The creation is an architectural folly based on a nineteenth-century Wardian Case – a plant and seed transportation box derived from earlier eighteenth-century experimental transportation boxes.
The structure will house a series of brightly coloured artificial ‘exotic’ plants which will be defiantly emerging from the roof.
It will be of significant scale and visible from other points in the garden such as the Chapel and Column to Liberty. The intention is to offer a dramatic presence within the landscape that will provoke discussion and enable some of the hidden histories of Gibside to emerge.
Similar to a rare and exotic plant, Mary Eleanor was viewed as a particularly prized ‘object’ due to her large inheritance, which would transfer to her husband upon marriage.
The horrific story of her mental and physical abuse at the hands of her manipulative and selfish second husband, who tricked her into marrying him to acquire her fortune and social status, highlights some of the difficulties encountered by women at the time.
The fact that women received little protection legally only compounded the abuses that many suffered.
