Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.
—Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, 1774
Like most traditional nursery rhymes, the original wording and intended meaning of “Mistress Mary” have been moderated over the years by jolly alliteration and enchanting imagery. Yet since its publication in 1774 this seemingly innocent little ditty has served as commentary on a range of unsavory topics, including infidelity, wars of royal succession, and genocide. More positively, it has also been interpreted as a celebration of female empowerment and fertility. All, or none of which, may be true.
Whatever its meaning, the rhyme sprang to mind when delving into the history of A la Ronde—a truly remarkable sixteen-sided property in Devonshire, England, built in 1798 by Misses Jane and Mary Parminter. Indeed, except for a conflict of dates, “Mistress Mary” might have been written for the Parminter cousins.
While neither monarchs nor murderers, Jane and Mary were certainly contrary. In an age not given to female emancipation, they were spinsters with a spine who refused to play by society’s rules. Their unaccompanied, decade-long grand tour of Europe was likely considered shocking by their Georgian peers. Their determination to develop A la Ronde and its surrounding estate (replete with an onsite commune-cum-sanctuary for similarly unmarried and childless women) even more so. As women of independent means and character, the Parminter cousins were atypical. As were their plans for A la Ronde.
A quirk of both feminist and domestic architectural history, A la Ronde was inspired by their European travels, and reminiscent of Renaissance life in an Italian villa. As the sun circled the building the cousins would chase the light, moving through the various work, living, and entertaining spaces that radiated off the central octagonal hall, ending their day with dinner in the darkest room. The house was decorated with mementoes and sketches from their travels, creating an environment that resonated with the surrounding landscape and their personal eccentricities. Yet of all the peculiarities embedded in house—material or ideological—central to Jane and Mary’s remarkable vision was the room they created at the heart of A la Ronde, the Shell Gallery.
Painstakingly crafted by the cousins over countless years, the gallery comprises their own sketches and watercolors, collected pinecones, moss, minerals, animal bones, a poor lone crab, and over 25,000 shells. An early printed guide to the house, which has been open to the public since the mid-1960s, offers a clue to the Shell Gallery’s origins. Writing of the Georgian era’s obsession with mysticism and romanticism, it describes an age “of grottos, pagodas, ruined temples, curiosities—all of which we now tend to lump together as ‘follies’. . . designed to evoke emotions . . . the macabre or terrifying were carefully contrasted against ‘sublime beauty.’” However, few, if any, of these fashionable follies were designed as interior interventions.
Contrarians to the last, Jane and Mary’s indoor garden of “silver bells and cockle shells” is now considered a sublime example of outsider art. It is an inspired legacy of the creative endeavors of two wonderfully outsider women.
Libby Sellers is an independent design historian, curator, and writer.
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