The soCial C onTeXTs of Wildlife, C.1650–1750^63from the surrounding landscape. Avenues were thus commonly planted
with beech, only really a species of the working countryside in south east
England;^15 with common lime Tilia Vulgaris, rather than the small-leafed
Tilia cordata;^16 or with sweet chestnut. The grove of Scots pine planted in
the grounds of Somerleyton in Suffolk was such an unusual sight that it
could be described in 1662 as one of the place’s ‘curiosities’, and in 1663 as
‘the most incomparable piece in the realm of England’.^17
Garden historians tend to focus on the ornamental aspects of the
grounds of great houses, but attention should also be drawn to their more
productive and practical areas. Kitchen grounds, and also farmyards, were
usually located near the mansion or even interspersed with the ornamental
gardens; while many features, such as orchards and nut grounds, were at
once ornamental and productive in character.^18 Great gardens not only
displayed a knowledge of the latest fashions in architecture and garden
design. They also boasted that their owners produced, and consumed, rare
and exotic food. This immediately brings us back to wild, or at least semi-
wild, creatures, the exploitation of which had, as we have seen, long been
a means of displaying social superiority. Deer parks were by now almost
invariably located beside – sometimes wrapped around – major residences.
In addition, dovecotes were frequently placed close to mansions, and
often near or within the main garden areas. This was partly for practical
reasons – to protect the birds from theft and to facilitate the movement of
the rich dung which they produced. But it was also because such badges
of manorial privilege were to be proudly displayed, and seventeenth- and
early eighteenth-century dovecotes are often architecturally sophisticated
structures, elaborately detailed.^19 Fish ponds were likewise located close to
the mansion. Indeed, many if not most canals and basins doubled as ‘stews’
or holding ponds.^20 Rabbit warrens were perhaps the most surprising
elements of these landscapes of lordship. The Catholic recusant Thomas
Tresham erected a strange triangular lodge in the 1590s within the warren
close to Rushton House in Northamptonshire. This provided both a pun
on Tresham’s name and a statement of his faith in the tridentine mass: it
has three sides, each 33 feet long and with three gables; three storeys; and
three-sided chimneys.^21 At Quarrendon in Buckinghamshire the main view
from the great house erected by Sir Henry Lee looked out across gardens
and onto a large warren which lay some 350 metres to the east. A group
of ‘pillow mounds’, of varied and complex form, still survives here, some
carefully placed on the false crest of the hill, and raised higher than most
such mounds, to ensure their visibility.^22 Many other large residences,
like Sopwell House near St Albans in Hertfordshire, looked out directly
across rabbit warrens, which clearly formed an acceptable alternative to
deer parks (Figure 13).^23 Such displays, it should be emphasized, were not
only to be found at the homes of backwoods squires. Fishponds, warrens
and the rest formed important components of designed landscapes at the
highest social levels. Chatsworth in Derbyshire was a vast mansion erected