The 80 winged dragons that once perched on the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens are to be reinstated in the most comprehensive restoration in its 257-year history.
The ten-story-tall pagoda is the oldest building at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. I don't know if its me , my camera, or the Pagoda, but one of us is leaning. Designed by William Chambers & built in 1762. The pagoda is a testimony to the fascination of the Royal Family for Oriental culture during the 18th century.
The Pagoda in Kew Gardens, which has an even number of floors while true Chinese pagodas have an uneven number for good luck.
"The towering Pagoda in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew is perhaps the most ambitious garden structure built in the Chinese style in Europe in the eighteenth century. It is a relic of the taste for exotic and often ephemeral garden buildings which prevailed among the wealthy and fashionable classes of that profuse age. The pagoda was designed and built by the architect Sir William Chambers (1723-96) between 1761 and 1762 as the principal ornament in the pleasure grounds of the White House at Kew, residence of Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, mother of George III.: Text Source & See more at: (
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"There was a fashion for Chinoiserie in English garden design in the mid 18th century, and Chambers was a keen advocate, reacting against the sweeping 'natural' lines of contemporaries such as 'Capability' Brown.
The Pagoda was completed in 1762. The ten-storey octagonal structure is 163 ft (nearly 50 m) high and was, at that time, the tallest reconstruction of a Chinese building in Europe. It tapers, with successive floors from the first to the topmost being 1 ft (30 cm) less in diameter and height than the preceding one.
The original building was very colourful; the roofs being covered with varnished iron plates, with a dragon on each corner. There were 80 dragons in all, each carved from wood and gilded with real gold.
There have been several restorations, mainly to the roofs, but the original colours and the dragons have not been replaced, though the question of replica dragons was discussed in 1979." Text Source: (
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From the Guardian Website:
Kew Gardens to breathe new life into great pagoda dragons.
Mythical creatures will return when west London folly inspired by China’s Porcelain Tower undergoes biggest restoration in its 257-year history.
The 80 winged dragons that once perched on the great pagoda at Kew Gardens are to be reinstated in the most comprehensive restoration in its 257-year history.
The structure, 50 metres tall and visible miles from the botanical gardens, is in the care of Historic Royal Palaces, whose experts have been trawling through architectural archives to find every scrap of evidence for the dragons, which seem to have disappeared within a decade of its unveiling in 1762.
There was great excitement as the project was being planned last year, when a winged dragon found in a local authority store was sent to one of the curators. It had the hopeful initials WC – thought to stand for William Chambers, the architect of the pagoda. However, Craig Hatto, who is leading the restoration project, said further research had revealed the dragon was part of the sign for a public lavatory in Woking.
Many legends surround the dragons, including an improbable one claiming they were made of solid gold and sold to settle the gambling debts of the Prince of Wales, the future George IV.
Hatto said the best evidence –including witness descriptions of their “shimmering” surface – is that they were made of lacquered carved wood. More disappointingly, he does not think they held little tinkling silver bells in their mouths, as many had believed.
“We still have hopes that somebody will open a box in an attic and uncover them, but since nobody has seen any trace of them in more than 200 years, it is beginning to look unlikely,” he said.
Hatto said the pagoda was intended as the highlight of a “world tour”, a royal progress through the gardens past Roman ruins, Greek temples and Arabic mosques. “Visitors were regularly invited to climb to the top where they could see the world laid out in miniature in the king’s back garden, and his kingdom stretching away into the distance outside the walls – it was a spectacular bit of showing off.”
The work, intended to be completed by 2017, will restore many original paint colours and features but will not correct a fundamental mistake in its design. A true Chinese pagoda would have an uneven number of floors for luck, but the Kew one has 10. It is believed to have been inspired by the famous 15th-century Porcelain Tower in Nanking but based on an engraving of the building, which Chambers had never seen in reality, that incorrectly showed it with 10 floors." Text Source: (
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