About
Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare is a small but architecturally refined octagonal garden temple built around 1756 by the celebrated actor-manager David Garrick as a personal shrine to William Shakespeare, standing in a riverside garden beside the Thames at Hampton where Garrick had his country villa.
Garrick, the most famous actor of his generation and a tireless champion of Shakespeare's reputation, commissioned the temple to house a specially commissioned marble statue of the playwright by the sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac, using the building both as a private devotional space celebrating his theatrical hero and as a fashionable garden ornament of the kind wealthy eighteenth-century owners increasingly built to enhance their landscaped grounds.
The temple's design, attributed to the architect Robert Adam though this remains debated among architectural historians, reflects the neoclassical taste fashionable among cultivated patrons of the period, its domed octagonal form and portico creating a dignified, temple-like setting appropriate to Garrick's near-religious veneration of Shakespeare, whose works Garrick did more than almost anyone else to establish as the centre of the English theatrical and literary canon during the eighteenth century.
Following restoration and the return of a cast of the original Roubiliac statue (the marble original now residing in the British Museum), the temple today houses a small exhibition exploring Garrick's remarkable career, his instrumental role in the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon that helped cement Shakespeare's status as England's national poet, and the wider history of eighteenth-century garden temples and follies.
Set within a public riverside garden maintained by the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and open year-round, the temple itself opens to visitors only on a limited seasonal Sunday afternoon schedule, reflecting both its status as a small volunteer-supported heritage site and its role primarily as a garden ornament rather than a purpose-built museum.
The combination of Garrick's personal celebrity, Roubiliac's sculptural artistry, and the temple's evocative Thames-side setting makes this modest building a surprisingly rich site for exploring eighteenth-century theatre history, celebrity culture and the origins of Shakespeare's enduring cultural status.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Sunday morning garden visits
Busiest: Sunday afternoon
💡 Sunday afternoons April to September for the fullest experience combining Temple and riverside garden.
💡 Visitor Tips
- The Temple opens Sunday afternoons only, late March to late October - plan your visit around this narrow window.
- The riverside garden itself is open daily year-round and free to visit even when the Temple is closed.
- Look for Open House weekend dates in September, when the Temple often opens for extended hours.
- Combine your visit with nearby Hampton Court Palace for a fuller day of history along this stretch of the Thames.
- Admission is free, though donations are welcomed to support the volunteer Trust's upkeep of the building.
- This is a small, quick visit - allow 20-40 minutes rather than planning a lengthy stay.
- The garden makes a pleasant riverside picnic spot even outside Temple opening hours.
Highlights
The Roubiliac Shakespeare Statue (Cast)
The Temple's centrepiece is a cast of Louis-François Roubiliac's celebrated marble statue of William Shakespeare, originally commissioned by David Garrick specifically for this building and considered one of the finest eighteenth-century sculptural depictions of the playwright. The original marble now resides in the British Museum, but the cast displayed within the Temple preserves the composition Garrick intended visitors to encounter: Shakespeare depicted in a contemplative, almost divine pose befitting the near-religious veneration in which Garrick held him, making tangible the origins of Shakespeare's elevation to the status of England's national poet during the eighteenth century.
David Garrick and 18th-Century Celebrity
Exhibition displays explore David Garrick's extraordinary career as the most celebrated actor-manager of his generation, whose naturalistic acting style transformed English theatre and whose personal wealth and fame allowed him to build this private shrine to his theatrical hero. Garrick's life illustrates the emergence of a recognisably modern form of theatrical celebrity in eighteenth-century Britain, and the Temple itself stands as a rare surviving physical monument to that celebrity culture, built by a performer wealthy and famous enough to commission major sculptural and architectural works in his own name.
The 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee
Displays address Garrick's instrumental role in organising the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon, a lavish multi-day festival of pageantry, music and celebration that, despite being disrupted by heavy rain, is widely credited with helping cement Shakespeare's reputation as England's pre-eminent national poet and establishing Stratford-upon-Avon as a site of literary pilgrimage.
The Jubilee represents a pivotal moment in the construction of Shakespeare's enduring cultural status, and Garrick's Temple stands as a smaller, more permanent expression of the same devotional impulse behind that famous festival.
Neoclassical Garden Temple Architecture
The Temple's elegant domed octagonal form, with a design sometimes attributed to Robert Adam, exemplifies the eighteenth-century fashion for garden temples and architectural follies as ornamental features within landscaped grounds, blending classical architectural reference with a specific commemorative purpose rather than serving as purely decorative garden furniture.
The building's careful proportions and detailing reward close architectural examination alongside its role as a shrine to Shakespeare.
Collections
Garrick's Temple's principal object is the cast of Louis-François Roubiliac's marble statue of Shakespeare originally commissioned for the building by David Garrick, supported by a small exhibition of interpretive material addressing Garrick's career, his role in the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, and the wider eighteenth-century cultural movement that established Shakespeare's status as England's national poet.
As a small, volunteer-supported site, the Temple's holdings are modest in scale but historically significant, offering a focused rather than comprehensive exploration of Georgian theatre history and celebrity culture centred on this single, evocative building and its riverside garden setting.
David Garrick and the Shrine to Shakespeare
The Temple's history, the Roubiliac statue cast, and Garrick's role in establishing Shakespeare's cultural status.
📍 Interior
The 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee
Displays on Garrick's Stratford-upon-Avon festival and its role in cementing Shakespeare's national reputation.
📍 Interior
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.