1930–the present

The earliest photographs of the cave’s interior that we have found are those taken by Murray Forsyth for his article in Country Life in 1979 (fig 15).Footnote ¹¹ At that time the cave was seldom visited and, as can be seen, nature was taking over. This contrasts with how it appears today. The vegetation has been cleared away from the cave, with the exception of large quantities of ivy, and it stands upon a well-kept lawn. Rocks have been piled up against its western side to form a rockery and the northern side forms part of a modern terrace.

Fig 15. Murray Forsyth’s photographs of Rousseau’s Cave. Photograph: Forsyth Reference Forsyth1979.

The current owner only knows the cave from shortly before the present-day Wootton Hall was built in 2002. However, Lee Mackay and Simon Manby of Forge Farm Studio in Wootton paid their first visit to the cave in 1968, when they first moved to the village. Although in 1966 a local journalist had already recorded that the cave was ‘still there in remnants’,Footnote ¹² in 1968 there was substantially more remaining than today. The deterioration of the cave that has occurred since 1930 is probably due to a mixture of souvenir hunting and natural erosion. Lee and Simon recall about twelve groups of artificial stalactites attached to the interior walls of the cave (with two or three stalactites in each group). There now remain just six groups – much eroded. The stalactites were not carved, but were made of a grey stucco, all modelled in relief and not in the round. Today, their remains can be seen on the southern and western walls of the cave attached to the stones that constituted the first course of the cave’s domed roof. Simon Manby, a sculptor, suggests that, as they were not identical in size or shape, they might have been cast from a mould and then modified in situ. In length they were between 5cm to 10cm, and in depth no more than 4cm. In appearance they may originally have been similar to the artificial stalactites on the seventeenth-century grotto wall at Wallenstein Palace Garden in Prague (Czechia).

Lee and Simon recall that there were also about twelve clear crystals randomly embedded into the walls of the cave. Although no longer in situ, one of these survives (see image in supplementary material). It is a calcite crystal (2.5cms × 1.8cms × 0.8cms) of the variety known as Iceland spar or optical crystal.Footnote ¹³

Other than the partial remains of its first course, the cave’s domed roof no longer exists, but in 1968 a portion of it still survived, above the fireplace wall. It was built entirely of dressed local sandstone. Although the surviving first course of the roof is roughly curved at the western end, it is much straighter along the southern and northern ends, with a wide-angled corner at the north-east; all of which suggests a roughly oblong roof but not one that followed any strict geometric pattern.

1837/8–1930

On 19 December 1929 Wootton Hall, together with 53 acres, was offered for auction. It was advertised as ‘suitable for a school, institution or pleasure estate’. However, it failed to meet its reserve price of £3,500. The bidding did not rise any higher than £2,500.Footnote ¹⁴ It was then hoped to raise a higher price by selling off the fixtures and fittings of the house individually. An auction was held at the house on 27 and 28 February and 1 March 1930. Saturday 1 March was devoted to the sale of ‘Outdoor Effects’. However, it was the start of the Depression and again bidding was disappointingly slow. The total realised was £2,290.Footnote ¹⁵

Among the ‘outdoor effects’ sold on 1 March for £5 was lot 689 (of 775): ‘The Stone-built Rousseau’s Cave’.Footnote ¹⁶ It was bought by William Podmore Snr (?–1958) of Consall Hall near Stoke-on-Trent. The payment of £5 presumably entitled him to any parts of the cave that could be physically removed. He took away the cave’s exterior ashlar facing stones, which were carefully reassembled at Consall Hall, so as to make a replica of the cave’s exterior. He also bought a rose tent (or bower), which he later sold back to the previous owners of Wootton Hall, the Bromley Davenports, and an oak staircase, which he installed at Consall Hall.

Fortuitously, it was not a school day, and his twelve-year-old son accompanied him to the sale. In 2016–17 we interviewed his son, William Podmore OBE (1917–2018), about his memories of the cave. He remembered it as having a vaulted dome-shaped ceiling, at the centre of which was a sealed hatch about 2ft in diameter. Furthermore, there was originally a free-standing stone bench that, in 1930, stood against the western wall of the cave to the left of the fireplace and an interior east-facing window connecting the cave with a passageway that extended from the house. (By 1968 the eastern wall had almost entirely disappeared.) The 25’-to-a-mile ordnance survey map (1892–1914), combined with photographic evidence of fig 16, suggest that, although it may have been contiguous with a passageway in the house, the passageway seen by young Mr Podmore would have extended from the main part of the house by only about 2–3m. Mr Podmore created a rough sketch of the of the window (or windows), divided by a stone mullion, connecting the cave to the house (see supplementary material for image). In fig 17 Mr Podmore’s rough sketch of the windows and mullion has been transposed onto the open eastern side of the present-day cave and his imperial measurements have been converted to metric.

Fig 16. The entrance to Rousseau’s Cave. Photograph: Staffordshire Record Office 4463-9-4.

Fig 17. The window in relation to the rest of the cave. Photograph: authors.

At Consall Hall, the place where the ashlar facing stones were initially reassembled was found to be prone to flooding and so in 1960 they were again carefully reassembled, by William Podmore Jnr, at their current location on the pond terrace (see supplementary material for image).

The accuracy of the Podmores’ reconstruction can be seen when it is compared to a pre-1908 photograph of the cave (see fig 16). That the photograph predates 1908 can be deduced from the fact that another photograph of the cave from the south-west (see supplementary material) was published that year in Collins’ Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England Footnote ¹⁷ and the Illustrated London News.Footnote ¹⁸ The vegetation and flowers in this photograph are in exactly the same positions as the vegetation and flowers in the photograph taken from the straight-on position. Both photographs were probably taken by the local photographers R and R Bull, a business based in nearby Ashbourne that traded between 1904 and 1913. (They made a postcard from the photograph.Footnote ¹⁹ )

Using the pre-1908 photographs of the cave’s exterior (fig 16) and the reconstruction at Consall Hall, it is a relatively straightforward process to digitally transpose the reconstructed ashlar facing stones back into their original position against cave’s southern exterior wall (fig 18).

Fig 18. Digital overlay. Photograph: Dr Kirsten Leach.

However, the photographs of the cave (fig 16) and of the house (fig 19) and Mr Podmore’s reconstruction (fig 17) only take us back to the early Victorian period. For it was then that the terrace was constructed over the top of the cave. This is apparent from the comments of Bernard Burke in A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain.Footnote ²⁰ Burke was invited into the house to view the art collection of the Rev Davenport Bromley (1787–1862). The Rev Davenport Bromley, the grandson of Richard Davenport, was the only owner of Wootton Hall who ever spent much time there. Other owners preferred to spend most of their time at Capesthorne Hall and Calveley Hall in Cheshire. The Rev Davenport Bromley was vicar of the nearby village of Ellastone from 1811 to 1830, and he inherited the house from his father, Davies Davenport (1757–1837). Following the death of his father, extensive rebuilding took place, mainly in the years 1837 and 1838 and continuing to 1842,Footnote ²¹ under the direction of the architect Thomas Trubshaw (1802–42),Footnote ²² who may have been influenced by the recent Italianate re-rendering of nearby Trentham Hall.

Fig 19. Wootton Hall from the north. Photograph: Collins Reference Collins1908.

According to Burke: ‘Until the taste and wealth of the present Mr Davenport Bromley erected this new, handsome and spacious mansion, Wootton was an old and small house, seldom inhabited by the family.’Footnote ²³ The present owner ‘fixed his residence here, and added a handsome Mansion, in the Italian style of architecture, to the small original house’.Footnote ²⁴ He then lets slip a remark that is crucial in understanding the history of the cave. Rousseau ‘wrote his ‘confessions’ in a grotto, which has been built over in erecting a flight of steps which leads to the principal entrance’Footnote ²⁵ (our italics).

No previous writers on Rousseau’s stay in Wootton have realised that the exterior of the cave was entirely different prior to the Rev Davenport Bromley’s ‘improvements’. Courtois in 1910 records, presumably from local legend, that ‘Rousseau’s apartment was located on the first floor at the back of the house’,Footnote ²⁶ but no one seems to have informed him that the exterior of the cave that he saw, and that is shown in old photographs – and much of the rebuilt and expanded house – would have been unrecognisable to Rousseau.Footnote ²⁷

The above remarks by Bernard Burke imply that the facing stones (and probably also the oak staircase) that were bought by Mr Podmore in 1930 only date from 1837 at the earliest. They were part of the improvements that were carried out so as to create a house worthy to display an extensive collection of newly-acquired Renaissance Italian art.Footnote ²⁸ Likewise, the elaborate wrought iron ‘Milanese gates’ that are now at Capesthorne Hall, decorated with the figure of Saint Andrew, which came from Wootton Hall (and originally, according to family legend, from a monastery near Milan), were most likely bought by the Rev Davenport Bromley on one of his art-buying expeditions.Footnote ²⁹ The Rev Davenport Bromley spent considerable time in Italy, but there is no record of Rousseau’s host, Richard Davenport, ever travelling abroad.

Nonetheless, despite William Podmore’s mistaken assumption about the date of the ashlar facing stones, we are deeply indebted to him for sharing his memories of the cave as it was in 1930. We only wish that we had asked him more.Footnote ³⁰

c 1750–1837/8

Although there is no known picture of the house that predates the building work of 1837–8, there is an inventory that was made on 21 and 22 February 1837 following the death of its owner, Davis Davenport, on 5 February 1837.Footnote ³¹ As it immediately predates the building work carried out by the Rev Davenport Bromley, and as no known work is known to have been carried out between c 1750 when the original house was built and 1837, when the Rev Davenport Bromley inherited it, this inventory is probably the nearest we can get to a description of the eighteenth-century house.Footnote ³²

The 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey map of 1834–9Footnote ³³ confirms that the original house stood on the same site as the Rev Davenport Bromley’s house; however, it was considerably smaller. The 1929 sales catalogue reveals that the servants’ wing (built 1837–42) contained ten bedrooms and that there were fifteen other bedrooms (in the main part of the house). By contrast, the 1837 inventory lists only nine bedrooms (excluding servants’ bedrooms) – the number of servants’ bedrooms pre-1837 is unknown. As the 1837 inventory makes no mention of a bell tower, we may infer that this Italianate structure was another addition from the years 1837–42. Other additions made at this time include a new billiard room and a large drawing room.Footnote ³⁴

The photographs of the house suggest that the western wing – ie the westernmost rooms, protruding both southwards and northwards from the line of the house – was built in 1837–42 by the Rev Davenport Bromley. If the four bedrooms in the west wing and the ‘two bedrooms in Tower over’Footnote ³⁵ are subtracted from the 1929 total of fifteen bedrooms, we arrive back at the total of nine (original) bedrooms in the house that Rousseau knew. Seven of these bedrooms were on the first floor. On the ground floor, pre-1837, there was a library, drawing room and dining room. The original house consisted of just two floors, ground floor and first floor, with the servants’ rooms in the basement. There were also stables and a brewhouse arranged around a yard.Footnote ³⁶ The original house would in fact have been of a similar size to that which exists on the same site today, built in 2002.

Unfortunately, the 1837 inventory makes no mention of Rousseau’s Cave. However, this is not surprising for, as will be seen, the evidence points to the connecting passageway (seen by Mr Podmore) being built at the same time as the terrace. The existence of the terrace, and the assumption that this dates to Rousseau’s stay, has led previous writers to think of Rousseau’s Cave as a grotto, connected to the house. However, although it had some of the features of a grotto, if we free our minds of the terrace, it will be seen that in the eighteenth century the cave was not a grotto but a small self-contained hermitage.

The difference between grottoes and hermitages is sometimes vague, and sometimes, even in the eighteenth century, a hermitage might be described as a grotto, but there are significant differences. Grottoes were inspired by the shrines at sacred springs in ancient Greece and Rome. The Romans termed such a shrine a nymphaeum, for it was customarily dedicated to local water nymphs. The fashion was revived in sixteenth-century Italy and reached Britain in the early seventeenth century. The fashion was revived again in the early eighteenth century, coinciding with the fashion for hermitages. But, in general, a grotto was a little more sociable and frivolous than a hermitage.

By contrast, an eighteenth-century hermitage reflected a prevailing fashion for melancholy. Thus, sometimes lines from Milton’s ‘Il Penseroso’, ‘the founding text of the eighteenth-century cult of melancholy’Footnote ³⁷ were inscribed upon hermitage walls:

Whereas a grotto might typically be decorated with statues of nymphs, a hermitage was more likely to be decorated with memento mori – for example, a crucifix, a skull or an hourglass. A further difference is that a grotto is a place to visit, whereas the hermitage is, ostensibly, a place to live. There are examples of eighteenth-century owners paying for hermits to inhabit their hermitages as living illustrations of a simple contemplative life, but more usually hermitages were left in a state in which visitors might imagine that the hermit had momentarily left but might reappear at any moment.

If there is one architectural feature above all others that proclaims Rousseau’s Cave to be a hermitage – a place to live – rather than a grotto, it is the very small fireplace. We have been able to find only one grotto that had a fireplace: Hartburn grotto in Northumberland, which was exceptional in that it served as a swimmers’ changing room.

Admittedly, the cave does have some features that are more usually associated with a grotto: the stalactites and the calcite crystals (found, for example, in the Painshill grotto dating to the 1760s and the Goldney House grotto of 1737–64). However, it has no water feature at all, nor any shell decoration. Both of these features would be expected had the cave been designed as a grotto. Moreover, the ground is well-drained: there is no hidden clay-lined pond. The decorative tufa is more often found in grottoes rather than hermitages, but its use in hermitages is not unparalleled. For example, the hermitage at Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire was ‘a circular structure made from rustic tufa’Footnote ³⁸ and the hermitage at Oriel Temple in County Louth in Ireland is made partly of tufa.Footnote ³⁹

Rousseau’s Cave is alluded to in a poem by Voltaire, ‘Guerre Civil de Geneve’ (1768):

In 1818 Stephen Weston translated this as:

That rumours of Rousseau living in a cave reached Voltaire demonstrate the contemporary demand for Rousseau-related gossip. Yet Wootton was a remote place and, dating to Rousseau’s stay, there is only one eye-witness description of the cave – all too brief – dating from the eighteenth century. Mary Delaney refers to Rousseau’s hermitage in a letter to her brother Bernard Granville at Calwich Abbey. Calwich is next door to Wootton, and Rousseau would often visit Granville. The two men got on well, and Granville was one of the few in the area who could speak French. The letter is dated ‘Delville [Ireland] 3 July 1766’.

Mrs Delany was herself a designer of grottoes and hermitages, and in the above extract she is comparing the hermitage at Wootton to that at Calwich, which she may well have had a hand in designing when the house was built in the 1740s. There exists in the National Gallery of Ireland ‘A View of the Bridge and Grotto at Calwich House’ by Mrs Delany dated 1756, showing a door in a hillside. It was probably inspired by the fact that Calwich was formerly the site of a medieval priory.

Another eighteenth-century account suggests a feature of the hermitage not at first apparent from the current ruins was a poem inscribed on a large plaque that once stood upon the mantelpiece. During the course of our research we have developed the hypothesis that such a plaque existed and that the poem was copied by Erasmus Darwin.

Charles Darwin recorded that his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, visited Rousseau at the cave in 1766 and that for some years afterwards they kept up a correspondence.Footnote ⁴² Although Darwin did not himself record his meeting with Rousseau (or the record does not survive), in a bundle of his poems dedicated to his eldest brother Robert Waring Darwin, the following lines are found under the heading ‘Inscribed over the Chimney of an Hermitage’:

The editors of Darwin’s poems assume that this poem is by Darwin himself and that the title is a poetic conceit, but there is in fact no reason not to take Darwin at his word. This is just the sort of poem that we might expect to find decorating an eighteenth-century hermitage. None of the other hermitages within the vicinity of Darwin’s home at Lichfield, and later Derby, have a chimney – neither Cratcliffe, Kedleston, Dale Abbey, Anchor Church, Ilam, Sneinton nor the hermitage built by Matthew Boulton in the grounds of Soho House in Birmingham. The only exception is the rock-cut dwelling at Rowtor Rocks, near Birchover, in Derbyshire, but there the natural rock overhangs the fireplace.

We turned to the photogrammetry survey in search of evidence to support the existence of a plaque in the alcove above the fireplace. The digital model allowed us to view this part of the ruin with a variety of different lighting arrangements, with either the original colours or a neutral grey surface. Rotating the view, as seen in the video clip,Footnote ⁴⁴ helped to clarify surface details. A combination of these techniques revealed traces of the plaque that we had not noticed during our initial visit. The outline of the plaque is particularly clear along the top, top-left and top-right edges (figs 20 and 21). A second visit to the ruin confirmed the results of our photogrammetry-based analysis.

Fig 20. Fireplace alcove. CGI Rendering: authors.

Fig 21. Outline of plaque. CGI Rendering: authors.

In later years, Darwin adapted the hermitage poem into a poem of his own, published posthumously in 1836. He had a habit of incorporating other people’s poetry into his own. For example, he incorporated the work of his neighbour Anna Seward into his ‘Botanic Garden’ without permission or acknowledgement.Footnote ⁴⁵ Here is Darwin’s adaptation:

Time, and its Monitors

By the late Erasmus Darwin

Now First Published

Silent the Gnomon’s shade is thrown,

Slow gliding o’er the lettered stone;

The trickling sands in silence flow,

Showered on the mould’ring heap below;

The golden hand, with silent pace,

Steals round and round th’ enameled face;

Smooth on their gems the axles spin,

The steady balance beats within.

So pass, ye hours! – my tranquil day

Nor speeds your steps nor courts your stay.

For Love (with all his Gorgon trains

Of doubts and jealousies and pains)

Rude Love, my late intrusive guest,

Has left at length this beating breast,

And sullen Care’s malicious hand

Nor shakes my sun, nor shakes my sand.Footnote ⁴⁶

Darwin has here kept the theme of tranquillity but, characteristically, added the theme of love and updated the time-keeping technology – but the original poem is simply a melancholy ode to tranquillity.

The original poem makes it all the more likely that the cave contained probably the most typical memento mori decoration of a hermit’s cave at this time, an hourglass. It is also worth noting that the 1930 sale catalogue included a sundial ‘Top carved G.R. 1762, with Engraved Brass Plate’ (fig 22). If this were in close proximity to the hermitage, it would have added meaning to the poem above the fireplace. The poem’s references to ‘the Gnomon’s shade’ and ‘the mould’ring heap below’ suggest that the original source of the poem was a sundial-bearing headstone, and that Davenport copied it as a suitable decoration for his newly-built hermitage.

Fig 22. Lot 708 a sundial from the 1930 sale catalogue.

Unsurprisingly, given his determinedly self-sufficient character, Rousseau himself seems to have happily embraced the role of hermit. He signs off a letter to Granville as follows:

Adieu, Monsieur; derechef bon voyage, et souvenez-vous quelquefois du pauvre hermite, votre voisin, Rousseau [Adieu, Monsieur; and bon voyage once more, and remember sometimes a poor hermit, your neighbour, Rousseau] (our italics)Footnote ⁴⁷

The letter is undated but internal evidence suggests a date of 1766.Footnote ⁴⁸

Ten years after Rousseau’s departure, Josiah Wedgwood referred to the hermitage in a letter to his business partner, dated 4 May 1777:

Our neighbour Mr Sneyd of Keel has married one of his daughters to young Mr. Davenport, of Davenport. You knew his father who gave Rousseau a hermitage in Derbyshire [sic].Footnote ⁴⁹

In summary, the small fireplace, the lack of any water feature or shell decoration and the correspondence of Mary Delany, Josiah Wedgwood and of Rousseau himself all point to the cave as having been a small self-contained hermitage. Although it was close to the house, a connecting passageway would have contradicted the eremitical ideal that it promoted. It may, then, be safely assumed that the connecting passage was put in when the terrace was built shortly after the Rev Davenport Bromley inherited the house in 1837. Prior to that date, and the addition of the western wing, the hermitage would have stood in the garden about five or six metres from the house.

We may then envisage a sequence of events wherein the ‘not large’ house that Rousseau knew was built by Richard Davenport (c 1705–70) at some time around 1750.Footnote ⁵⁰ He acquired the land from Lord Bathurst in 1728.Footnote ⁵¹ Some nineteenth-century sources mention that Wootton was built to a design by Inigo Jones, but this claim reflects a common confusion between Wootton Hall and Wootton Lodge (a mile away).Footnote ⁵² It was the latter that was built to a design by Inigo Jones. In the garden of the house, and sharing the same magnificent views as the house,Footnote ⁵³ Rousseau’s Cave was originally a free-standing simple hermitage carved out of and embellishing a natural outcrop of bedrock.

There are other examples of eighteenth-century hermitages carved out of rocks, in Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Devon,Footnote ⁵⁴ but perhaps inspiration was also drawn from nearby caves made into houses, which can be seen to this day about four miles away at Mayfield near Ashbourne.Footnote ⁵⁵ The carving out of the sandstone outcrop at Wootton may have been carried out by lead miners from the nearby Weaver Hills.

The hermitage consisted simply of a door, window, fireplace and roof. The alcoves were probably decorated with memento mori such as a crucifix and an hourglass. The recess above the fireplace carried a plaque with an anonymous poem praising the cave’s tranquillity. Most likely wherever possible, both inside and outside, the bare rock was left undisguised. Perhaps some strands of ivy were left to climb the exterior of the hermitage, so as to emphasise the building’s ‘natural’ simplicity. The eastern wall, of which almost no trace now remains, was probably built up artificially, strong enough to help support the roof but left looking picturesquely unfinished. No doubt there was a table and a free-standing seat of some sort, but little else. The overall intended impression was that this was a building that had grown from nature.

In the original hermitage there was presumably a window in the eastern wall. This may have been quasi-ecclesiastical, like that shown in the contemporary illustration of Merlin’s Cave, completed by William Stukeley in 1737. Merlin’s Cave, as depicted in this illustration, is the nearest parallel example to Rousseau’s Cave that we have found.Footnote ⁵⁶

However, many of the features of the cave, including the calcite crystals embedded in the walls of the cave (with lime mortar), were intended to be seen at their best at nighttime, by candlelight. We can be confident that the stalactites, the crystals and the tufa all date from the eighteenth century, for this form of decoration had fallen out of fashion by the nineteenth century. And we can be confident that the domed roof was another original feature, for the surviving remnants of the stalactites are attached to the surviving lowest course of the roof.

By 1837, when the Rev Davenport Bromley inherited Wootton Hall, since hermitages and ‘natural’ gardens were no longer in fashion,Footnote ⁵⁷ a terrace was built that absorbed the hermitage into the enlarged house. At the same time, a passage and a larger window looking onto the cave’s interior were built so that, from the comfort of his home, his guests might still see where Rousseau had worked on his Confessions.

Between 1837 and 1842 alterations were also made to the exterior south face of the cave in order that it might fit inside the box of the terrace, in such a way that the facing stones of the terrace would run on in a straight line from the south face of the house. The protruding rock was cut back and the entire surface made roughly smooth prior to the building of the wall of facing stones. This is when the south face became covered with chisel marks from a mason’s point chisel. These were not made during the removal of the facing stones, for there is no indication that the facing wall was tied back to the stone outcrop in any way – there are no marks on the outcrop where metal or masonry ties might have been anchored. In 1837/8 the gap between masonry and stone might have been filled with rubble, possibly with some lime mortar. Dismantling the wall would not have led to the considerable evidence of chiselling that can now be seen on the southern face of the cave’s exterior. Rather, these marks were made during the building of the terrace. At the same time, the cave’s chimney was dismantled and the top of the Main Outcrop, where there are also marks from a mason’s point chisel, was made slightly flatter. Marks from the same tool suggest that the entrance way was also ‘tidied up’ at the same time. (Presumably, the lowest course of the ashlar facing stones were left at Wootton by the Podmores because in 1930 they were still buried by the Victorian terrace.)

Building the terrace over the cave meant that its window no longer admitted any daylight. The solution was to create the roof lantern/skylight at the apex of the domed roof. It is also most likely that the design of the window was altered at this time, for Mr Podmore’s drawing looks slightly more like what would be expected of a date of 1837–42 rather than c 1750. Perhaps the new owner considered the original window a little too small, crude and rustic. The window seen by Mr Podmore was relatively large, taking up in length most of the eastern wall, suggesting that it was built not for the purpose of looking out from the hermitage but for the purpose of looking in, as though looking at a diorama.

It is difficult to gauge the Rev Davenport Bromley’s attitude to Rousseau. He may have been somewhat ambivalent. His father, having been educated according to Rousseau’s recommendations, never liked to hear even the name of Rousseau.Footnote ⁵⁸ His son had few qualms about carrying out ‘improvements’ to Rousseau’s Cave, but on the other hand he was interested enough in Rousseau to have a window built so that his guests might see into the cave without leaving the comfort of the house. Fortunately, Davenport Bromley’s ‘improvements’ for the most part only affected the cave’s exterior. In the Victorian period the fireplace and the alcoves may have been seen as rather crude and rustic, but through some spirit of respect for Rousseau they were left alone. Consequently, even now, the interior of the cave would be recognisable to Rousseau.

He would also recognise much of the surrounding countryside. The Weaver Hills were a favourite place (see supplementary material for images). Another favourite place was The Twenty Oak Wood. According to a footnote in The Vales of Wever: A loco-descriptive poem by John Gisborne: ‘In a field, at a small distance from Northwood, stands a cluster of oaks, commonly called the Twenty Oaks. They form a circle, disclosing between their trunks a beautiful prospect. To this silent retreat Rousseau used to retire, during his residence at Wootton, and some of the stones may still be seen which formed his seat.’Footnote ⁵⁹ Gisborne was living at Wootton Hall when he composed this poem. The seat is gone but the copse, near Northwood Farm and about half a mile south-east of Wootton Hall, still exists (Ordnance Survey National Grid Reference SK 1196 4434). There are currently about fourteen fair-sized to large oak trees, and oak is still the predominant species (see supplementary material for images). Rousseau’s love of oak trees is made clear in Book VI of Confessions: ‘Often I have said, when I have felt less well than usual, “When you see me at the point of death, carry me into the shade of an oak, and I promise you I shall recover”.’Footnote ⁶⁰

As a postscript, it should also be mentioned that there is a second-hand memory of the hermitage preserved in George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859). The story is set in 1799 and is partly inspired by the reminiscences of her father, Robert Evans (1773–1849), who worked at Wootton Hall as a resident agent in the 1790s. It is generally agreed that Donnithorne Hall in the novel is loosely based on Wootton Hall. In the novel, there is a hermitage in the grounds of Donnithorne Hall that plays a most significant role in the story. However, in the novel the hermitage is surrounded by woodland, which suggests that George Eliot may have either confused, or deliberately conflated Rousseau’s hermitage with a Victorian ‘bungalow Tea-house reached by a rock walk through a wood’,Footnote ⁶¹ which conforms to the book’s description of the hermitage. If this was a confusion on her part it is understandable, for when she wrote Adam Bede Rousseau’s hermitage would no longer have existed in its original form as an autonomous building. Either way, as the scene of a seduction, it makes more sense for the novel’s hermitage to be surrounded by trees rather than in the garden of the house.