In the 18th century the Campbell family, Earls of Breadalbane, embellished the park around the family seat at Taymouth with temples and mock forts, complementing the natural beauties of the surrounding hills and the River Tay that flows through the estate. Just a couple of miles away, on the shores of Loch Tay, was a more dramatic feature, a rustic shelter and a roaring cascade, which added a sublime element to the beautiful policies of Taymouth.

An exact date for the construction of The Hermitage is not known, but it was extant in 1769 when the traveller and naturalist Thomas Pennant admired the ‘hermitage, the great cataracts adjacent, and the darksome chasm beneath’. Contemporary accounts suggest that the building was the creation of John Campbell (1738-1771), son of the 3rd Earl of Breadalbane, and his wife Wilhelmina (1741-1786), who were styled Lord and Lady Glenorchy. They married in 1761, so the Hermitage was most likely built soon after that date, and was quite new when Pennant saw it.

Most visitors arrived by carriage, but the more intrepid could hire a boat and sail down Loch Tay to a jetty close to the falls. A guide met visitors and led them along a wooded walk and then into a dark, rugged passage.

Senses suitably excited by the gloomy tunnel, the visitor could then gasp in awe as they entered the chamber and found a bow window framing the waterfall ‘in all its splendour’.

The Hermitage, as it has always been known, was built to appear as a cave hewn out of solid rock, although it is actually a carefully constructed sham, with thatch and moss originally disguising the mode of construction.

The earliest 18th century accounts give little mention of the interior, but by 1786 the Hermitage was decorated in a whimsical style as home to an (imaginary) hermit. The seats and bed were dressed with the pelts of wild animals, and the walls were covered in moss and ‘ornament’d with shellwork and plaister in imitation of fruit – which is supposed to be the Hermit’s food’. There was also a shelf of books, which the fictional solitary occupant could apparently peruse to enrich his mind. But this artifice was unconvincing, and in 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth was not fooled, noting that the volumes were wood wrapped with old leather covers. She did however admire the ‘quaint apartment’ and the ‘beautiful prospect’ from the window which took in not only the waterfall, but also the handsome village of Kenmore and Loch Tay (now blocked by trees, but visible from the paths up and down from the Hermitage).

Not everyone shared the general consensus that the building was ‘rural and romantic’. The Reverend James Plumptre was conducted to the Hermitage in 1799 and found the place ‘much too modern and magnificent’ to house a hermit retiring from the world, although he conceded that a ‘London Hermit’ might be quite at home. William Gilpin, the great exponent of the picturesque, was less critical, but felt the Hermitage unnecessary as the waterfall was perfectly capable of enchanting without it.

Many more visitors recorded their visit in poetry and prose, including the famed Robert Burns. On a tour of Scotland in 1787 he visited the Falls of Acharn and composed the poem originally called ‘Written in the Hermitage at Taymouth’, featuring the lines:

Poetic ardours in my bosom swell,
Lone wandering by the hermit’s mossy cell…

This poem was later published as ‘Verses written with a pencil over the chimney-piece, in the parlour of the inn at Kenmore, Taymouth’.

In the middle of the 19th century these lines could still be seen by guests at the inn (as indeed they can today), but for added drama visitors to the Hermitage could hear them recited by the guide, who whilst they were distracted by a first sight of the falls, had slipped into a mask and a costume and ‘came forth personifying an eremite’. Wearing a ‘dress of shaggy goatskin’ and a ‘long and venerable beard of lichens’ the guide appeared ‘to the amusement, and sometimes the alarm, of his visitors’.

The Marquis of Breadalbane was later reported to have wanted to instal a permanent hermit, but ‘no-one could be found bold enough to act out the part’, and anyway candidates would have known that it was much more lucrative to be a loquacious guide and extract tips from the many English visitors: in 1857 it was written that ‘Milk and honey flow abundantly from the lips of the genuine Celtic cicerone; and hard-hearted must the Sassenach be who does not feel the effects of the soft sawder in the most sensitive part of his person, his breeches pocket’.

In 1842 it was reported that the Hermitage had ‘undergone a scrubbing’ in preparation for a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Sadly this work appears to have been in vain, for whilst the young queen recorded her pleasure at being rowed up Loch Tay with ‘the pipes playing, & boatmen singing old Gaelic songs’, she makes no mention of a visit to see the cascade.

The modern visitor approaches just as the early tourist did. A walk up a ‘steep and rugged path’, followed by a pause to get one’s breath back, and then a moment to gaze ‘with wonder and amazement at the ‘magnificent landscape’ before entering the Hermitage to view the cascade. Sadly, the Hermitage was damaged in a storm in the 1950s: the roof is long gone, and the shellwork interior lost, but this remains an enchanting spot.

Taymouth Castle is currently being renovated as an hotel, but visitors are free to walk in the park. There’s a delightful circular walk to the falls from the hamlet of Acharn.

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Conishead Priory, as the name suggests, was a religious house, but after the dissolution it became a private home. In the middle of the 18th century it was home to Thomas Braddyll (1730-1776) who created new pleasure grounds around the Priory, including a number of ornamental features.

The pleasure ground was described at length by Thomas West in his Guide to the Lakes, first published in 1778, two years after Braddyll’s death. West wrote that the ‘late owner performed wonders’ to create ‘the paradise of Furness’, and called the park had been ‘one of the greatest in England.’ Nature had of course been generous at Conishead, which is tucked between the hills and the sea, but as West wrote, Braddyll had consulted ‘the genius of the place’ to form a ‘magnificent whole’. 

Above the house, a lawn sloped up to woodland where in 1777 a young visitor found a ‘curious Hermitage, or Moss-House, where the Moss and Ivy are curled round by the curious Hand of Nature’.  Sadly no contemporary images have been found, and the view above is the only known record of the building intact.

West’s extravagant praise for the delights of Conishead can be seen in a different light when we learn from a visitor in 1779 that he had played a leading role in the design. The tourist wrote that the Hermitage was an ‘exact’ copy of ones seen in France, and was ‘built and furnished under the direction of Mr West’.

Thomas West (?1720-1779) was better known locally as Father West, a Jesuit priest who had returned to Britain after the closure of the Jesuit schools in France in 1765. He settled in Furness, and as well as tending to a small catholic flock, indulged his passion for history, and became friends with the principal local families: the Braddylls of Conishead and the Cavendishes of Holker Hall. West has not previously been acknowledged as a gentleman landscape designer, but that he took keen interest in contemporary design can be seen in his published works where he compares Conishead to two great landscapes: Wooburn Farm, Philip Southcote’s pastoral landscape in Surrey, and Mount Edgcumbe, overlooking Plymouth Sound in Devon.

The Hermitage was cruciform in plan and built of rustic rough stone blocks. It consisted of two rooms – a living chamber and a chapel with a painted glass window representing the Annunciation. No records of any religious activity have been found, but it would have been a place for quiet contemplation where one could appreciate the beauty of nature: visitors commented on the ‘great variety of pleasing views’ it commanded.

On Thomas Bradyll’s death in 1776 the estate was left to his cousin, or ‘the Grandson of my Aunt Margaret’ to be precise. This was Wilson Gale (1756-1818), and under the terms of the will he took the name Bradyll. The Hermitage was kept in good repair and was visited by guests exploring the ‘delightful walks’ in the park. An 1834 guidebook to the lakes mentioned the building, but found it inauthentic as it was ‘considerably more elegant than hermits are wont to construct for themselves’. Which diverts us to the question of whether it was ever inhabited: one story told in the area is that a ‘tame lion’ was kept in the Hermitage in the early 19th century. Another local legend says that a hermit was in residence for 20 years, but there is no evidence whatsoever, and as we shall see below, hermits were in short supply in the area. 

In 1843 the ‘pretty secluded retreat’ was described as ‘in perfect keeping’, but soon after this date the Conishead estate passed out of Braddyll hands. Wilson Gale Braddyll’s son and heir, Thomas, had lost money on a mining venture, and having also spent lavishly building the amazing house that survives today, he was forced to sell Conishead Priory. The estate has since had various institutional owners.

The Hermitage was intact, if overgrown, when architect and antiquarian John Flavel Curwen (1860-1932) gave a paper on it in 1902. The stained glass was gone, but he found the remains of a wooden bedstead, and on the floor of the chapel was a ‘massive cross of red sandstone, 5 feet 9 inches in length, but broken’. 

The current custodian of Conishead Priory, the Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre, is slowly restoring the house and estate. In 2009 the Buddhist community commissioned Greenlane Archaeology to investigate the landscape, including the hermitage. No interior features are intact, but the truncated walls still stand, and the cruciform plan is clear to see. 

In recent years a new ornament has been added to the pleasure grounds at Conishead Priory in the form of this wonderful temple.

A second, and sadly also lost, hermitage was built not too far away in 1795. The eccentric Joseph Pocklington (1736-1817) embellished an island in Derwentwater with follies, and later constructed a hermitage at his Barrow Cascade House estate on the shore of the lake.

Pocklington was keen to find a hermit to animate the new building, and offered a generous half a crown a day in payment. But as William Gell recorded in 1797, the terms were tough: ‘The hermit is never to leave the place, or hold a conversation with anyone for 7 years during which time he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatever, but is to let his hair and nails both on hands and feet grow as long as nature will permit them’.

Curiously, the post seems to have remained vacant.

The Hermitage at Conishead is not publicly accessible, but the Manjushri Kadampa community welcome visitors elsewhere on the estate, and it is very well worth a trip for the beauties of the architecture (old and new), the woodland and the coastline. And there’s a great cafe.  https://manjushri.org

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As the nation settles into staying at home, forgoing a social life and, more practically, visits to the hairdresser and beauty salon, the Folly Flâneuse got to thinking about those fashionable landscape ornaments called hermitages, in which men (presumably women had more sense than to apply for the vacancy) lived in isolation. With ragged clothing, long fingernails, and unkempt beards, the hermits animated the landscape, whilst creating a little drama for the visitors who caught a (staged) glimpse of the recluse.

Hermits in the landscape garden have been considered at length elsewhere, so only a brief summary is necessary here. In the 18th century hermitages sat alongside grottoes, temples, belvederes and sham ruins as essential components of a voguish pleasure ground. Hermitages were created from natural materials – tufa from nearby streams, tree trunks and branches, and moss and heather for the roof. The buildings had to look as if a hermit could have built them himself, using only what he could find locally. Most were designed as rustic retreats, the name ‘hermitage’ suggesting a place where the visitor could be at one with nature and pause for quiet reflection, the word hermit being ultimately derived from the Greek for ‘solitary.’

But some estate owners went a step further and recruited ‘real’ hermits – legend has it via the classified ads in the local newspaper. In return for their basic accommodation and meals, the applicants would eventually receive a pension. But the small print insisted that they made commitments such as remaining for 7 years, not cutting their hair or nails, and making a vow of silence. Needless to say, there are few records of anyone staying the course, but many a story of the hermit being caught having a good natter in the village pub only a few weeks into his contract. Much more reliable were the (albeit rare) waxwork hermits, who seldom strayed, or the automata under the control of a hidden estate retainer.

Whether there is much truth in the hermit tales is debatable, but there were certainly plenty of hermitages. There were examples across Britain and although many have been lost because of the organic nature of their construction, there’s a particularly lovely surviving example at Brocklesby, the seat of the Earl of Yarborough in Lincolnshire. Accounts show it was constructed as part of a scheme of improvements proposed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who last visited Brocklesby in 1780 shortly before work on the shelter started.

The approach to the hermitage is through a grotto tunnel which was once decorated with fossils and curious minerals. Venturing into the dark space created a frisson of trepidation, but on coming out into the light the visitor’s spirits would rise at the sight of the pretty little rustic temple in front of them. Created out of tree trunks, gnarled branches, and rough stone, around a brick core, the little octagon is entered by an arch beautifully formed of two curving branches. The interior was decorated with rustic latticework made of entwined branches, of which traces remain, and furnished with a table made out of a ‘lump of elm disease’ (as Barbara Jones unromantically described it in her notes), a rustic seat, and four chairs each hewn out of a single piece of wood.

So was it ever home to a hirsute and terrifyingly-taloned anchorite, dressed only in rags? Rumour has it that a hermit was occasionally to be found at home, but evidence seems hard to come by. Although there was certainly a very shabby and shifty individual in residence when the Folly Fellowship visited in 1999.

Hermits may have endured their spartan surroundings, but most people were just too keen on their creature comforts to linger in root houses, which by their nature were ‘not very dry’. James Plumptre toured Yorkshire in 1799 and was enamoured with William Aislabie’s landscape garden at Hackfall, near Ripon. Hoping to be able to return and spend more time there, he wished for a cell to be built where he might ‘hermitize’. But remembering the northern weather he added the caveat ‘at least for the summer half year.’

One man who wasn’t afraid of the colder seasons was William Wordsworth, born 250 years ago this week on 7 April 1770. In the early 19th century he built a rustic shelter in his garden at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, inspired by an example he and his sister Dorothy had seen in Scotland. The ‘Moss House’ was used all year round, including as a retreat ‘for quietness on warm days in winter’. The Folly Flâneuse had intended to feature the Wordsworth Trust’s plans to create a modern day successor to the lost structure, which were at an advanced stage when the current situation escalated. Obviously, that’s all on hold but there will be further news here in due course, and a visit to see it is on the flâneuse’s increasingly long list of ‘Things To Look Forward To’.

The hermitage at Brocklesby is grade I listed in recognition of its status as a rare survivor of the genre. ‘Damp and in disrepair’ when seen by Barbara Jones in the 1970s, it has since been restored. The pleasure grounds at Brocklesby are strictly private but have historically been open to the public at certain times of the year. Once the current restrictions are lifted a call to the estate office should elicit the necessary information https://www.brocklesby.co.uk