86 ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW 
Richmond prepared by Thomas Richardson, of York Street, Cavendish 
Square, in 1771. It was most probably erected by George III. 
f shortly after the death of his father in 1760. According 
The Queen s ^ same pj an there existed in 1771, in front of the 
Queen’s Cottage, the “ New Menagerie ” ; it was termed 
“ new,” no doubt, to distinguish it from the other and longer- 
established one near the original Botanic Garden of Kew. The 
Queen’s Cottage stands in what were originally the Royal Gardens 
of Richmond. It takes its name from Queen Charlotte, the consort 
of George III., and appears to have been used as a sort of summer 
tea-room by the Royal Family. 
Covered with a thick roof of thatch, and embowered among 
the surrounding trees and shrubs and its own luxuriant creepers, 
it represents exactly the type of rural cottage one sees pictured 
on the stage and in pastoral poems, but seldom in real life. The 
King and Queen were pleased at times to assume the parts of 
Strephon and Phyllis, and this Cottage made an appropriate scene 
for the play. But it would not be a comfortable place to live in — 
in which respect it resembles many other poetical conceptions 
when realised. Although it has four separate entrances, it consists 
of but one room above and a room and two small kitchens below. 
And the only way from the kitchens to the lower room, without going 
out-of-doors, is up one staircase and down another. Until a few 
years ago the walls of the room on the ground floor were hung 
with Hogarth prints, which were ultimately taken to Windsor. 
The ceiling and walls of the upper room are decorated with 
paintings of convolvulus and nasturtium climbing over bamboo- 
poles ; above each window are a crossed spear and battle-axe with 
a crown superposed, all in gilt. The rooms are now unfurnished 
except for the old chintz curtains that drape the windows. But 
perhaps the cold emptiness of the Cottage helps one the better 
to re-people it with the ghosts of the King and Queen and the 
Royal children who made it their playground. 
