Add MS 78628 A

A. Untitled plan of John Evelyn’s house and garden at Sayes Court, with a detailed key occupying most of the left-hand side of the sheet, linked to the plan by means of 126 numbers, and headed, `Explanation of the Particulars Referring to the Numbers’; [1652-1654?]. Plan in pen and ink, designed by Evelyn but probably drawn and written by his amanuensis Richard Hoare. Cartouche to the left of centre in the form of a plinth, incorporating a [italics]Latin[/italics] inscription and surmounted by compasses, enclosing a compass rose (south at top) and scale bar: 40 yards: 2.35 inches [1: 612]. Showing the house and out-buildings in ground plan with individual rooms differentiated, and to the west the private garden, kitchen-gardens, oval parterre, grove, and to the far west the orchard, all delineated in great detail with planting patterns and pathways indicated and trees shown pictorially. Bounded by `Part of Great Broome Field’ (top and right), `Part of ten Acres [Field]’ (bottom), `part of K[ing’s Dock]yard’ (left). With several old repairs where the paper has been mutilated along earlier folds, resulting in some loss of text from the key and detail towards the top and bottom of the plan.

The plan was devised by John Evelyn shortly after he returned to England in 1652 after a long period of travel in Europe, as the working design and record of his renovations to the house and garden at Sayes Court. The Latin inscription within the cartouche, which includes the statement, `manu sua delineavit JE’, might be taken to indicate that he drew the present plan himself. However the key and other handwritten content are not in his hand, but appear to be in that of his amanuensis Richard Hoare and the whole is uniform in style and ink. It is likely that Hoare, an expert draftsman and calligrapher, copied the plan, including the inscription, from Evelyn’s draft, some time in or after 1654. This is confirmed by two letters Evelyn wrote to his father-in-law Sir Richard Browne; in the first of Sept. 1652 he refers to `the oval garden’, `the Exact designe whereof (together with our other environs) I purpose to send you coppied exactly from the plott which I have now finished and is the guide of all our designes’; in the second of 23 Jan. 1653/4 he adds, `I am exceedingly rejoyced to find that my little designes heere have pleasd you as I find they have by the foote of your letter, in those most excellent Verses, which I entend to engrave on a plate designed with this Epigraph: Nob viro D.D. R.B. Equiti aurato et Baronetto … Hunc Tamesis spectissimae Fluvii prospectum quem a Ripa Haeredituriae eius Terrae et Nativitatis loci in Agro Deptfordi[-?] manu sua propria delineavit et in Aere excusit J.E. Gener. Eius Amantiss: observantae … but of this more hereafter’ (see Add. MS 78221 above). The second letter indicates that Evelyn intended to engrave the plan himself, incorporating the inscription to his father-in-law, whose hereditary estate Sayes Court was. The present plan is in keeping with this intention; it is executed with great precision and clarity as to detail, the key is calligraphically written, and the cartouche incorporates an inscription to Browne similar to that quoted in the above letter. However no plate or print of the plan is known. The plan has been frequently reproduced, most notably in full and with several details of particular areas, including a transcribed key, in Prudence Leith-Ross, `The Garden of John Evelyn at Deptford’, Garden History, 25 (1997), pp. 138-152.

Paper. 565 x 645mm.