THE gardens at Bramham in Yorkshire, laid out and built near the end of the seventeenth century, are probably the best preserved in England or the grounds that were designed at that time under French influence. Wrest in Bedfordshire, and Melbourne in Derbyshire of which some pictures will follow, are also gardens of purely French character.
It is extremely interesting to compare these gardens with those of a more distinctly Italian feeling. Many features they have in common; architectural structure and ornament, close-clipped evergreen hedges inclosing groves of free-growing trees; parterres, pools and fountains. Yet the treatment was distinctly different, and, though not easy to define in words, is at once recognised by the eye.
For one thing the French school, shown in its extremest form by the gardens of Versailles, dealt with much larger and more level spaces. The gardens of Italian villas, whether of the Roman Empire or of the Renaissance, were for the most part in hilly places; pleasant for summer coolness. This naturally led to much building of balustraded terraces and flights of steps, and of parterres whose width was limited to that of the level that could conveniently be obtained. Whereas in France, and in England especially, where the country house is the home for all the year, the greater number of large places have land about them that is more or less level and that can be taken in to any extent.
At Bramham the changes of level are not considerable, but enough to furnish the designer with motives for the details of his plan. The house, of about the same date as the garden, was internally destroyed by fire in the last century. The well-built stone walls still stand, but the building has never been restored. The stables and kennels are still in use, but the owner, Captain Lane-Fox, lives in another house on the outskirts of the park. The design of the gardens has often been attributed to Le Nôtre, and is undoubtedly the work of his school, but there is nothing to prove that the great French master was ever in England.
The way to the house is through a large, well-timbered park. Handsome gate-piers with stone-wrought armorial ornament lead into a forecourt stretching wide to right and left. A double curved stairway ascends to the main door. To the left of the house is an entrance to the garden through a colonnade. Next to the garden front of the house, which faces south-west, is a broad gravelled terrace. The ground rises away from the house by a gently sloping lawn, but in the midmost space is a feature that is frequent in the French gardening of the time, though unusual in England: a long theatre-shaped extent of grass. There is a stone sundial standing on two wide steps near the house, and a gradually heightened retaining wall following the rise of the ground. Not more than two feet high where it begins below, and there accentuated on either side by a noble stone plinth and massive urn, the retaining wall, itself a handsome object of bold masonry, follows a straight line for some distance, and then swings round in a segmental curve to meet the equal wall on the further side; thus inclosing a space of level sward. Midway in the curve, where the wall is some twelve feet high, there appear to have been niches in the masonry, possibly for fountains.
The wide gravel walk next the house-front falls a little as it passes to the left, divides in two and continues by an upward slope on either side of a wall-fountain in a small inclosure formed by the retaining walls of the rising paths. The path then passes all round the large rectangular pool, one end of which forms the subject of the picture. This shows well the graceful ease and, one may say, the courteous suavity, that is the foremost character of this beautiful kind of French designing. The high level of the water in the pool, so necessary for good effect, is a detail that is often overlooked in English gardens. Nothing looks worse than a height of bare wall in a pool or fountain basin, and nothing is more commonly seen in our gardens. The low stone kerb bordering the pool is broken at intervals with only slightly rising pedestals for flower vases. Tubs of Agapanthus stand on the projections by the side of the piers that flank the small fountain basin, whose overflow falls into the pool.
THE POOL, BRAMHAM
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
SIR JAMES WHITEHEAD, BART.
All this portion of the garden has a background of yew hedges inclosing large trees. From this pool the ground rises to another; also of rectangular form, but with an arm to the right, in the line of the cross axis, forming a T-shape. Between the two, on a path always rising by occasional flights of steps, is a summer-house. The path swings round it in a circle. To right and left are flower-beds and roses; outside these, also on a curved line, are ranged a series of gracefully sculptured amorini, bearing aloft vases of flowers.
The path soon reaches the upper pool, again passing all round it. At the point furthest to the right, at the end of the projecting arm, and looking along the cross axis to where, beyond the pool, the ground again rises, is a handsome wall fountain, with steps to right and left, inclosed by panelled walls. All this garden of pool and fountain, easy way of step and gravel, and ornament of flower and sculpture, is bounded by the massive walls of yew, and all beyond is sheltering quietude of ancient trees. From several points around the highest pool, as well as from the rising lawns to right and left of the theatre, straight grass-edged paths, bordered by clipped hornbeam, lead through the heavily wooded ground. From distant points the main walks converge; and here, in a circular green-walled court, stands a tall pedestal bearing a handsome stone vase. The prospects down the alleys are variously ended; some by pillared temples set in green niches, some by the open park-landscape; some by further depths of woodland. It is all easy and gracious, but full of dignity—courtly—palatial; bringing to mind the stately bearing and refined courtesy of manner of our ancestors of two centuries ago. It is good to know that some of these gardens and disciplined woodlands still exist in our own land and in France; these quiet bosquets de verdure of those far-away days. Though the scale on which they were planned is only suitable for the largest houses and for wealthy owners who can command lavish employment of labour, yet we cannot but admire the genius of those garden artists of France who designed so boldly and yet so gracefully, and who have left us such admirable records of their abounding ability.
