They Hired Garden Hermits as Living Lawn Ornaments

In 18th-century England, aristocrats began moving away from tidy, symmetrical gardens toward a more wild and unkempt style. One unusual feature was the rise of the ornamental hermit: men hired to live on estates as living garden decorations, often alone in huts or forts in the garden. At Painshill Park in Surrey, England, landowner Charles Hamilton reportedly offered a seven-year contract to a hermit who would live in a grotto, avoid speaking to visitors, and spend his days wandering and pondering. 

The practice was inspired by Romantic ideals that celebrated nature, solitude, and philosophy. The men were commonly expected to dress like ancient druids or medieval hermits, complete with long robes and bare feet. The years between 1727 and 1830 are believed to have been the peak era for ornamental hermits, after which the trend faded out.

They Built Fake Ruins on Their Estates

If hiring a hermit wasn’t enough, some wealthy landowners also built crumbling castles that had never actually existed. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, aristocrats across Europe embraced ornamental ruins, known as follies. They were especially popular in England, where architects deliberately designed towers, temples, abbeys, and castle walls to look weathered over time. In some other instances, such as in 1836 at Scotney Castle in Kent, already-existing buildings were purposefully and partially demolished for the aesthetic.

Ruin follies were not always just decorative oddities — they could also carry political messages. The 1820s Temple of Augustus at Virginia Water, for example, incorporated ancient Roman columns and stone fragments to evoke the grandeur of Rome and suggest that Britain had inherited its legacy.

They Wore Towering Shoes

Centuries before modern platform heels graced the pages of glossy fashion magazines, wealthy Venetian women in the Renaissance era wore towering platform shoes known as chopines. Some chopines reached nearly 20 inches high, elevating the wearer well above the people and streets below. Walking in them often required assistance from servants or companions, making the footwear extra impractical.

Although chopines helped keep expensive gowns out of the mud, the shoes’ excessive height also symbolized wealth and grandeur. The inability to move became part of the display, signaling that the woman wearing them belonged to a household with attendants and would not, indeed, be doing any work herself.

They Perfumed Themselves With Whale Secretion

Ambergris is a waxy substance formed inside a sperm whale’s intestinal tract, and it was highly sought after by Renaissance elites in Italy and throughout Europe. Eventually, after sitting in the digestive tract, the substance is expelled from the whale into the ocean; it washes up on shore, hardens, and develops a distinctive musky scent. 

Because genuine ambergris was so rare, it became known as “floating gold.” Wealthy Europeans used ambergris to scent perfumes, gloves, and clothing, while Arab societies valued ambergris as incense and a medicinal substance as early as the ninth century.

They Collected Exotic Animals

Long before modern zoos existed, wealthy rulers built private animal collections known as menageries to flaunt their power and access. Ancient Egyptian rulers around 3500 BCE were known to keep exotic animals such as hippos, elephants, and baboons, while European monarchs later collected lions, polar bears, and cheetahs. 

French King Louis XIV had one of Europe’s most famous menageries, built at Versailles in the 1660s. Animals such as gazelles, cassowaries (aggressive clawed birds), and even quaggas (an extinct relative of the zebra) became part of the grounds’ spectacle, proving not only wealth, but also the elite ability to wield connections and acquire goods of almost any kind from faraway lands just for the sake of it.