6 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
The Stone 
House. 
The 
Hermitage. 
This is believed to have been constructed by the sons of George III., 
playing at building, with the help of a bricklayer. When the Rock 
Garden was being made in 1882, the materials of this 
building, which had become overgrown and little more 
than a mere heap of stones, were used to eke out the 
rather scanty supply. About this ruin the legend had gathered that 
it marked the entrance to a subterranean passage under the Thames 
to Sion House, a story which has no more foundation than many 
other similar ones in the country. The original Merlin’s Cave stood 
on a spot about fifty yards from the southern corner of the present 
lake, in a north-easterly direction. 
Another curious and noted structure built by Queen Caroline 
about the same time as Merlin’s Cave was the Hermitage. It stood 
some 300 yards north of Merlin’s Cave, and was 
separated from it by an open or thinly-wooded ex- 
panse known as the “ Forest Oval.” The building had 
three arched entrances, and was built of stones “ rudely laid to- 
gether.” The interior is described as of octagonal shape, with niches 
in which were placed the busts of famous men, among them Newton 
and Locke. Verisimilitude was given and (as we are told by a 
contemporary author) the venerable look of the whole improved, by 
a “ solemn grove behind and a little turret on the top with a bell, 
to which you may ascend by a winding walk.” George III. was not 
troubled with any excess of sentiment in regard to his grandmother’s 
work, and the Hermitage went the way of Merlin’s Cave. It stood 
about a hundred yards south-west of the present Azalea Garden. 
The other buildings erected by Queen Caroline were, as we gather 
from contemporary accounts, a temple, situated on a mound, with 
a circular dome crowned with a ball and supported by Tuscan columns ; 
a dairy house, apparently used as such ; the Queen’s Pavilion, a 
neat, elegant structure wherein was seen a beautiful chimney-piece, 
copied from a design by the architect, Andrea Palladio ; a “ summer- 
house on the terrace,” giving a view of “ that noble seat called Sion 
House.” The mound on which the temple stood still remains to 
mark the site, which is the extreme south-west comer of the Queen’s 
Cottage Grounds. It is now covered with large trees. The “ terrace,” 
or a portion of it, still remains. It is now, as it was then, a favourite 
promenade, extending from the Brentford Ferry to the Isleworth 
Ferry Gate. 
