Benjamin Hyett

Benjamin Hyett (1708–1762) of Painswick House, Gloucestershire, was an eighteenth-century garden creator.

Painswick House

Painswick Rococo Garden, Thomas Robins the Elder, 1748.

Life

He was born 17 December 1708, the eldest son of Charles Hyett (d. 1738), a leading citizen of Gloucester.^[1] He was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford^[2] and the Inner Temple, becoming a barrister in 1731.^[3] In 1733 his father bought an estate in Painswick and built a house as a country residence.^[4] In 1741 he unsuccessfully stood as MP for Gloucester in the Tory interest.^[3] Shortly after^[5] he married Frances (d. 1768), the only child of Sir Thomas Snell, a London merchant who had settled in Upton St Leonards.^[6][7] He died without any surviving children in 1762 and his estate passed to his brother Nicholas.^[3]

Gardens

By 1740 Hyett had created a Rococo garden at Marybone House, Gloucester, incorporating an eclectic range of features and buildings including a pagoda in approximately 6 acres.^[8][9]

A few years later he created a slightly larger garden at his Painswick house, known then as Buenos Aires.^[8] It incorporated a statue of Pan by Jan van Nost, which presided over the garden.^[10] The main features of the garden were preserved into the 20th century and have now been preserved and opened to the public as the Painswick Rococo Garden.^[11]

Visual records of both gardens when newly created were preserved in paintings by Thomas Robins the Elder.^[12][13]