Wotton House, Surrey, home to the famous diarist – and the delightful Tortoise House. By Lucinda Lambton
A temple for tortoises, no less, was built in a small garden in Surrey in the 19th century. It was designed by William John Evelyn, kinsman to John Evelyn, the famed writer, horticulturalist and diarist.
It has an Ionic portico of four bays on the ground floor. From the open upper floor, once embellished with Corinthian pilasters, you could ‘view’ the tiny creatures disporting themselves in the pool below.
By the late-19th century, the Tortoise House had become a rotting ruin. In the 20th, it was to be transformed into the most refined spot for taking tea. By the late-20th, it had become a ruin once again.
The wrecked temple was well and truly wrecked, living on in a somewhat parlous state. For a time, it was leased to the Home Office as the Fire Service College.
When I saw it in 1984, niches had survived, housing fragments of statuary, along with a black-and-white marble floor. It was still known as the Tortoise House.
Then, at the turn of the 21st century, it was restored to its original temple state, although at only half its original height.
This was all thanks to Hayley Conference Centres, who leased the place in 2000. The house is now a hotel.
Wotton House, next to the Terrapin Temple, was built by the Evelyns in the early-17th century and extended and altered over the next 250 years.
The great polymath John Evelyn (1620-1706) was born at Wotton and lived here throughout his childhood. He was a scholar, connoisseur, bibliophile and town-planner, even writing of air pollution in the 16th century.
All was not straightforward in his childhood. He wrote in the first volume Conference Centres, who leased the place in 2000. The house is now a hotel.
Wotton House, next to the Terrapin Temple, was built by the Evelyns in the early-17th century and extended and altered over the next 250 years.
The great polymath John Evelyn (1620-1706) was born at Wotton and lived here throughout his childhood. He was a scholar, connoisseur, bibliophile and town-planner, even writing of air pollution in the 16th century.
All was not straightforward in his childhood. He wrote in the first volume of his famed diary that, ‘in regard of my mother’s weakness or rather custom of persons of quality’, he had been sent to live with a wet nurse until he was 14 months old.
In 1694, as his ageing elder brother had no heirs, the septuagenarian John Evelyn moved into his beloved birthplace, and he lived there until he died in 1706. The house, he wrote in his diary, ‘is so large and ancient and so sweetly environed with those delicious streams and venerable woods, as in the judgement of strangers as well as Englishmen, it may be compared to one of the most pleasant seats in the nation and most tempting for a great person and a wanton purse to render it conspicuous’.
Of his library of some 4,000 books, he wrote that he looked upon it ‘with the reverence of a temple’. His watchwords were from 1 Thessalonians 5:21: ‘Omnia explorate; meliora retinete’ – ‘Explore all things; retain the better ones.’
He had applied his gardening genius to deal with Wotton. At one point, he laid down instructions for ‘digging down a mountain’. He created an artificially terraced hill which survives to this day.
Then there was the pool, later used by the tortoises, fed by one of the tributaries of the River Tillingbourne.
It was all part of Wotton’s ‘water in abundance’, in a garden thought to be the first in England to be designed in the Italian style.
Evelyn’s pride in the place knew no bounds. In his diary, he wrote, ‘I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and groves that adorn it, were they not as generally known to be among the most natural, and the most magnificent that England afforded; and which indeed gave one of the first examples of that elegancy, since so much in vogue, and followed in the managing of their waters, and other elegancies of that nature.’
In 1830, Evelyn’s kinsman George Evelyn died from a wound received years before at the Battle of Waterloo. He left his 26-year-old wife a widow, with six boys aged between six years and six weeks to raise by herself at Wotton.
The eldest, William John, was to live there all his life. An idealistic, poetical and painfully shy figure who delighted in natural history, he assembled animals by the score, as he recorded in Helen Evelyn’s History of the Evelyn Family:
‘There were wild boars, Indian cattle, kangaroos, a zebra, a vulture, chameleons, a seagull and various tortoises.’ This is the first surviving mention of the inhabitants of the Tortoise House. Hurray!
The kangaroos, we further read, were let loose on Leith Hill, where they flourished for years ‘until gradually exterminated by ruthless individuals’.
There was a delightful account of an escaped kangaroo in a 2003 lecture by Angus Trumble, most suitably in the National Library of Australia.
William John raised the alarm to catch the creature. Trumble reported:
‘Evelyn called out the local hunt, replete with huntsmen, a pack of beagles, whippers-in and so forth. The kangaroo sought refuge in a place called the Duke of Norfolk’s Copse, but was flushed out and cornered at Abinger Rectory.’
An anonymous contemporary report of the incident declared:
‘The animal’s peculiar mode of progression was exhibited in a style which astonished the field – a singular succession of leaps carrying it over the ground at a rate perfectly startling.
‘Those who were well-mounted alone were enabled to go the pace and they speedily found themselves at the top of
‘There were wild boars, Indian cattle, kangaroos, a zebra’
Leith Hill, where the kangaroo took to the road, and for about a mile and a half they all dashed along, “the field” rapidly augmenting in numbers as they proceeded in their novel chase.’
In 1856, Nathaniel Hawthorne went to Wotton. An extract from his English Notebooks records his curious impression of William John Evelyn as he was showing off his bloodstained prayer book, used by Charles I at his execution.
What a ghastly possession!
The Evelyns should be credited for building what is unique the world over, his Tortoise House.
What a transformation – from the looming ruin to the pretty-as-a-picture little neoclassical temple with a garden of its own. What more enchanting ornamentation could be found in England’s Home Counties?
Lucinda Lambton is author of
Palaces for Pigs: Animal Architecture and Other Beastly Buildings
