Bloomsbury : Leonard Woolf .

Leonard Sidney Woolf (25 November 1880 – 14 August 1969) was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.

Early life

Woolf was born in London, the third of ten children of Solomon Rees Sidney Woolf (known as Sidney Woolf), a barrister and Queen’s Counsel, and Marie (née de Jongh). His family was Jewish. After his father died in 1892 Woolf was sent to board at Arlington House School near Brighton, Sussex. From 1894 to 1899 he attended St Paul’s School, and in 1899 he won a classical scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge,^‪‬ where he was elected to the Cambridge Apostles. Other members included Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, GE Moore and EM Forster. Thoby Stephen, Virginia Stephen’s brother, was friendly with the Apostles, though not a member himself. Woolf was awarded his BA in 1902, but stayed for another year to study for the Civil Service examinations.

In October 1904 Woolf moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service, in Jaffna and later Kandy,^‪ and by August 1908 was named an assistant government agent in the Southern Province, where he administered the District of Hambantota. Woolf returned to England in May 1911 for a year’s leave. Instead, however, he resigned in early 1912 and that same year married Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf).

Together Leonard and Virginia Woolf became influential in the Bloomsbury group, which also included various other former Apostles.

In December 1917 Woolf became one of the co-founders of the 1917 Club, which met in Gerrard Street, Soho.

Writing

After marriage, Woolf turned his hand to writing and in 1913 published his first novel, The Village in the Jungle, which is based on his years in Sri Lanka. A series of books followed at roughly two-yearly intervals.

On the introduction of conscription in 1916, during the First World War, Woolf was rejected for military service on medical grounds, and turned to politics and sociology. He joined the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, and became a regular contributor to the New Statesman. In 1916 he wrote International Government, proposing an international agency to enforce world peace.

As his wife’s mental health worsened, Woolf devoted much of his time to caring for her (he himself suffered from depression). In 1917 the Woolfs bought a small hand-operated printing press and with it they founded the Hogarth Press. Their first project was a pamphlet, hand-printed and bound by themselves. Within ten years the Press had become a full-scale publishing house, issuing Virginia’s novels, Leonard’s tracts and, among other works, the first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Woolf continued as the main director of the Press until his death. His wife suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, until her suicide by drowning in 1941. Later Leonard fell in love with a married artist, Trekkie Parsons.

In 1919 Woolf became editor of the International Review. He also edited the international section of the Contemporary Review from 1920 to 1922. He was literary editor of The Nation and Atheneum, generally referred to simply as The Nation, from 1923 to 1930), and joint founder and editor of The Political Quarterly from 1931 to 1959), and for a time he served as secretary of the Labour Party’s advisory committees on international and colonial questions.

In 1960 Woolf revisited Sri Lanka and was surprised at the warmth of the welcome he received, and even the fact that he was still remembered.^‪‬ Woolf accepted an honorary doctorate from the then-new University of Sussex in 1964 and in 1965 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He declined the offer of CH in the Queen’s Birthday honours list in 1966

Family

Among his nine siblings, Bella Woolf was also an author.

Death

Woolf died on 14 August 1969 from a stroke. He was cremated and his ashes were buried alongside his wife’s beneath an elm tree in his beloved garden at Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex. The tree subsequently blew down and Woolf’s remains have since been marked by a bronze bust.

His papers are held by the University of Sussex at Falmer.

Works

• The Village in the Jungle – 1913
• The Wise Virgins – 1914 (Republished in 2003 by Persephone Books)
• International Government – 1916
• The Future of Constantinople – 1917
• The Framework of a Lasting Peace – 1917
• Cooperation and the Future of Industry – 1918
• Economic Imperialism – 1920
• Empire and Commerce in Africa – 1920
• Socialism and Co-operation – 1921
• International co-operative trade – 1922
• Fear and Politics – 1925
• Essays on Literature, History, Politics – 1927
• Hunting the Highbrow – 1927
• Imperialism and Civilization – 1928
• After the Deluge (Principia Politica), 3 vols. – 1931, 1939, 1953
• Quack! Quack! – 1935
• Barbarians at the Gate – 1939
• The War for Peace – 1940
• A Calendar of Consolation – selected by Leonard Woolf, 1967

People : Bloomsbury, Duncan Grant

Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery and theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

His father was Bartle Grant, a “poverty-stricken” major in the army, and much of his early childhood was spent in India and Burma. He was a grandson of Sir John Peter Grant, 12th Laird of Rothiemurchus, KCB, GCMG, sometime Lt-Governor of Bengal.^‪ Duncan was also the first cousin twice removed of John Grant, 13th Earl of Dysart (b. 1946).

Early life

Grant was born on 21 January 1885 in Rothiemurchus, Aviemore, Scotland. He attended school in England from 1894, where he was educated at Hillbrow School, a preparatory school in Rugby, and St Paul’s School, London. Grant showed little enthusiasm for studying but enjoyed art classes. He was encouraged by his art teacher and also his aunt Lady Strachey, who organised private drawing lessons for him. Eventually, he was allowed to follow his desire to become an artist, rather than join the army as his father wished, and he attended Westminster School of Art in 1902. He then studied art at the Slade School and in Italy and Paris.

He was a cousin, and for some time a lover, of Lytton Strachey. Through the Stracheys, Duncan was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group, where John Maynard Keynes became another of his lovers.

Career in art

Grant is best known for his painting style, which developed in the wake of French post-impressionist exhibitions mounted in London in 1910. He often worked with, and was influenced by, another member of the group, art critic and artist Roger Fry. As well as painting landscapes and portraits, Fry designed textiles and ceramics.

After Fry founded the Omega Workshops in 1913, Grant became co-director with Vanessa Bell, who was then involved with Fry. Although Grant had always been actively homosexual, a relationship with Vanessa blossomed, which was both creative and personal, and he eventually moved in with her and her two sons by her husband Clive Bell. In 1916, in support of his application for recognition as a conscientious objector, Grant joined his new lover, David Garnett, in setting up as fruit farmers in Suffolk. Both their applications were initially unsuccessful, but eventually the Central Tribunal agreed to recognise them on condition of their finding more appropriate premises. Vanessa Bell found the house named Charleston near Firle in Sussex. Relationships with Clive Bell remained amicable, and Bell stayed with them for long periods fairly often – sometimes accompanied by his own mistress, Mary Hutchinson.

In 1935 Grant was selected along with nearly 30 other prominent British artists of the day to provide works of art for the RMS Queen Mary then being built in Scotland. Grant was commissioned to provide paintings and fabrics for the first class Main Lounge. In early 1936, after his work was installed in the Lounge, directors from the Cunard Line made a walk-through inspection of the ship. When they saw what Grant had created, they immediately rejected his works and ordered it removed.

Grant is quoted in the book The Mary: The Inevitable Ship, by Potter and Frost, as saying:

“I was not only to paint some large murals to go over the fireplaces, but arrange for the carpets, curtains, textiles, all of which were to be chosen or designed by me. After my initial designs had been passed by the committee I worked on the actual designs for four months. I was then told the committee objected to the scale of the figures on the panels. I consented to alter these, and although it entailed considerable changes, I got a written assurance that I should not be asked to make further alterations. I carried on, and from that time my work was seen constantly by the Company’s (Cunard’s) representative.

When it was all ready I sent the panels to the ship to put the finishing touches to them when hanging. A few days later I received a visit from the Company’s man, who told me that the Chairman had, on his own authority, turned down the panels, refusing to give any reason.

From then on, nothing went right. My carpet designs were rejected and my textiles were not required. The whole thing had taken me about a year….. I never got any reason for the rejection of my work. The company simply said they were not suitable, paid my fee, and that was that.”

Personal life

Duncan’s early affairs were exclusively homosexual. These included his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey, the future politician Arthur Hobhouse and the economist John Maynard Keynes, who at one time considered Grant the love of his life. Through Strachey, Grant became involved in the Bloomsbury Group, where he made many such great friends including Vanessa Bell. He would eventually live with Vanessa Bell, who though she was a married woman fell deeply in love with him, and one night succeeded in seducing him; Vanessa very much wanted a child by Duncan, and became pregnant in the spring of 1918. Although it is generally assumed that Duncan’s sexual relations with Vanessa ended in the months before Angelica was born (Christmas, 1918), they continued to live together for more than 40 years.

Living with Vanessa was no impediment to Duncan’s relationships with men, either before or after Angelica was born. Angelica grew up believing that Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell was her father; she bore his surname and his behaviour toward her never indicated otherwise. Duncan and Vanessa formed an open relationship, although she herself apparently never took advantage of this after settling down with him and having their child. Duncan, in contrast, had many physical affairs and several serious relationships with other men, most notably David Garnett, who would one day marry Angelica. Duncan’s love and respect for Vanessa, however, kept him with her until her death in 1961.

Angelica wrote: “(Grant) was a homosexual with bisexual leanings”.^‪

Later years

In Grant’s later years, his lover the poet Paul Roche (1916–2007), whom he had known since 1946, took care of him and enabled Grant to maintain his accustomed way of life at Charleston for many years. Roche was made co-heir of Grant’s estate. Grant eventually died in Roche’s home in 1978.

Duncan Grant’s remains are buried beside Vanessa Bell’s in the churchyard of St. Peter’s Church, West Firle, East Sussex.

People : DDDD Deborah The Dowager Duchess Of Devonshire, Gardener On A Scale Like No Other…

Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire DCVO (née Deborah Freeman-Mitford; 31 March 1920 – 24 September 2014), was the youngest and last surviving of the six Mitford sisters who were prominent members of English society in the 1930s and 1940s.

Life

Known to her family as “Debo”, Deborah Mitford was born in Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, England. She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941. When Cavendish’s older brother, William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in combat in 1944, Cavendish became heir to the dukedom and Marquess of Hartington; in 1950, upon the death of his father, he became the 11th Duke of Devonshire.

The Duchess was the main public face of Chatsworth for many decades. The Duchess wrote several books about Chatsworth, and played a key role in the restoration of the house, the enhancement of the garden and the development of commercial activities such as Chatsworth Farm Shop (which is on a quite different scale from most farm shops as it employs a hundred people); Chatsworth’s other retail and catering operations; and assorted offshoots such as Chatsworth Food, which sells luxury foodstuffs which carry her signature and Chatsworth Design which sells image rights to items and designs from the Chatsworth collections. Recognising the commercial imperatives of running a stately home, she took a very active role and was known to run the ticket office for Chatsworth House herself. She also supervised the development of the Cavendish Hotel at Baslow near Chatsworth and the Devonshire Arms Hotel at Bolton Abbey.

In 1999 the Duchess was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II, for her service to the Royal Collection Trust. Upon the death of her husband in 2004, her son Peregrine Cavendish became the 12th Duke of Devonshire. She became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire at this time.

She and the duke had seven children, four of whom died shortly after birth:

• Mark Cavendish (born and died 14 November 1941)
• Emma Cavendish (born 26 March 1943, styled Lady Emma Cavendish from 1944), mother of the fashion model Stella Tennant
• Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire (born 27 April 1944)
• An unnamed child (miscarried December 1946; he or she was a twin of Victor Cavendish, born in 1947)
• Lord Victor Cavendish (born and died 22 May 1947)
• Lady Mary Cavendish (born and died 5 April 1953)
• Lady Sophia Louise Sydney Cavendish (born 18 March 1957)

She was also a maternal aunt of Max Mosley, former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), as well as the grandmother of Stella Tennant, a fashion model.

Death

Her death, at the age of 94, was announced on 24 September 2014. The Duchess was survived by three of her seven children, eight grandchildren and eighteen great-grandchildren.

Selected interviews

She was interviewed on her experience of sitting for a portrait for painter Lucian Freud in the BBC series Imagine in 2004.

In an interview with John Preston of the Daily Telegraph, published in September 2007, she recounted having tea with Adolf Hitler during a visit to Munich in June 1937, when she was visiting Germany with her mother and her sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and, therefore the one who carried on the entire conversation with Hitler. Shortly before ending the interview, Preston asked her to choose with whom she would have preferred to have tea: American singer Elvis Presley or Hitler. Looking at the interviewer with astonishment, she answered: “Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.”

In 2010, the BBC journalist Kirsty Wark interviewed the Duchess for Newsnight. In it, the Duchess talked about life in the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler, the Chatsworth estate, and the marginalisation of the upper classes. She was also interviewed on 23 December by Charlie Rose for PBS. She spoke of her memoir and other interesting aspects of her life. On 10 November 2010, she was interviewed as part of “The Artists, Poets, and Writers Lecture Series” sponsored by the Frick Collection, an interview which focused on her memoir and her published correspondence with Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Titles from birth

• The Honourable Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford (1920–1941)
• The Lady Andrew Cavendish (1941–1944)
• Marchioness of Hartington (1944–1950)
• Her Grace The Duchess of Devonshire (1950–2004)
• Her Grace The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (2004-2014)

Hadlow Tower & Castle : May’s Folly, The Tallest Victorian Folly In England….

Hadlow Castle is a Grade I listed country house and tower in Hadlow, Kent, England.

History

Hadlow Castle replaced the manor house of Hadlow Court Lodge. It was built over a number of years from the late 1780s, commissioned by Walter May in an ornate Gothic style. The architect was J. Dugdale. his son, Walter Barton May inherited the estate in 1823, and another inheritance in 1832 from his wife’s family. He added a 170 feet (52 m) octagonal tower in 1838, the architect was George Ledwell Taylor. A 40 feet (12 m) octagonal lantern was added in 1840 and another smaller tower was added in 1852. This was dismantled in 1905. Walter Barton May died in 1858 and the estate was sold. Subsequent owners were Robert Rodger, JP, High Sheriff of Kent, in 1865. He died in 1882 and the castle was bought by Dr. MacGeagh, a Harley Street specialist in 1891. He would drive in his carriage to Tonbridge and catch the train to London thus being an early commuter. The castle passed to T E Foster MacGeagh and he sold it in 1919 to Henry Thomas Pearson, whose family occupied it until 1946. During the war it was used as a watchtower by the Royal Observer Corps. The unoccupied castle changed hands several times after the Pearsons’ left, and was demolished in 1951, except for the servants’ quarters, several stables and the Coach House, which was saved by the painter Bernard Hailstone. The Tower was already a Listed Building, having been listed on 17th April 1951. Now the entrance gateway and lodges of the Castle still stand – a heavy Gothic presence on the street – as does the Stable Court with two turreted pavilions, which are all in private ownerships, and new homes have been built in the grounds.

Tower

Hadlow Tower, 51°13′21″N 0°20′20″E known locally as May’s Folly, is a Victorian Gothic tower, and one of the largest in Britain. The top 40 feet (12 m) is an octagonal lantern.

The Grade I listed tower was badly damaged in the Great Storm of 1987, and the lantern was removed in 1996. The tower’s condition then worsened rapidly. The cost of repairs was estimated at £4 million. In July 2006, Tonbridge and Malling borough council announced that it would issue a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the tower in an effort to save it. This CPO was confirmed in March 2008 by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with plans for the council to take possession of the Tower and transfer it to the Vivat Trust in late 2009, so that the necessary repair and restoration work can be undertaken; plans included short-term holiday accommodation, with a separate exhibition centre on part of the ground floor.

In January 2011, it was announced that the tower had been compulsorily purchased by Tonbridge and Malling District Council; the council sold it to the Vivat Trust for £1. Restoration of the tower, including the replacement of the lantern commenced in February 2011, with completion then scheduled for September 2012. The project was funded by grants from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The latter granted £2,000,000 of the estimated £4,000,000 restoration cost. Now restored, the tower offers holiday accommodation, with public exhibition space on the ground floor. On 24 February 2011, Hadlow Castle was transferred to the Vivat Trust.

The restoration was completed in February 2013, making it the tallest folly in the United Kingdom. In October 2013, the restoration of the tower was recognised when the Vivat Trust and the Save Hadlow Tower Action Group (SHTAG) won a Lloyd-Webber Angel Award. Work was completed on the interior; the exhibition centre in the tower is open on Thursdays from May to October. Visits are organised by SHTAG

People : Richard Norman Shaw, Architect, Designer of New Scotland Yard & Phileas Fogg’s Club……

Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912) was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.

Life

Shaw was born in Edinburgh, and trained in the London office of William Burn with George Edmund Street and attended the Royal Academy classes, receiving a thorough grounding in classicism, and met William Eden Nesfield, with whom he was briefly in partnership. In 1854–1856 he travelled with a Royal Academy scholarship, collecting sketches that were published as Architectural Sketches from the Continent, 1858.

In 1863, after sixteen years of training, he opened a practice for a short time with Nesfield. In 1872, Shaw was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

He worked, among others, for the artists John Callcott Horsley and George Henry Boughton, and the industrialist Lord Armstrong. He designed large houses such as Cragside and Grim’s Dyke, as well as a series of commercial buildings in a wide range of styles.

Shaw was elected to the Royal Academy in 1877, and co-edited (with Sir Thomas Jackson RA) the 1892 collection of essays, Architecture, a profession or an Art?. He firmly believed it was an art. In later years, Shaw moved to a heavier classical style which influenced the emerging Edwardian Classicism of the early 20th century. Shaw died in London, where he had designed residential buildings in areas such as Pont Street, and public buildings such as New Scotland Yard.

His picturesque early country houses avoided the current Neo-Gothic and the academic styles, reviving vernacular materials like half timber and hanging tiles, with projecting gables and tall massive chimneys with “inglenooks” for warm seating. The result was free and fresh, not slavishly imitating his Jacobean and vernacular models, yet warmly familiar, a parallel to the Arts and Crafts movement. Richard Norman Shaw’s houses soon attracted the misnomer the “Queen Anne style”. As his powers developed, he dropped some of the mannered detailing, his buildings gained in dignity, and acquired an air of serenity and a quiet homely charm which were less conspicuous in his earlier works; half timber construction was more sparingly used, and finally disappeared entirely.

His work is characterised by ingenious open planning, the Great Hall or “sitting hall” with a staircase running up the side that became familiar in mass-produced housing of the 1890s.

He was also involved in ecclesiastical architecture. He restored St. John’s Church, Leeds and designed new churches such as St. Margaret’s, Ilkley, All Saints’, Leek and All Saints’, Richards Castle.

Shaw died in London on 17 November 1912.

Built work

• 1–2 St. James Street, London, 1882–83
• Glen Andred, at Withyham, Sussex, 1867
• Leyswood, at Withyham, Sussex, 1866–69
• Knight’s Bank, at Farnham, Surrey, 1868 (demolished 1932)
• Cragside, at Rothbury, Northumberland, 1869/1870–1885
• Preen Manor, Shropshire
• Grim’s Dyke, Harrow, London, 1870
• New Zealand Chambers, Leadenhall Street, London, 1871–73
• Pierrepont and Merrist Wood, Surrey
• Lowther Lodge, Kensington, 1873–75, headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society
• 6 Ellerdale Road, Hampstead, London, built for himself
• House of Bethany, St. Clement’s Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, 1874–75
• Wispers, West Sussex, 1874–76
• 8 Melbury Road, Kensington, London, built for painter Marcus Stone, 1872–73
• Woodland House, 31 Melbury Road, Kensington, London, built for painter Luke Fildes, 1876–77
• Pierrepont House, Frensham, 1876–78
• Swan House, 17 Chelsea Embankment, London, 1875–77
• Ellern Mede, 31 Totteridge Common, Barnet, 1877
• Bedford Park, London, the first “garden city” suburban development: housing, including St. Michael and All Angels Church, 1879–82
• Albert Hall Mansions, at Kensington Gore, London, 1879–86
• Tabard Hotel, Chiswick, London
• Adcote, Little Ness, Shropshire, 1876–81
• Flete House, Devonshire
• Greenham Lodge, Berkshire
• Dawpool, Cheshire (demolished, 1920s)
• Bryanston School, Dorset, 1898
• Chesters, Northumberland
• New Scotland Yard, on the Thames Embankment, London, 1887–1906 (built as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, now known as the Norman Shaw Buildings and used as Parliamentary offices)
• Albion House, James Street, Liverpool, 1896–98
• House for Kate Greenaway, Frognal, London, 1885
• Swanscombe Church in Kent
• White Lodge and White Lodge West, Bingley, West Yorkshire
• Bannow, Residential Care Home, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, 1877
• Claremont School, originally the Ebden family home named Baldslow Place, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex 1888
• 4 – 6 Page Heath Lane, Bickley, Kent, 1864
• The Corner House, 114 Shortlands Road, Beckenham, Kent, 1869
• 1 St. James’s Street, London, 1904
• Bailiff’s Cottage, Bromley Palace Estate, Bromley, Kent, 1864 (demolished)
• Town Hall, Market Square, Bromley, Kent, 1863 (unexecuted)
• Bradford City Hall extension, 1909
• Holy Trinity Church, Bingley, Yorkshire 1866–68 (demolished 1974)
• Holme Grange School, Wokingham, Berkshire East Sussex 1883
• Flora Fountain, Mumbai, India, 1864
• Highdown School, Emmer Green, Reading, Berkshire, 1878–80
• Alderbrook Park, Cranleigh, Surrey 1881 (house for Pandeli Ralli, demolished 1956)
• Trevanion, Totteridge Lane, Barnet, 1883–84
• Piccadilly Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, London, England, 1905–08; his last work

People : André Le Nôtre , From Versailles To Greenwich Park, Garden Designer to the Kings…..

André Le Nôtre (12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700, occasionally rendered as André Le Nostre) was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. Most notably, he was the landscape architect who made the design and construction for the park of the Palace of Versailles, and his work represents the height of the French formal garden style, or jardin à la française.

Prior to working on Versailles, Le Nôtre collaborated with Louis Le Vau and Charles Le Brun on the park at Vaux-le-Vicomte. His other works include the design of gardens and parks at Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain. His contribution to planning was also significant: at the Tuileries he extended the westward vista, which later became the avenue of the Champs-Élysées and comprise the Axe historique.

Biography

Early life

André Le Nôtre was born in Paris, into a family of gardeners. Pierre Le Nôtre, who was in charge of the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries in 1572, may have been his grandfather. André’s father Jean Le Nôtre was also responsible for sections of the Tuileries gardens, initially under Claude Mollet, and later as head gardener, during the reign of Louis XIII. André was born on 12 March 1613, and was baptised at the Église Saint-Roch. His godfather at the ceremony was an administrator of the royal gardens, and his godmother was the wife of Claude Mollet.

The family lived in a house within the Tuilieries, and André thus grew up surrounded by gardening, and quickly acquired both practical and theoretical knowledge. The location also allowed him to study in the nearby Palais du Louvre, part of which was then used as an academy of the arts. He learned mathematics, painting and architecture, and entered the atelier of Simon Vouet, painter to Louis XIII, where he met and befriended the painter Charles Le Brun. He learned classical art and perspective, and studied for several years under the architect François Mansart, a friend of Le Brun.

Career

In 1635, Le Nôtre was named the principal gardener of the king’s brother Gaston, duc d’Orléans. On 26 June 1637, Le Nôtre was appointed head gardener at the Tuileries, taking over his father’s position. He had primary responsibiliity for the areas of the garden closest to the palace, including the orangery built by Simon Bouchard. In 1643 he was appointed “draughtsman of plants and terraces” for Anne of Austria, the queen mother, and from 1645 to 1646 he worked on the modernisation of the gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau.

He was later put in charge of all the royal gardens of France, and in 1657 he was further appointed Controller-General of the Royal Buildings. There are few direct references to Le Nôtre in the royal accounts, and Le Nôtre himself seldom wrote down his ideas or approach to gardening. He expressed himself purely through his gardens. He became a trusted advisor to Louis XIV, and in 1675 he was ennobled by the King. He and Le Brun even accompanied the court at the siege of Cambrai in 1677.

In 1640, he married Françoise Langlois. They had three children, although none survived to adulthood.

Vaux-le-Vicomte

André Le Nôtre’s first major garden design was undertaken for Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s Superintendent of Finances. Fouquet began work on the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1657, employing the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun, and Le Nôtre. The three designers worked in partnership, with Le Nôtre laying out a grand, symmetrical arrangement of parterres, pools and gravel walks. Le Vau and Le Nôtre exploited the changing levels across the site, so that the canal is invisible from the house, and employed forced perspective to make the grotto appear closer than it really is. The gardens were complete by 1661, when Fouquet held a grand entertainment for the king. But only three weeks later, on 10 September 1661, Fouquet was arrested for embezzling state funds, and his artists and craftsmen were taken into the king’s service.

Versailles

From 1661, Le Nôtre was working for Louis XIV to build and enhance the garden and parks of the Château de Versailles. Louis extended the existing hunting lodge, eventually making it his primary residence and seat of power. Le Nôtre also laid out the radiating city plan of Versailles, which included the largest avenue yet seen in Europe, the Avenue de Paris.

In the following century, the Versailles design influenced Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s master plan for Washington, D.C. See, L’Enfant Plan.

Other gardens

France

In 1661, Le Nôtre was also working on the gardens at the Palace of Fontainebleau. In 1663 he was engaged at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Château de Saint-Cloud, residence of Philippe d’Orléans, where he would oversee works for many years. Also from 1663, Le Nôtre was engaged at Château de Chantilly, property of the Prince de Condé, where he worked with his brother-in-law Pierre Desgots until the 1680s. From 1664 he was rebuilding the gardens of the Tuileries, at the behest of Colbert, Louis’s chief minister, who still hoped the king would remain in Paris. In 1667 Le Nôtre extended the main axis of the gardens westward, creating the avenue which would become the Champs-Élysées. Colbert commissioned Le Nôtre in 1670, to alter the gardens of his own château de Sceaux, which was ongoing until 1683.

Abroad

In 1662, he provided designs for Greenwich Park in London, for Charles II of England. In 1670 Le Nôtre conceived a project for the Castle of Racconigi in Italy, and between 1674 and 1698 he remodelled the gardens of Venaria Reale, near Turin. In 1679, he visited Italy. His later advice was provided for Charlottenburg Palace and château de Cassel in Germany, and with plans for Windsor Castle.

Final works

Between 1679 and 1691, he was involved in the planning of the gardens of Château de Meudon for François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis.

His work has often been favorably compared and contrasted (“the antithesis”) to the œuvre of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the English landscape architect.

People : Harold Nicolson, English Diplomat, Politician, Author, Diarist and Gardener…

Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician. He was the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West, their unusual relationship being described in their son’s book, Portrait of a Marriage.

Early life

Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the younger son of diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock. He was educated at Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford.

Diplomatic career

In 1909 Nicolson joined HM Diplomatic Service. He served as attaché at Madrid from February to September 1911, and then Third Secretary at Constantinople from January 1912 to October 1914. During the First World War, he served at the Foreign Office in London, during which time he was promoted Second Secretary. As the Foreign Office’s most junior employee, it fell to him in August 1914 to hand Britain’s revised declaration of war to the German ambassador in London. He served in a junior capacity in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, for which he was appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1920 New Year Honours.

Promoted First Secretary in 1920, he was appointed private secretary to Sir Eric Drummond, first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, but was recalled to the Foreign Office in June 1920.

In 1925, he was promoted Counsellor and posted to Tehran as Chargé d’affaires. However, in Summer 1927 he was recalled to London and demoted to First Secretary for criticising his Minister, Sir Percy Loraine, in a dispatch. He was posted to Berlin as Chargé d’affaires in 1928. He was promoted Counsellor again, but resigned from the Diplomatic Service in September 1929.

Political career

From 1930 to 1931, Nicolson edited the Londoner’s Diary for the Evening Standard, but disliked writing about high-society gossip and quit within a year.

In 1931, he joined Sir Oswald Mosley and his recently formed New Party. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament for the Combined English Universities in the general election that year and edited the party newspaper, Action. He ceased to support Mosley when the latter formed the British Union of Fascists the following year.

Nicolson entered the House of Commons as National Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester West in the 1935 election. In the latter half of the 1930s he was among a relatively small number of MPs who alerted the country to the threat of fascism. More a follower of Anthony Eden in this regard than of Winston Churchill, he nevertheless was a friend (though not an intimate) of Churchill, and often supported his efforts in the Commons to stiffen British resolve and support rearmament.

He became Parliamentary Secretary and official Censor [2] at the Ministry of Information in Churchill’s 1940 wartime government of national unity, serving under Cabinet member Duff Cooper for approximately a year until he was asked by Churchill to leave his position;[3] thereafter he was a well-respected backbencher, especially on foreign policy issues given his early and prominent diplomatic career. From 1941 to 1946 he was also on the Board of Governors of the BBC. He lost his seat in the 1945 election. Having joined the Labour Party, he stood in the Croydon North by-election in 1948, but lost once again.

Writer

Encouraged in his literary ambitions by his wife Vita Sackville-West, also a writer, Nicolson published a biography of French poet Paul Verlaine in 1921, to be followed by studies of other literary figures such as Tennyson, Byron, Swinburne and Sainte-Beuve. In 1933, he wrote an account of the Paris Peace Conference entitled Peacemaking 1919.

Nicolson is also remembered for his 1932 novel Public Faces, foreshadowing the nuclear bomb. A fictional account of British national policy in 1939, it tells how Britain’s secretary of state tried to keep world peace, even with the Royal Air Force aggressively brandishing rocket airplanes and an atomic bomb. In today’s terms, it was a multi-megaton bomb, and the geology of the Persian Gulf played a central role, but on the other hand, Nicolson never foresaw Hitler.

After Nicolson’s last attempt to enter Parliament, he continued with an extensive social schedule and his programme of writing, which included books, book reviews, and a weekly column for The Spectator.

His diary is one of the pre-eminent British diaries of the 20th century and a noteworthy source on British political history from 1930 through the 1950s, particularly in regard to the run-up to World War II and the war itself: Nicolson served in high enough echelons to write of the workings of the circles of power and the day-to-day unfolding of great events. His fellow parliamentarian Robert Bernays characterized Nicolson as being “…a national figure of the second degree.” Nicolson was variously an acquaintance, associate, friend, or intimate to such figures as Ramsay MacDonald, David Lloyd George, Duff Cooper, Charles de Gaulle, Anthony Eden and Winston Churchill, along with a host of literary and artistic figures.

Personal life

In 1913, Nicolson married Vita Sackville-West. Nicolson and his wife practised what today would be called an open marriage. Once, Nicolson had to follow Vita to France, where she had “eloped” with Violet Trefusis, to try to win her back. Nicolson himself was no stranger to homosexual affairs. Among others, he was involved in a long-term relationship with Raymond Mortimer, whom both he and Vita affectionately referred to as “Tray”. They discussed their shared homosexual tendencies frankly with each other, and remained happy together. They were famously devoted to each other, writing almost every day when separated due to Nicolson’s long diplomatic postings abroad, or Vita’s insatiable wanderlust. Eventually, he gave up diplomacy, partly so they could live together in England.

They had two sons, Benedict, an art historian, and Nigel, a politician and writer. His younger son Nigel published works by and about his parents, including Portrait of a Marriage, their correspondence, and Nicolson’s diary.

In the 1930s, he and his wife acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook in Kent, the county known as the garden of England. There they created the renowned gardens that are now run by the National Trust.

There is a brown “blue plaque” commemorating him and Vita Sackville-West on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1.

Honours

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1953, as a reward for writing the official biography of George V, which had been published in the previous year.

People : Gertrude Jekyll, Influential Garden Designer and Writer

Gertrude Jekyll ; 29 November 1843—8 December 1932) was an influential British horticulturist, garden designer, artist and writer. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrote over 1,000 articles for magazines such as Country Life and William Robinson’s The Garden. Jekyll has been described as “a premier influence in garden design” by English and American gardening enthusiasts.

Early life

Jekyll was born at 2 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, the fifth of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Julia Hammersley. Her younger brother, the Reverend Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who borrowed the family name for his famous novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In 1848 her family left London and moved to Bramley House, Surrey, where she spent her formative years.

Themes

Jekyll was one half of one of the most influential and historical partnerships of the Arts and Crafts movement, thanks to her association with the English architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, for whose projects she created numerous landscapes, and who designed her home Munstead Wood, near Godalming in Surrey. (In 1900, Lutyens and Jekyll’s brother Herbert designed the British Pavilion for the Paris Exposition.)

Jekyll is remembered for her outstanding designs and subtle, painterly approach to the arrangement of the gardens she created, particularly her “hardy flower borders”. Her work is known for its radiant colour and the brush-like strokes of her plantings; it is suggested by some that the Impressionistic-style schemes may have been due to Jekyll’s deteriorating eyesight, which largely put an end to her career as a painter and watercolourist. In works like Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden (reprinted 1988) she put her imprint on modern uses of “warm” and “cool” flower colours in gardens.

Jekyll was one of the first of her profession to take into account the colour, texture, and experience of gardens as the prominent authorities in her designs, and she was a lifelong fan of plants of all genres. Her theory of how to design with colour was influenced by painter J.M.W. Turner and by impressionism, and by the theoretical colour wheel. Later in life, Jekyll collected and contributed a vast array of plants solely for the purpose of preservation to numerous institutions across Britain. This pure passion for gardening was started at South Kensington School of Art, where she fell in love with the creative art of planting, and even more specifically, gardening. At the time of her death, she had designed over 400 gardens in Britain, Europe and a few in North America. Jekyll was also known for her prolific writing. She penned over fifteen books, ranging from Wood and Garden and her most famous book Colour in the Flower Garden, to memoirs of her youth. Jekyll did not want to limit her influence to teaching the practice of gardening, but to take it a step further to the quiet study of gardening and the plants themselves. Her concern that plants should be displayed to best effect even when cut for the house, led her to design her own range of glass flower vases.

Jekyll later returned to her childhood home in the village of Bramley, Surrey to design a garden in Snowdenham Lane called Millmead. She was also interested in traditional cottage furnishings and rural crafts, and concerned that they were disappearing. Her book Old West Surrey (1904) records many aspects of 19th-century country life, with over 300 photographs taken by Jekyll.

Upton Grey Manor House

In 1908 Gertrude Jekyll drew plans for a garden at the Manor House in Upton Grey for the magazine editor Charles Holme. It has been restored in recent years. It is on a smaller scale than the majority of her other commissions.

To the west of the house is the Wild garden. Some of Jekyll’s original drifts of daffodils remain at the end of the Wild Garden, still in the drifts she designed.

To the east of the house stands there is the formal garden. Here there are no curved lines, Jekyll designed a Rose Lawn and typical herbaceous borders whose colours run in drifts from cool to hot and the return to cool again. These, with the tennis and bowling lawns are enclosed in yew hedging.

Outside the hedging lies the nuttery, orchard, kitchen garden, stable cottage and cottage beds.

The whole of the garden has been faithfully restored to the many plans and plants that Jekyll prescribed.

Awards

Jekyll was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1897 and the Veitch Memorial Medal of the society in 1929. Also in 1929, she was given the George Robert White Medal of Honor of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.

Death

Jekyll is buried in the churchyard of Busbridge Church, formerly known as St. John the Baptist, Busbridge, Godalming, next to her brother and sister-in-law, Sir Herbert Jekyll, KCMG and Lady Agnes Jekyll, DBE. The monument was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

People : Vita Sackville West. Author, Poet & Gardener and Modern Day Icon

The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933. She was known for her exuberant aristocratic life, her passionate affair with the novelist Virginia Woolf, and Sissinghurst Castle Garden, which she and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, created at their estate.

Early life

Victoria Sackville-West (known as Vita) was born at Knole House near Sevenoaks, Kent, the only child of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife Victoria Sackville-West, who were cousins. Her mother was the natural daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville. Christened Victoria Mary Sackville-West, she was known as “Vita” throughout her life, to distinguish her from her mother.

The usual English aristocratic inheritance customs were followed by the Sackville family, which prevented Vita from inheriting Knole on the death of her father. The house followed the title, and was bequeathed instead by her father to his nephew Charles, who became the 4th Baron. The loss of Knole would affect her for the rest of her life; of the signing in 1947 of documents relinquishing any claim on the property, part of its transition to the National Trust, she wrote that “the signing… nearly broke my heart, putting my signature to what I regarded as a betrayal of all the tradition of my ancestors and the house I loved.”

Personal life

Marriage

In 1913, at age 21, Vita married the 27-year-old writer and politician Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) in the private chapel at Knole. Nicknamed Hadji, he was the third son of British diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock (1849–1928). The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships, as did some of the people in the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with many of whom they had connections.

These affairs were no impediment to the closeness between Sackville-West and Nicolson, as is seen from their almost daily correspondence (published after their deaths by their son Nigel), and from an interview they gave for BBC radio after World War II. Harold Nicolson gave up his diplomatic career partly so that he could live with Sackville-West in England, uninterrupted by long solitary postings abroad.

Following the pattern of his father’s career, Harold was at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, and author of biographies and novels. The couple lived for a number of years in Cihangir, Constantinople, and were present, in 1926, at the coronation of Rezā Shāh, in Tehran, Persia. They returned to England in 1914 and bought Long Barn in Kent, where they lived from 1915 to 1930. They employed the architect Edwin Lutyens to make many improvements to the house.

The couple had two children: Nigel (1917–2004), a well known editor, politician, and writer, and Benedict (1914–1978), an art historian. In the 1930s, the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent. Sissinghurst had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors, which gave it a dynastic attraction to her after the loss of Knole. There the couple created the famous gardens that are now run by the National Trust.

Affairs and bisexuality

Rosamund Grosvenor

Vita’s first close friend was Rosamund Grosvenor (5 September 1888 – 30 June 1944), who was four years her senior. She was the daughter of Algernon Henry Grosvenor (1864–1907), and the granddaughter of Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury. Vita met Rosamund at Miss Woolf’s school in 1899, when Rosamund had been invited to cheer Vita up while her father was fighting in the Boer war. Rosamund and Vita later shared a governess for their morning lessons. As they grew up together, Vita fell in love with Rosamund, whom she called ‘Roddie’ or ‘Rose’ or ‘the Rubens lady’. Rosamund, in turn, was besotted with Vita. “Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out,” she admits in her journal, but she saw no real conflict: “I really was innocent.”

Lady Sackville, Vita’s mother, invited Rosamund to visit the family at their villa in Monte Carlo; Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole, at Rue Lafitte, and at Sluie. During the Monte Carlo visit, Vita wrote in her diary, “I love her so much.” Upon Rosamund’s departure, Vita wrote, “Strange how little I minded [her leaving]; she has no personality, that’s why.” Their secret relationship ended in 1913 when Vita married. Rosamund died in 1944 during a German V1 rocket raid.

Violet Trefusis

The same-sex relationship that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Sackville-West’s personal life was with the novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter of the Hon. George Keppel and his wife, Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII. They first met when Vita Sackville-West was 12 and Violet was 10, and attended school together for a number of years.

The relationship began when they were both in their teens. Both later married. Vita and Trefusis had eloped several times from 1918 on, mostly to France, Sackville-West dressing as a man when they went out, as the French writer George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, 1804–1876), had done some 100 years earlier when residing with the Polish musician Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) and her own two children on the Spanish island of Majorca in 1838 and early 1839.

The affair ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths until Sackville-West’s affairs with other women finally took their toll.

The two women seem to have made a bond to remain faithful to one another, meaning that although both were married, neither could engage in sexual relations with her own husband. Sackville-West was prompted to end the affair when she heard allegations that Trefusis had been involved sexually with her husband, indicating that she had broken their bond. Despite the rift, the two women were devoted to one another, and deeply in love, and continued to have occasional liaisons for a number of years afterwards, but never rekindled the affair.

Vita’s novel Challenge also bears witness to this affair: Sackville-West and Trefusis had started writing this book as a collaborative endeavour, and the male character’s name, Julian, had been Sackville-West’s nickname when passing as a man. Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to refuse to allow publication of the novel in England; but Vita’s son Nigel Nicolson (1973, p. 194) praises his mother: “She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?”

Virginia Woolf

The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, described by Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature”, as a result of this affair.

Unusually, the moment of the conception of Orlando was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on 5 October 1927: “And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other” (excerpt from her diary published posthumously by her husband Leonard Woolf).

Other affairs

Vita Sackville-West also had a passionate affair between 1929 and 1931 with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department. “Stoker” was the pet name given to Hilda by Sackville-West during their liaison.

In 1931 Sackville-West became involved in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn Irons, who had interviewed her after her novel The Edwardians became a bestseller, and Irons’s lover Olive Rinder.

One of Vita’s suitors was Henry Lascelles who married the Princess Royal and became 6th Earl of Harewood.

She was also romantically involved with her sister-in-law Gwen St. Aubyn, Mary Garman and others not listed here.

Well-known writings

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. This novel was dramatized by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller.

Sackville-West’s science-fantasy Grand Canyon (1942) is a “cautionary tale” (as she termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The book takes an unsuspected twist, however, in that makes it something more than a typical invasion yarn.

In 1947 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The same year she began a weekly column in The Observer called “In your Garden”. In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust’s garden committee.

She is less well known as a biographer, and the most famous of those works is her biography of Saint Joan of Arc in the work of the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography of Saint Teresa of Ávila and Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, a biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography of her own grandmother, the Spanish dancer known as Pepita., the mother of many children by British diplomat and second Lord Sackville, Lionel Sackville-West, (1829–1908), as stated extensively above, running by 2010 at some 11 editions in English. For instance, the 1985 edition by Telegraph Books, (ISBN 9780897607858). The first edition was Doubleday Publishers, 1937. There was another by Amereon, date unknown, (ISBN 9780848811501).

Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems.

Legacy

Vita died at Sissinghurst on the 2nd June 1962 and Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust, given by Sackville-West’s son Nigel in order to escape payment of inheritance taxes. Its gardens are famous and remain the most visited in all of England.

A recording was made of Vita Sackville-West reading from her poem The Land. This was on four 78rpm sides in the Columbia Records ‘International Educational Society’ Lecture series, Lecture 98 (Cat. no. D 40192/3).

An English Heritage plaque on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1, commemorates her and Harold Nicolson.

Her cremated remains were placed in the Sackville family vault at Withyham Parish Church in East Sussex.

India : The Amber Palace and Maota Gardens, Elephants Take you up this Jewel In The Crown of Jaipur

Amer Palace (also spelled and pronounced as Amber) is located in Amer (a town with an area of 4 square kilometres (1.5 sq mi), 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from Jaipur, Rajasthan state, India. It is the principal tourist attractions in the Jaipur area, located high on a hill. Amer Fort was built by Raja Man Singh I. Amer Fort is known for its artistic style of Hindu elements. With its large ramparts, series of gates and cobbled paths, the fort overlooks the Maota Lake, at its forefront.

The aesthetic ambiance of the palace is seen within its walls on a four level layout plan (each with a courtyard) in a well turned out opulent palace complex built with red sandstone and marble consisting of the Diwan-e-Aam or the “Hall of Public Audience”, the Diwan-e-Khas or the “Hall of Private Audience”, the Sheesh Mahal (mirror palace) or Jai Mandir, and the Sukh Niwas where a cool climate is artificially created by winds that blow over the water cascade within the palace. Hence, the Amer Fort is also popularly known as the Amer Palace. The palace was lived in by the Rajput Maharajas and their families. At the entrance to the palace near the fort’s Ganesh Gate, there is also a temple dedicated to Sila Devi, a goddess of the Chaitanya cult which was given to Raja Man Singh when he had defeated the Raja of Jessore, Bengal in 1604. (Jessore is now in Bangladesh).

This palace along with Jaigarh Fort, located immediately above on the Cheel ka Teela (Hill of Eagles) of the same Aravalli range of hills, is considered as one complex, as the two are well connected by a subterranean passage. This passage was meant as an escape route in times of war for the royal family members and others in the Amer Fort to shift to the more redoubtable Jaigarh Fort.

Annual tourist visitation to the Amer Palace in Amer town was reported by the Superintendent of Department of Archaeology and Museums to the Amer Palace as 5000 visitors a day, and 1.4 million visitors were reported during 2007.

Earlier to the Kachwahas, Amer was a small place built by Meenas in the town they consecrated to Amba, the Mother Goddess, whom they knew as `Gatta Rani’ or `Queen of the Pass’. The Amer Fort, as it stands now, was built over the remnants of this earlier structure during the reign of Raja Man Singh, the Kacchwaha King of Amber. The structure was fully expanded by his descendant, Jai Singh I. Even later, Amer Fort underwent improvements and additions by successive rulers over the next 150 years, until the Kachwahas shifted their capital to Jaipur during the time of Sawai Jai Singh II, in 1727.

Many of the ancient structures of the medieval period of the Meenas have been either destroyed or replaced. However, the 16th century impressive edifice of the Amer Fort and the palace complex within it built by the Rajput Maharajas are very well preserved.

Take over of Amber Fort by Kachwahas According to Todthis region was known as Khogong. The Meena King Raja Ralun Singh also known as Alan Singh Chanda of Khogong kind-heartedly adopted a stranded Rajput mother and her child who sought refuge in his realm. Later, the Meena king sent the child, Dhola Rae, to Delhi to represent the Meena kingdom. The Rajput, in gratitude for these favours, returned with Rajput conspirers and massacred the weaponless Meenas on Diwali while performings rituals i.e. Pitra Trapan, it is customery in the Meenas to be weaponless at the time of PitraTrapan, “filling the reservoirs in which the Meenas bathed with their dead bodies” [Tod.II.281] and thus conquered Khogong.This act of Kachwaha Rajputs was termed as most coward and shameful in history of Rajasthan.

The first Rajput structure was started by Raja Kakil Dev when Amber became his capital in 1036 on the site of present day Jaigarh Fort of Rajasthan. Much of Amber’s current buildings were started or expanded during the reign of Raja Man Singh I in the 1600s. Among the chief building is the Diwan-i-Khas in Amber Palace of Rajasthan and the elaborately paited Ganesh Poll built by the Mirza Raja Jai Singh I.

The current Amer Palace, was created in the late 16th century, as a larger palace to the already existing home of the rulers. The older palace, known as Kadimi Mahal ( persian for ancient) is known to be the oldest surviving palace in India. This ancient palace sits in the valley behind the Amer Palace. Amer was known in the medieval period as Dhundar (meaning attributed to a sacrificial mount in the western frontiers) and ruled by the Kachwahas from the 11th century onwards – between 1037 and 1727 AD, till the capital was moved from Amer to Jaipur. The history of Amer is indelibly linked to these rulers as they founded their empire at Amer.

Earlier to the Kachwahas, Amer was a small place built by [Meenas] in the town they consecrated to Amba, the Mother Goddess, whom they knew as `Gatta Rani’ or `Queen of the Pass’. The Amer Fort, as it stands now, was built over the remnants of this earlier structure during the reign of Raja Man Singh, the Kacchwaha King of Amber. The structure was fully expanded by his descendant, Jai Singh I. Even later, Amer Fort underwent improvements and additions by successive rulers over the next 150 years, until the Kachwahas shifted their capital to Jaipur during the time of Sawai Jai Singh II, in 1727.

Many of the ancient structures of the medieval period of the Meenas have been either destroyed or replaced. However, the 16th century impressive edifice of the Amer Fort and the palace complex within it built by the Rajput Maharajas are very well preserved.

Garden

The garden, located between the Jai Mandir on the east and the Sukh Niwas on the west, both built on high platforms in the third courtyard, was built by Mirza Raja Jai Singh (1623–68). It is patterned on the lines of the Chahar Bagh or Mughal Garden. It is in sunken bed, shaped in a hexagonal design. It is laid out with narrow channels lined with marble around a star shape pool with a fountain at the centre. Water for the garden is led from the Sukh Niwas cascades of water channel and also from the cascade channels called the “chini khana niches” that originate from terrace of the Jai Mandir.