Schneckenberg (park area)

The Schneckenberg in Leipzig

Snail in the vineyard in Radebeul: close-up view with transport caterpillar

Snail in the vineyard in Radebeul: close-up view of the last two turns from the rear

A snail mountain has been a design element in garden and landscape architecture since the Tudor period. It became particularly popular in the late 18th century as part of an English country park . It is an artificially raised hill, which sometimes has a wooden core.

features

From the foot of the Schneckenberg to the “summit” there is a path that spirals (read: snail-shaped) around the mountain. Because of the pleasure strolling along this path, the mountain was also called Lustberg .

Anyone who uses this path has a constantly changing view of different lines of sight and visual axes , which is the main attraction of an English landscape garden that the garden architects wanted to achieve. At the top of the hill there is usually a small viewing platform that allows a spacious view of the garden or park. A preserved example can be viewed in the Wilhelmsbad park .

The reverse model was the snail pit , where a spiral path led down into the depths. This is said to have existed, for example, in the baroque complex of Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe - but it has not been preserved.

history

Lookout hills are known from garden literature of the early modern period. So William Lawson recommends mounds on all four corners of the property. Lawson describes mountains of snails made of stone and wood. John Leland describes a mountain of snails in Castle Wressel in Yorkshire as " ... written about with degrees, like the turning in cokil shells to come to the top without payne" . On the occasion of Elizabeth I's visit , Lord Hereford had a wooden snail mountain with a snail built in Elveston in Hereford in 1591 . The snail even had antennae. The queen and her entourage could watch the merrymaking from a hazel and ivy gazebo on a wooden scaffolding.

literature

• Bettina Clausmeyer-Ewers: State Park Wilhelmsbad Hanau, Parkpflegewerk , Regensburg 2002, ISBN 3-7954-1486-5 , p. 167f.
• Dorothee Sattler: Schütz von Holzhausen and von Hohenfeld aristocratic archives opened up . In: Archivnachrichten aus Hessen 8/1 (2008), pp. 27ff. Fig .: p. 27: Construction drawing of a screw mountain.

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Orchard, and Garden, Philadelphia 1858 reprint of the London 1626 edition
2. ↑ itinary, quoted by Thomasina Beck (1974), Gardens in Elizabethan Embroidery. Garden History 3, 1, 54
3. ↑ Thomasina Beck (1974), Gardens in Elizabethan Embroidery. Garden History 3, 1, 54