Orangeries were winter shelters for citrus that became showpieces of wealth
When shiploads of orange, pomegranate and banana trees reached European ports in the 17th century, their owners needed somewhere warm to keep them through winter. Glass was so expensive that the resulting orangeries became status symbols. Louis XIV's at Versailles held 3,000 orange trees in a hall 155 metres long.
The idea grew out of Italian Renaissance gardens, once glassmakers could turn out large sheets of clear glass; Padua had an orangery as early as 1545. The first ones were plain and practical, often warmed only by open fires, and some could be taken down in summer. Further north the Dutch pioneered big glazed walls and stove heating, though their buildings usually kept solid roofs. Fully glazed roofs, letting light reach plants that were still growing, only arrived in the early 19th century. At Dyrham Park in Gloucestershire, a slate-roofed orangery from about 1702 was reglazed a century later after Humphrey Repton complained it was gloomy.
Fashion took off after the Eighty Years' War ended in 1648, led by France, Germany and the Netherlands. Wealthy merchants as well as nobles joined in, the traders of Nuremberg among them. The Louvre's orangery of 1617 set off a wave of imitations that peaked at Versailles, where Jules Hardouin-Mansart designed a building not surpassed in size until modern greenhouses appeared in the 1840s. Joseph Paxton, later designer of the Crystal Palace, soon outdid it with his vast conservatory at Chatsworth.
Builders learned to trap heat. Orangeries usually faced south, with tall windows on the sunny side and thick, almost windowless brick on the north. Straw served as insulation and wooden shutters held warmth in; Kensington Palace's orangery, built in 1704 and 1705, even had underfloor heating. Owners led guests through them on garden tours, and many had fountains, grottos and space for entertaining when it rained.
Britain kept a rich collection. The one at Kew, designed in 1761 by Sir William Chambers, was once England's largest glasshouse, and Margam Park in Wales holds the longest in the country at 100 metres. Today the distinction from a conservatory is technical: an orangery has less than 75 per cent of its roof glazed.
Source: Orangery
