Numerous thatched, rustic cottages of this type appear in Adam's landscape drawings, but this is the only instance of one of Adam's rustic designs having been executed.

The fabric of the tea pavilion - built opposite the Rickmansworth entrance to the park - is now 17 Moor Lane, and in domestic use. Although it remains in situ, considerable alterations have been made to the fabric. The thatch has been replaced with roof tiles and the northern wing does not survive, although it is thought to have been executed in the 1760s. The octagonal interior of the tea room was sold in 1933, much expanded and installed as a drawing room in an unknown house in America, possibly in Virginia or Maryland. The treework columns do not survive; the entrance has been moved to the southern link; and there is an extension to the east.

In 1990 William Dodd of English Heritage discovered that the source for the interior of the tea pavilion at Moor Park was the title page of a Dutch work, Horti Medici (1697).

It is clear from early twentieth-century Country Life photographs that Adam volume 22/146 was the executed design for the chimneypiece in the tea pavilion at Moor Park.

Group

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk