Summer Garden > Poultry (animal) yard

The «Poultry (animal) yard» bosquet

The bosquet was arranged in .1710s. Later on it housed a poultry yard with regular cages, open-air cages, and a pavilion that served like a dovecote. Numerous «birds and animals; from overseas lived there In the dovecote one could find rare species of pigeons. The bosquet was adorned' with a fountain. Poultry and animal yards of the type were integral to regular parks and gardens in l”th-lSrh centuries. All the constructions of rhe bosquet were disassembled in rhe late 1780s.

The bosquet was reconstructed in 2010-2011 in accordance with the archeological research findings and the axonomerrk plan of Si. Petersburg completed by Saint-Hilaire in 1767-1773.

The first evidence of the poultry yard and a pavilion for song-birds in the Summer Garden dates back to the late 1700s. By 1720 they had arranged open-air cages with the central so called «Sable» cage and a birds pavilion with a pigeon-loft The site of the bosquet was decorated with a small one-stream fountain basin of marble.

The author of «The Gentleman of the Monarch's Bed-Chamber's Dairy» Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholtz, when describing the Summer Garden of 1721, mentions one of the bosquets where «there is one large poultry yard, where some birds strut around, and some others are caged in small cages standing along the perimeter of the yard. There are eagles, black storks, cranes, and many other rare birds. There are also kept numerous four-legged animals such as, for instance, a very big hedgehog with a lot of black and white pines up to eleven inches long..» In addition, there is also a blue fox, several sables and other animals. In the tall dovecote to the East there are lots of beautiful rare pigeons».

According to the historical evidence of 1720s-l740s, at the Poultry Yard they kept lynxes, wolverines, foxes, badgers, beavers, monkeys, marmots, polar foxes, «colourfill and white» peacocks, pelicans, among other birds and animals.

The bosquet was marked on a number of historical plans of the Summer Garden, in particular detail — on the . axonometric plan of St Petersburg completed by Saint Hilaire in 1767-1773. All the constructions of the bosquet were disassembled in the late 1780s.

The architectural research of 2009-2010 revealed the precise proportions of the yard, which turned out to be 28 metres by 25,5 metres, and the proportions of the constructions that had been there before the yard; the research also found out the constructions locations as compared with each other's and the one of the Grand Alley.

At present, the Pavilion «The Dovecote» houses an exposition of the archeological finds uncovered on the territory of the Summer Garden at different times; in the former sable cages there are photos of the animals that were kept in the Summer Garden in XVIII.