Pyramid of Marble: The Garden of Euphues

The most complete description of Nonsuch dates from 1598 and probably some of the detail dates from the latter part of Elizabeth's reign rather than from her father's. The place was surrounded by a deer park, `delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks so embowered by trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by pleasure herself to dwell in along with health'. In the gardens were many marble columns and pyramids and a number of fountains of which the more remarkable are described in detail. The most considerable consisted of two main streams of water, one within the other in pyramid form, above which perched figures of birds which streamed water from their beaks; another appropriately placed in the grove of Diana was of Actaeon turned into a stag; while a third was a water joke of the type we first encountered at Naples a century earlier, `a pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes which spurt upon all that come near'? Details of the gardens at Hampton Court are far more complete. Here the most striking features were the labyrinth;2 the Mount with its arbours and galleries; and the raised beds. The Maze covered only a quarter of an acre, but its meanderings were half a mile long. The Mount was a far more considerable affair, built on brick foundations and containing an elaborate arbour which was linked with other parts of the garden by covered galleries. No trace remains of the Mount, but there is the remnant of a similar one at Rockingham Castle and at Boscobel.