The Garden History Blog

Boatswain by Clifton Tomson (1808)
Nottingham City Museum and Galleries

Hows that for a cheery topic?   It’s the 200th anniversary next week of the death of a dog. Admittedly not just any old dog but one called Boatswain, a much-loved Newfoundland dog  that belonged to Lord Byron. So besotted was the poet that he commissioned a large monument in the hound’s memory for the gardens of Newstead Abbey.   This act obviously struck a chord in the British psyche because  the reason I know about the anniversary is an article about the Northern Newfoundland Club holding a celebration  at Newstead Abbey laying a posy of flowers as “a fitting tribute to one of the most famous Newfies in our history.”

The Boatswain Monument, Newstead Abbey
image courtesy of William Bishop

I suppose I’m not surprised. Already this year I’ve mentioned the tomb of Mrs Soane’s dog Fanny, in the courtyard of the Soane Museum, and more recently  the dog’s cemetery at Wrest Park,  but I’ve been amazed how many other monuments and tombstones for dogs  exist in our historic parks and gardens.  We’ve certainly come a long way from the days when dead dogs were thrown out with the rubbish onto the wasteland outside the town’s walls – the Houndsditch.  Some might think we’ve come too far in our animal commemoration of course,  but as Lucinda Lambton has shown with her wonderful books on animal-related architecture, remembering and honouring our pets is part of a  great British tradition and it’s still alive and well although its heyday seems to have been in the late 18th c and into the 19th. Continue reading →