festivities. Langham was overwhelmed by the garden, describing it as an 'entire delight unto all senses’ and found the scenes at the base of the fountain very racy: 'Here were things, ye see, might inflame any mind to long after looking…'.

The Langham Letter, one of the longest and most detailed eyewitness accounts of an Elizabethan garden, provided the key to reconstructing the Kenilworth garden in the 21st century. Archaeological excavations between 2004 and 2006 uncovered the foundation and white marble fragments of the original fountain, confirming Langham’s contemporary description and allowing the garden's lay-out to be accurately mapped. The end result of this monumental exercise has made it possible for today’s visitor to experience those same sensations as richly described by Langham in 1575: ‘the pleasant whisking wind above, or delectable coolness of the fountain-spring beneath, to taste of delicious strawberries, cherries, and other fruits…to smell such fragrancy of sweet odours, breathing from the plants, herbs, and flowers, to hear such natural melodious music and tunes of birds…'.

Dr Simon Thurley, Chief Executive of English Heritage, said: 'The re-creation of an Elizabethan garden on such a scale is unique, this is to gardens what The Globe was to theatre. It is a world-first, made possible by the research of English Heritage archaeologists, historians and gardeners. Leicester's garden was as much a work of art as it was of horticulture and our re-creation, set among the sandstone ruins of his once splendid buildings, is a beautiful reminder of how sumptuous Elizabethan culture was.'

The garden will open to the public on Saturday 2 May with a bank holiday weekend of pageantry and spectacle. Elizabethan music and plays, displays of falconry and courtly chivalry will fill the grounds of the castle while 'Queen Elizabeth I' herself will personally inspect the new garden.

Since 2003, when English Heritage embarked on the ambitious project to bring the Elizabethan garden back to life, English Heritage has spent £2.1 million on this ground-breaking project.

Credit: Nick Pringle

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