The Peacocks at St Mary’s, Bedfont (in this 1802 watercolour), whose tercentenary was marked in 2004 by a production in church of Thomas Hood’s 1822 poem about their origin legend, feature in a chapter on “Topiary on a Gargantuan Scale” in four London churchyards (other examples were at Harlington, Hillingdon, and Enfield), in Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s English Garden Eccentrics: Three hundred years of extraordinary groves, burrowings, mountains and menageries (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale, £30 (£27); 978-1-913107-26-0). Other eccentricities covered involved birds, animals, caves, tunnels, and even mini-mountains