Something About the Temple of the Winds

Anyway, the wind blows.

The “greatest clue of all is in the Temple of the Winds” – so says the white card Anthony Monday finds in the abandoned northern Canadian shack he visited in The Mansion in the Mist (1992). But what does it mean? Emerson Eells explains how “at one time rich people owned vast estates, and they built little ornamental buildings on the grounds just to pretty things up. Sometimes the buildings had names like the Temple of the Winds.”

Later when the Anthony, Myra Eells, and Emerson arrive in the Autarch shadow dimension, they come across picturesque setting: 

...a small lake covered with lily pads and a gray scum. On the other side of the lake stood a small eight-sided building with a columned porch and a copper dome.

Emerson says he once went on a tour of English historic houses and believes the Autarchs have tried to make their world look like an old-fashioned English estate. Upon inspecting the temple, they find a surprise:

The temple was full of gardening equipment! On a warped table stood stacks of clay flowerpots, and a trowel lay nearby. Rakes and hoes leaned against the wall, and there was even an old-fashioned mechanical lawn mower. Hedge clippers and sickles hung from brackets, and overhead was a dark oil lamp on a chain.

We now turn our attention to James "Athenian" Stuart (1713-88), a Scottish archaeologist, architect, and artist. In his youth Stuart first traveled to Naples and later Athens, documenting ancient ruins with English architect Nicholas Revett. Stuart and Revett returned to London in 1755 and published their work, The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece, in 1762. Among the buildings included in this work was the Tower of the Winds in Athens - which I discussed not too long ago (and follies).

Robert O’Byrne writes at The Irish Aesthete blog how the Tower of the Winds inspired two Temples of the Winds:

...the first a Temple of the Winds completed in 1765 at Shugborough, Staffordshire and originally surrounded by an ornamental lake. Almost twenty years later Stuart revisited the concept to create another Temple of the Winds, this time at Mount Stewart, County Down for Robert Stewart, future first Marquess of Londonderry. [...]The site chosen for Stuart’s Temple of the Winds is at the top of a rise in the parkland, and offers sweeping views across the lough and towards the Mourne Mountains.

The Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart was designed for use as a banqueting hall - not gardening storage. But what of this Mount Stewart? Did it inspire the grounds in the Autarchs dimension?