The structure appeared in one of the oldest regular parks in Britain in connection with the reconstruction of this ensemble. The owner of Boughton, Lord Bakklu, wished to create a modern object of landscape architecture on a vacant plot of his territory, which, however, would not harm the historical appearance of the park, which remained unchanged for almost 300 years.
The Orpheus emerged through the canal from Kholm, a pyramid-shaped turf with a cut-off top, erected in the early 18th century (the oldest parts of the park date back to the 17th century). Wilkie saw in "The Hill" a metaphor of Olympus, which is quite fair, given the influence of antiquity on the culture of that era in general and its gardening art in particular. Based on this, in his work he "portrayed" the opposite of Olympus - the kingdom of the dead Hades. Its structure is a recess in the ground, mirroring the measurements of the "Hill": the area of the pit at ground level is 50 m2, its depth is 7 m. A ramp goes down along its walls, at the end leading to a small pond at the bottom.
According to the architect, the structure personifies Orpheus's journey into the underworld beyond Eurydice - only, unlike the myth, at the end of the path a visitor to Boughton Park awaits not a tragedy, but a firmament reflected in a pond. Wilkie borrowed the idea of such a use of the sky from the "oculus" of James Turrell at the Dallas Nasher Sculpture Center - only instead of an opening in the ceilings, we find heaven at the bottom of a deep hole (here the author laid the following idea: you cannot lose hope even in the face of death).
The pit is a key element of Wilkie's project, but not the only one. Next to him, he laid out on the turf of stone slabs a diagram illustrating the idea of the Fibonacci number sequence and the Golden Ratio, the most noticeable part of which is a cube frame made of metal beams.
The axis, started by "The Hill" and continued by the two modern structures that together make up the "Orpheus" site, Wilkie connected to the 17th century pond by a series of rectangular "lawns" planted with wildflowers.
