Historic Orangeries Across the UK
By Admin ISK. Filed in UK Vacations |
There are a number of orangeries among the long list of beautiful and fascinating buildings across the UK. You can find these from Bath to Wakefield and from Tyntesfield in Somerset to Kensington Palace.
The long history of orangeries in the UK is a tale of lavish Royal comforts, global exploration, dancing bears running amok and, well, oranges. I find this kind of thing engrossing and decided to find out more about how we ended up with so many of these fine structures all over the country.
The initial use of orangeries is believed to have started in Spain or maybe France, but it was the Dutch who brought the idea across to our shores. This happened sometime in the late 16th century, when relations between the countries were good.
A Luxury Fruit
Let’s not forget that oranges were a lot less common back then than they are now. Nowadays I think nothing of nipping down to the supermarket and buying a dozen oranges which have been shipped here from some exotic shores. Back in those days they were reasonably well known but were still seen as something of a luxury.
So the building of an orangery gave a rich land owner a chance to get hold of some highly valued fruit as well as have an interesting and attractive addition to their property. As we can see from the early surviving models, some of those orangeries were lovely structures which have stood the test of time wonderfully well. Others would clearly have been more mundane, practical affairs to us now but all of them would have been hugely exciting at the time.
As well as orange trees, the people who owned orangeries would often use them to grow other citrus plants and even bananas. To make their plant collections more interesting some people began to diversify and add in other exotic plants as well. I find it amazing to think of, for example, an 19th century merchant housing this wonderful collection of bizarre plants which everyone in the town would talk about and marvel over.
The Kensington Palace and Kew models were built during the heyday of the orangery but then there was a second boom period when tax on glass was done away with in the mid 19th century and it become more affordable to get one built. It was still a luxury compared to doing the same thing today but it was certainly within the reach of more people than before.
I started off by mentioning dancing bears running amok and it would be unfair to end without going into a bit more detail. This strange incident happened in the historic orangery building in Wakefield. During the 19th century it was turned into a zoo, and the popularity for dancing bears at that time meant that one was taken along there. Sadly it all ended with the bear escaping and killing their keeper. Not all of our orangeries have such dramatic stories attached to them but there is certainly a wealth of history to be explored.
Tags: 16th Century, Attractive Addition, Bananas, Citrus Plants, Exotic Plants, Global Exploration, Kensington Palace, Models, Orange Trees, Orangeries, Orangery, Oranges, People, Plant Collections, Somerset, Spain, Supermarket, Test Of Time, Tyntesfield, Wakefield