design of the Temple; the Duke paid him £2,277 for his work from 1745 to 1748. The Fishing Lodge (Pavilion) The Pavilion is, greatly, built out of coloured wood blocks cut ("cut ashlar") to look like stone, a specialty of Georgian carpentry. Inside the Duke's commissioned Singerie paintings, creating its Monkey Room. Spencer commissioned the French artist Andieu de Clermont to paint them – playing cards, shooting, fishing, smoking – and it is known they were completed before 1738. Other works of the artist were for Langley Hall, Norfolk. The Duke's curious décor later led some to call the island "Marlborough’s Folly". Indeed, Lady Hertford described the Pavilion soon after it was finished with both a hint of admiration and amazement: The parlour, which is the only room in it except the kitchen, is painted upon the ceiling in grotesque, with monkeys fishing, shooting etc., and its sides are hung with paper. When a person sits in this room he cannot see the water though the island is not above a stone's cast over: nor is he prevented from this by shade: for, except for six or eight walnut trees and a few orange trees in tubs there is not a leaf upon the island; it arises entirely from the river running very much below its banks. The Fishing Temple (Temple) The Temple, 100 yards away, was originally open on the ground floor like a market stall. The Duke's fine and eclectic decorative taste is again evident in the first-floor room that was once a billiard room. Its grand ceiling – with Neptune, shells and mermaids in high relief plasterwork of Wedgwood style – is said to be the work of Roberts of Oxford circa 1725, though some accounts attribute it to carver William Perritt. The Duke of Marlborough died in 1758. The island was bought in 1787 by Henry Townley Ward, who left it to P.C. Bruce, also , of Taplow. Inn to hotel By 1840, the Pavilion had become a riverside inn reached by ferry from the west. By the mid-late 19th century the hotel was called the "Monkey Hall Hotel". Visitors have been staying in various parts of the two buildings ever since. It became particularly fashionable just after 1900, when Edward VII and Queen Alexandra often had afternoon tea on the lawns with their children. Edward Elgar composed his violin concerto in 1910 in the Hut,