The Triumph of Pleasure: Vauxhall Gardens

When I was a kid it was always a big deal when we went to an amusement park and in Southern California we had three to choose from. They offered everything a child and the child within could want for pleasure: exciting rides, various sugary comestibles that stuck to everything, shops, places to sit, plants and flowers, hormonal teens and young adults engaged in secret assignations, and lots of interesting people of all shapes, sizes, nationalities and classes mingling as equals. Little did my 10 year old self know that the amusement park had been around for centuries, though called by a different name, and that people did in them essentially the same things they do today.

London was no exception when the fashion of the pleasure garden made its way from the continent in the 17th century, with at least six of them dotted about the city. With the restoration of Charles II to the throne, fun and frivolity were back on the menu, a savory delight to be enjoyed by all (if you had the chinks to pay for it). The pleasure garden was a place for those of quality and gentility to seek amusement and diversion, a place to see and be seen, to be entertained, and to experience the newest thrilling industrial innovations. One such pleasure garden, and a leader of these novel venues, was at Vauxhall in Lambeth. Situated next to the Thames just south of the city, it was one of the prime social destinations of its day.


Promo for the Pleasure Gardens, c. 1850

Rather coincidentally (or not), the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall opened the same year that poor Nicolas Fouquet threw a lavish party to show off his new house at Vaux le Vicomte to a jealous and enraged Louis XIV, who threw Nic in jail and commenced building the ultimate pleasure garden, Versailles. The takeaway lesson: One must never outshine the Sun King.



This map, dated 1753, clearly shows the location of Vauxhall Gardens (marked in pink), then known as Spring Gardens. For reasons unknown, the bottom of the page is north.

In England, things were a bit different and the monarchy were among those who frequented the city's pleasure gardens, though they had resplendent royal gardens of their own (think Hampton Court and Kensington Gardens).

Vauxhall takes its name from the landowners, the Fauxe, or Vaux, family derived from Falkes de Breauté, a mercenary working for King John, who acquired the land by marriage. Sometime after 1615, the land was sold and the development of the pleasure gardens began. The name changed over time - Falkes, Fox, Faux, Vaux - and the existence of a manor house, or hall, would logically give rise to the name Vauxhall. There are Vauxhall Gardens named after the English original in Canada and the US, and the Russian word for railway station is vokzal (Вокзал), attributed to a communication glitch between a delegation of Russians and their English hosts in the late 1800's. Oh, and the griffin emblem used by the car maker? It came from the de Breauté coat of arms.

Prior to that, the land surrounding Vauxhall had been marshland belonging to the manor of Lambeth in the 13th century. It wasn't until the marshlands were drained that the area became arable and began to be developed. Until the completion of Westminster Bridge in 1750 the only crossing on the Thames was at London Bridge, a fair distance away. No matter, the Thames was the M1 of its day and people made the boat journey to Vauxhall quite frequently. The celebrated gardener and diarist John Evelyn visited the gardens when they first opened in 1661, but the first mention of the pleasure gardens came from Samuel Pepys, who visited at least two dozen times, probably more.

In his diary, Pepys wrote of his first visit to the Pleasure Gardens: "Thence home, and with my wife and the two maids, and the boy, took boat and to Foxhall, where I had not been a great while. To the Old Spring Garden [at Charing Cross], and there walked long, and the wenches gathered pinks. Here we staid, and seeing that we could not have anything to eat, but very dear, and with long stay, we went forth again without any notice taken of us, and so we might have done if we had had anything. Thence to the New one [the New Spring Gardens at Vauxhall], where I never was before, which much exceeds the other; and here we also walked, and the boy crept through the hedge and gathered abundance of roses, and, after a long walk, passed out of doors as we did in the other place, and here we had cakes and powdered beef and ale, and so home again by water with much pleasure" (29 May 1662, a Thursday).


The Grand South Walk 1744

Addison describes his visit to the gardens in The Spectator, May 1712: "As I was sitting in my chamber, and thinking on a subject for my next Spector, I heard two or three irregular bounces on my landladys door; and at the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring whether the philosopher was at home. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend Sir Roger’s voice, and I had promised to go with him on the water to Spring Garden, in case it proved a good evening...we made the best of our way to Fauxhall. We were now arrived at Spring Garden, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of year. When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choir of birds that sung upon trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades. I could not but look upon the place as kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales...a mask who came behind him gave him a gentle tap on the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her, but the knife, being startled at so unexpected a familiarity told her she was a wanton baggage, and bid her go about her business. We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung beef. As we were going out of the garden, my old friend, thinking himself obliged, as a member of the quorum, to animadvert upon the morals of the place, told the, mistress of the house, who sat were more nightingales and fewer strumpets".



A general prospect of Vauxhall Gardens c. 1751 (The Foundling Museum)

From 1728 under the astute management of Jonathan Tyers, son of a leather merchant, Spring Gardens as it was then called enjoyed tremendous popularity and patronage. Known for the quality of its art - which was aided by Tyers's new friend William Hogarth - and music, visitors who could afford the shilling entrance fee (about £7 in today's money; quite a bargain compared to Disneyland) mingled with royalty, aristocracy, and the new wealthy landowners and merchants. A season ticket made of silver and engraved with your name on it could be had for a guinea (about £150). You paid extra for refreshments but the music, art, dancing, and fireworks were free (hey, that's how amusement parks today are set up - wicked!). Men and women could also, er, mingle in the long leafy avenues or steal a quick snog among the bosquets. And just like the parks of today there were hair-raising rides in that gravity-defying new invention, the hot air balloon. Food, drink, music, fireworks, exciting rides and secret assignations -  all rather familiar, wouldn't you say?



Balloon ascents were the E-ticket* ride of the 1850's

The gardens were at their heyday in the mid 1700s then slid into seediness over the next 100 years. Cut off from the river by the new rail lines and facing tougher competition from the Crystal Palace at the 1851 World's Exhibition in Hyde Park, the company visiting Vauxhall became unruly and the garden flowers were replaced with highly painted prostitutes until the gates were finally closed in 1859. The land was sold and developed, with all traces of the lovely walks and shady bowers erased. By the late 1800's no trace of the gardens remained.


Detail of Stanford's Geological Survey map of 1878 showing the new developments over the former garden site

The gardens might have been lost forever had not war intervened nearly a century later. During WW2 the area was bombed and received extensive damage. Of all the sites the bombs could have fallen, they fell on the site of the gardens. The target was likely the railway lines but apparently the enemy missed. In a commendable incidence of municipal foresight (or hindsight, as the case may be), instead of rebuilding the area it was landscaped and is once again a public garden.



Current Ordnance Survey map of Vauxhall

The elaborate Rococo bandstand has been replaced with a basketball court, and the grand walks and flower gardens are hidden under earthworks which very well may cover heaps of Victorian rubble.

This street sign on the Albert Embankment still shows the way to Tethered Balloon Rides, a local attraction until 2002, until the London Eye won out for best and highest panoramic view of the city.

Even though the park is open to the public, it bears no resemblance to its former glorious setting and I found nothing about it even remotely amusing. There are no elaborate bandstands, no supper boxes, no art, no music (except on pedestrians' ear buds), no glittering lamps and no gardens. Just humps of lawn, some trees, the enclosed basketball court and a few benches. The few times I was there people were simply passing through, not lingering as they would have done when the gardens were at their peak which is a shame because the park could be so much more inviting.

A mural on the pedestrian tunnel leading from the railway station hints at the gardens' history, street names like Spring Gardens Walk, Lilac Place, and a pub called The Jolly Gardeners indicate some manner of floriferousness in the vicinity but there isn't a flower garden to be seen, not even a window box or hanging basket at the pub.



Mural on the wall of the pedestrian tunnel under the railway tracks shows the splendor of the gardens

My question is: why not honor the gardens' past by planting some, well, gardens? When you look at other public spaces around London such as the Embankment Gardens, the rose garden in Hyde Park, the sunk garden at Kensington Gardens, and the flower beds at Regents Park, not to mention the countless public and private squares throughout the city, one wonders why the Borough of Lambeth has not considered a flower garden at Vauxhall Gardens a municipal necessity?

From what I understand, after the demise of the pleasure gardens the area went downhill pretty rapidly and is still economically depressed but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were girls' and boys' schools, an art school, and a vocational training program all within spitting distance of the gardens. Surely the creation of a garden would not only engage the community and provide educational initiatives for local school children, but would be an appropriate nod to the region's fabulous and long-reaching history, something which England has been known to be particularly proud of when it comes to conservation and restoration measures.

What Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens needs is more gardens

Perhaps in future the city council will look back in order to look forward and see fit to resurrect something of the Gardens' horticultural glamor. Perhaps then the Pleasure Gardens will triumph once again.

*Anyone born before 1982 might remember when Disneyland sold ticket books with alphabetically labelled tickets. An 'E' ticket was reserved for the most thrilling rides in the park, giving rise to the phrase, "An E-ticket ride", which I've often used to describe bus rides over narrow country lanes or certain friends' driving.

Edited to add: I neglected to mention a guided walk of the area lead by Ken Titmuss at http://londontrails.wordpress.com/, who kindly emailed an article detailing the history of the gardens. The walk does not focus on the history of the Pleasure Gardens so much as the development of the area after they closed. Still, the walk is enjoyable and ends at a charmingly restored tea room.

Great Barn Restoration at Great Dixter

As any garden designer knows, the composition of a garden is more than just plants. There are other elements to consider: water, the form of the land, climate, paving, and buildings. In the not-too-distant past gardens were designed around structures from which the garden could be viewed and appreciated, the buildings and the gardens integrated into a unified whole. Without one, the other would be incomplete. Great Dixter is that kind of garden with that kind of house but it's the Great Barn that was in the spotlight last weekend.

The Great Barn, Great Dixter

The Great Barn, with medieval timbers and triple-cowled 19th century oast house, is a massive hulk of a structure brooding over several parts of the garden. It gives the Barn Garden its name and when viewed from down in the Sunk Garden, the enormous undulating sea of roof tiles is almost imposing yet you never feel engulfed by it.

The white cowls of the Oast House pivot with the wind and are a reminder of this garden's past as a working farm. The medieval farmer who sheltered his beasts in the barn over winter and the 19th and 20th century hop workers processing the season's harvest probably wouldn't recognize the garden today, but they would know that structure without a shadow of a doubt.

South face of the Oast House

It's fortunate for us and for the history of the area that these buildings were preserved when the Lloyd family bought the tired estate in 1909. Edwin Lutyens designed the gardens around them - the barn, cattle troughs, hovels, bothies, cart sheds, even a pig pen, were all woven into the fabric of the garden and are integral notes in the composition. Perhaps even more fortunate was the desire by the current Trust to restore these wonderful edifices to their former glory instead of following the trend of commercial conversion to tea rooms and gift shops.

Don't get me wrong, I've been to plenty of gardens with fancy stable blocks converted to tea rooms and gift shops and, for the most part, all have been well done and they work for those gardens but covering the interior of Dixter's wonderful old barn with sheet rock and plunking in a lino service counter burdened with cakes and packaged sandwiches just isn't Dixter. Christopher Lloyd was adamant that the place not be mothballed and sealed in aspic when he died, nor that it become too commercialized or institutionalized. Head gardener and Trust CEO Fergus Garrett is determined that Christo's wishes be honored and the character of Great Dixter be respected in every aspect of managing the gardens, right down to the care of these magnificent old buildings. The world needs more like Fergus, I say.

Fergus called the restoration of the barn "the icing on the cake" of a multi-million pound restoration scheme focused on the buildings that has been ongoing since Christo's death in 2006, including the acquisition of Dixter Farm down the track, which was restored and made into an education center and student accommodations. Now there's a worthy conversion for you. With a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and donations from friends and private contributors, the barn project began in late 2011. I was fortunate enough to be there to see it before work began, then to visit as it was ongoing, and finally to see the fabulous new restoration opened to the public.

Opening of the Great Barn 3 Sept 2012

One of the things I love about Dixter is their stewardship of the land. With an eye to the future oak from the Dixter woods was harvested years ago, milled, and set out to season so it could be used in the restoration. Some was used in the house to replace rotting 15th century timbers, and as much as possible was used in the barn. The coppice woods are still managed and the poles, peasticks, twigs, etc. are all still used in the gardens. Students this year even learned how to split sweet chestnut and make ladders and hurdles, all with hand tools. In keeping with this form of management that honors the ancient traditions, an area of the barn was set up to demonstrate these hand-crafts and the products made there are put to work in the garden or made available in the shop. All using locally sourced materials, all made by traditional hand-craft, right there under the beams of the medieval barn. How cool is that!?

But enough talk, there are lots of pictures to see. If you're in East Sussex this autumn, a stop at Dixter is a must. The house and garden - and now great barn - are open until 28 October and believe me when I tell you there will still be plenty to see in the garden.

The Great Barn and Oast House in Spring 2011 before restoration began

Spring 2011

Sept. 2012

 

 

Brimstone would have been kept in the curved niches to feed the fire (middle door) under the drying floor

The restored hop press. Dried hops were pressed into bags hanging from below.




Hop workers wrote the start date of hops harvest on the joists, which have been preserved.

Fergus addresses the crowd on opening day 3 Sept 2012

Exterior of the barn and oast before restoration, Spring 2011

November 2011

September 2012, seen from the Solar Garden

The garden side of the barn offers shelter for visitors and a mess room for the gardeners. Fergus shares a moment with Rachael and James, the first two Christopher Lloyd Scholars (notice they're all wearing primary colors. I love that!)

Testimonies to enduring craftsmanship and sensitive stewardship: early morning light touches the 15th century Great Hall, 19th century oast and medieval great barn with a pale setting moon (top right) smiling down. Try imagining the garden without them. 4 Sept. 2012

The garden at Great Dixter is open Tuesday - Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays from 11-5 and the house is open from 2-5 until 28 October and will re-open 1st April. See their website for admission cost and special events and study days throughout the year.

Links to videos of the project can be found here and here. Watch them. But be warned, you just might fall in love with the place.

New Garden History Course

I've been a little slow with things lately but now that my dissertation is done, I can pull my head out of the sand and see what's happening in the big, wide world. There's a new on-line garden history course taught by garden historian Toby Musgrave that started yesterday but it runs again in October so it's not too late to register:

4 Thousand Years of Garden History

Overview

Course length: 4 weeks

• Next start date: 6th October
• Course price: £145
• 100% satisfaction money back guarantee

Dr. Toby Musgrave, well-known teacher and writer in landscape architecture, garden design and garden history here explores more than 150 gardens over four millennia of Western garden design.

He considers the why, the what, the how and the where of garden design by tracing the development of gardens through history and across social, political and philosophical boundaries.

Toby has been very kind to post my blog on his so I'd like to take this opportunity to return the favor. His class looks really interesting and if I hadn't just finished a big ol' garden history dissertation, I'd sign up! 

Digging In to Garden History

For the past five weeks, one day each week, I made the journey to Fulham Palace in west London to take part in their community garden archaeology dig. I had never been to Fulham Palace - let alone heard of it, shame on me - before I read about the dig and it needed only a second to decide to sign up. I figured I'd go the first day and see how I liked it before committing more time. Little did I know I'd get hooked.

Fulham Palace courtyard

There have been settlements at the site of Fulham Palace since the Iron Age and evidence of Roman occupation has been found nearby. There has been a palace here since, oh, 704 AD, and it was the residence of the Bishop of London until 1973. Bishops were pretty high up in the social, political, and religious echelons so it wasn't unusual for a Bishop to have several houses with a tally of 177 homes for 21 bishops in the 16th century.

Each successive bishop who lived at Fulham left his mark of improvement on the house and gardens, now a listed historical site by English Heritage. Elizabeth I was sent gifts of grapes from Fulham Palace's famous gardens, and one botanically enterprising bishop in the 17th century received rare species of plants from one of his American missionaries, himself a trained botanist. Among the exotics collected at Fulham Palace was a magnolia tree, the first to be grown in Europe.

In the late 1700s a two-acre walled kitchen garden was enclosed when the grounds were remodelled. The current entrance to the walled garden is through a Tudor gateway (and boy, were people short then or what?). There was a vinery, a knot garden was laid out in the 19th century, and fruit trees, espaliers, and loads of herbs and veg grown in the traditional four-quarter garden. Flowers for the house were also grown along the path borders and in the glasshouses.

The Tudor Gate to the walled garden

The restored 19th century knot garden and glasshouses

During the Second World War, part of the palace grounds were used for allotments, a use which still continues today. Luckily, the palace was spared bomb damage but bombs did fall in the allotments and kitchen garden (so the archaeological health and safety brief that included what to do if we uncovered any unexploded ordnance was no joke).

Fast forward a few hundred years to the 20th century when the palace had fallen into a state of decay and neglect. The area surrounding the palace, including a medieval moat, was designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument in 1976 and it took the next 30 years for committees to come to agreement on the restoration. A grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund enabled restoration of the building in 2006 and a subsequent grant in 2010 allowed for restoration of the gardens and grounds.

Included in this work was the excavation of the ancient moat, originally over a mile in length, that surrounded the site. The moat will filled in back in the 1920s and loads of builders' debris was chucked in. Only one section of the moat has been uncovered and restored, including the moat bridge, so far but there are hopes to eventually excavate the entire circuit.

A section of  the ancient moat and moat bridge, uncovered and restored

But now the for the fun part. The walled garden dig! Part of the restoration scheme includes an archaeological investigation of the walled garden to attempt to find evidence of planting or building features to aid in determining the appearance and planting in the garden which will, in turn, inform the restoration to a fully functioning kitchen garden. One of the first features to be uncovered and restored were the bee boles on the north-west face of the wall. Bee boles are little niches built into a wall to protect bee hives and their industrial inhabitants. Facing what was the original kitchen garden area, they were bricked in at some point, possibly when the kitchen garden was moved, but have now been de-bricked and will hopefully house bee hives again soon.

Restored bee bole

The actual digging took place in two trenches - logically referred to as Trench A and Trench B. Each area measured 25m square, and was divided in to a 5m grid. The top soil was removed by machine and the layers beneath excavated by hoe and trowel. Changes in the soil color and composition indicate the presence of features - planting holes, post holes, tree boles, etc - so these were excavated and recorded before uncovering the following layer.

Trench B and excavated features

The work was slow, tedious, and painful (lots of protesting from knees and back) but also really, really interesting. Volunteers cheerily asked with astonishing regularity, "Find anything interesting?" and when we did, a little thrill went through the camp. Maybe one of us would find some Roman hoard or the base of an old fountain. Given that the area had been a kitchen garden, and fields before that, we knew we weren't going to find any lost civilisation but one of the archaeologists had been involved in the discovery of the 18th c. pebble mosaic orangery floor at Chiswick, so you just never know.

In the end, we found lots of potsherds, bits of broken china, and my new obsession, clay pipes and stems. All these things help to date the feature so all the finds are collected in bags and tagged with numbers matching the feature being excavated. The oldest finds at this dig included some Roman pottery, so that's exciting. One feature that I excavated had some pieces of wood rotting in it but we knew the wood was modern because it had been painted. My theory was that it was a tree stake but who really knows?

Some of the finds from the moat excavation

Early clay pipe from a feature I helped excavate

One of my features - two different fills are present, as are two pieces of wood (barely visible on the far left of the profile), possibly tree stakes?

Some features were small and shallow, some were really huge and astonishingly deep. The soil here is sandy and very free draining so clay was mixed in with the fill to help retain moisture for whatever plant went into the hole. The differences in soil composition was pretty clear once you knew what to look for (and gave me flashbacks to soil science class). Fill soil (that which is different than the surrounding soil that was dug into, which is called the 'cut') is saved for analysis and they hope to find some seeds that might indicate what was planted here. This will help them further narrow down the date of the feature as well as help create a planting plan from that era so the gardeners know what was planted here and how well it thrived.

An excavated feature with two distinct layers of fill

In the end, the dig went back about 250 years to the "post medieval layer" which can be roughly translated to early 1700s. To dig deeper would have required more time and a lot more money than the budget allowed but it would be really interesting to see what, if anything, was to be found at the Roman layer.

Three archaeologists were on site during the dig, and all of them were wonderfully patient with us volunteers. The other volunteers, likewise, were a very able and willing bunch with several going to the dig every day or several times a week. The dig was a great way to get the community involved in the project, was a fantastic hands-on tool for teaching school kids about history, and it attracted so many interesting people - a professor in ancient Greek history, an English tutor, a horticulturist, an archaeology student, a garden historian (!), and so many others with such fascinating backgrounds. All were so enthusiastic about the dig that on the last day when we met for drinks down at the pub at the end of the day, we were all equally sad to see it end. I propose a volunteer reunion in a year's time to see how the rest of the garden restoration is getting on. Of course, most of the volunteers are local so they can visit any time, but I'll have to wait a year or more before I'm able to get back.

Site leader Ian ponders the next move for volunteers and the very long planting features they're investigating

After learning how to look for features, clean the surface, excavate, record (by drawing and photographing), taking levels and applying what I know of garden history to what was found at the site, I'm convinced that garden archaeology has a very important place in the field of historic garden study. Not only does it give a more complete picture of what occupied the site in previous centuries, but it completes the picture that paper documentation (if there is any) leaves unfinished. While it would be fantastic to jump in a Tardis and see the actual garden as it was 250 years ago, I think the thrill of discovery that archaeology brings would be lost.

So what's next now that the dig is finished? The trenches are being filled back in as I type, and all the written records and drawings will be compiled into a computer generated (CAD) plan of the site. All the scientific data is compiled and a written report is done, then the whole bundle handed over to the people in charge. Based on the final outcome, a new plan of the garden will be designed based on historic information from the dig. The whole process will take another couple of years but the gardeners hope to have the first bit of the garden redesigned and replanted in the very near future, adding a new layer to the history of this ancient site.

Got my picture in the paper! Taking levels with Stuart's help (Fulham Chronicle)

Waiting for the sun to go behind a cloud to get a better picture of the trench

Excavating and discovering, or, men will be boys (I don't think they ever out grow this kind of thing!)

Indiana Jones had to deal with snakes, we had to deal with foxes

Bishop Fisher looks on approvingly

Bishop dahlias blooming in the walled garden

Fulham Palace is located in Fulham, SW London. The nearest tube station is Putney Bridge and a pleasant 10 minute walk along the Thames Path will take you directly to the palace. The grounds are open free of charge from dawn till dusk. The walled garden and palace have different opening times so check the palace website for details. There is also a very nice cafe open daily from 9 to 5.

*A special thanks to Eleanor Sier, Fulham's Learning Officer, for organizing the volunteers and keeping us well fortified with tea and biscuits, and for making the dig such an enjoyable experience! 

Is It a Fake?

One of my favorite rambles is along the Thames Southbank from London Bridge to wherever my feet get tired. From the London Bridge tube station you can pass through the church yard of Southwark Cathedral then into the Borough Market, which is always heaving on a Saturday. A market has existed here for nearly 700 years and you can still stroll past the fishmongers, cheesemongers, sausagemongers, vegmongers, Turkish delightmongers, and a whole host of other mongers, drooling all the way.

On the other side of the market you can turn down Cathedral Street and head toward the river. There, berthed at St. Mary Overie Dock just a short walk from The Clink Prison Museum, is a full scale replica of The Golden Hinde. So much history within so short a walk. I always stop and marvel at this ship because of Sir Francis Drake's Prayer which I first heard quoted by my friend and mentor Danilo Maffei in his speech at my class's graduation ceremony at Longwood Gardens. When I first saw the Golden Hinde, read the informational signage and made the connection between it and the prayer, the prayer meant even more and made Sir Francis's accomplishment all the more amazing. I mean, can you just imagine spending three years circumnavigating the globe in this!?

Well, one fine Sunday morning as I wandered along my usual route, I decided to stop and get a cappuccino at the coffee shop right next to the Hinde. It was early and the Thames Walk was nice and quiet, except for the two city workers busy putting up long garish banners in preparation for the Olympics and obscuring my view of the ship in the process.



Just in case all those Olympic tourists suddenly forgot what city they were in and during what calendar year?

Joining me that morning at another table outside the coffee shop was a father and son out for their morning walk. I'm always heartened when I hear a parent intelligently educating their offspring about the history of this fine city and such was the case here when the child asked about the galleon. Dad correctly informed his son that this was a replica of the original in which Drake had sailed around the world and in they went to order their coffee.

It's when they came out and continued their conversation that the problem started. Well, for me, anyway. As they sat down the son gazed thoughtfully at the ship before us and said, "So the boat's a fake?"

This comment set off a chain of thought processes that occupied me throughout the day, fed by the fact that I've been volunteering at a garden archaeology project intended to discover the original layout of an 18th century garden which will inform its eventual restoration. The kid's conclusion - albeit erroneous - begs the question: is a replica or historic recreation of something - however true to the original in materials and craftsmanship - simply a forgery to be dismissed without value?

The dictionary definition of the word "fake" is 'a forgery, sham, counterfeit, something intentionally meant to fool someone' whereas "replica" and "reproduction" are defined as 'a duplicate of an original work'. This impressive vessel makes no claim to be the original but can boast that it is in fact a fully functional recreation of the original, constructed to the original plans by traditional hand craft, is just as sea worthy and has, in fact, clocked more nautical miles than its predecessor and has also circumnavigated the globe, thank you very much. It is now used as a living history museum with tours, talks, and reenactments by impersonated swarthy sailors for the edification of the world's youth and young at heart. There is no intent here to fool anyone. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Is it a fake? I say it's not. A fake presumably would be unable to sail in the same manner as the original, which this baby does. Is it as valuable as the original? Perhaps also not in monetary terms, yet its value lies in the insight and learning we gain from viewing and experiencing something that's as close to an ephemeral original as we're going to get from a distance of 435 years. With the Golden Hinde, as with a restored period garden, you can walk through it, touch it, smell it, experience its scale and dimensions, and get a pretty good first-hand idea of what it's like to inhabit that space. I'd argue the same goes for the Globe Theatre just up the river. Though modern health and safety regulations prevented it from being a true reproduction, one can imagine experiencing Shakespeare just as the Elizabethans did (and if you're like me, you'll splurge and pay the extra bob for a cushion when you go). With a little imagination and fancy dress, you can take the experience a step further and transform yourself into a Tudor sailor, groundling, or gardener.

Is the boat a fake? The dad copped out and agreed it was which made me sad for the kid. Instead of appreciating the value that this masted marvel has to offer, he just dismissed it and probably went home and pretended to be Captain Jack with a video game rather than test his muscle on real rigging. And talk about a fail on the dad's part. The opportunity to enlighten his child was right there in front of him, large as life (though obscured by those gaudy, yet painfully authentic, banners). 

Were I brave enough, I'd steal to the dock in the dark of night and scrawl Sir Francis's prayer on the pavement for all to see. Since I'm not, I'll type it here. I think that father and son would have benefited from it that day.

Sir Francis Drake's Prayer

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

The Golden Hinde in Deptford c. 1581 (wiki). This is not a fake. It's a facsimile.