BY SHELIA BINNS
The lake at Virginia Water was created in the mid-1700s and was then the largest man-made lake in Britain. Its purpose was to transform an area of Windsor Great Park into the sort of ‘picturesque’ landscape that was fashionable at the time. The designer’s vision of arcadia included various follies (buildings constructed for purely ornamental purposes but intended to look authentic), including a long-disappeared encampment of Turkish tents and an oriental style fishing temple, as well as the cascade and the ruined Roman temple that remain in place.
The difference between the temple and the other follies is that among the artificial creations, the components of the ruined Roman temple are genuine. The columns and other pieces of masonry originated some 2,000 miles away, in the Roman city of Leptis Magna in Libya, North Africa. In the second century AD, Leptis Magna was the third largest city in Roman Africa, after Carthage and Alexandria. Its ruins were preserved largely because they were covered for centuries by desert sand but by the nineteenth century, they had been rediscovered.
Mindful that the Elgin Marbles had been well received at the British Museum, the Consul General in Tripoli (then in the Ottoman empire) convinced the local Governor in 1816 that some of the remains should be taken to Britain as a gift to the Prince Regent (later King George IV). British imperial superiority prevailed and 22 granite columns, 15 marble columns, 10 capitals, 25 pedestals, 7 loose slabs, 10 pieces of cornice, 5 inscribed slabs as well as fragments of figure sculpture were shipped to England. There was considerable local opposition to the remains being removed – not, as one might imagine, because people were indignant that their heritage was being stolen but because the stonework was an important source of building materials and columns could be sliced to make millstones.
They tried to prevent the shipment and some columns had to be abandoned on the beach, where they remain to this day.
Unfortunately, the Roman remains were less well received than the Elgin Marbles and they remained in the forecourt of the British Museum for eight years, while it was decided what to do with them. In 1826, they were given to Jeffry Wyatville, King George IV’s architect, to create a folly on the Windsor royal estate, near the lake at Virginia Water.
The ‘Temple of Augustus’ was created from the Roman columns and fragments, but with no attempt to replicate anything in Leptis Magna. Wyatville supplemented the structure with material from a recently demolished English country house, even adding a chipped cornice to the nearby road bridge to resemble an arch in a city wall. The whole ensemble is a work of imagination, intended to evoke an impression of a Roman ruin. This fitted well with nineteenth century ideas of ‘the picturesque’ but also sought to link imperial Britain (then with the largest empire in history) with Roman greatness. It remains an impressive sight but also a rather forlorn reminder of the values of a bygone age.