IN Eastern Suffolk, within a few miles of the sea, is this, the country home of the Hon. William Lowther.
The house, replacing an older one that occupied the same site, is of brick and stone, built in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. A moat, inclosing an unusually large area, and formerly entirely encompassing the house and garden, is now partly filled up; but one long arm remains, running the greater part of the length of the house and garden; a shorter length bounding the inclosed garden on the opposite side. The longer length of moat approaches the house closely on its eastern face, and then forms the boundary of a large and beautifully-kept square lawn, with fine old cedars and other trees. Following this southward is a double walled garden, with the main paths, especially those of the nearer division, bordered with flowers. Beyond these again is the portion of the garden that forms the subject of the picture—a small parterre of box-edged beds with a row of old clipped yews beyond. This leads westward to a grove of trees, with a statue also girt with trees standing in an oval in the midmost space.
The garden has beautiful incidents in abundance, but is somewhat bewildering. Traces of the older gardening constantly appear; but their original cohesion has been lost. The moat, always an important feature, ends suddenly at four points. Garden-houses and gazebos, that usually come at salient points with determinate effect, seem to have strayed into their places. Sections of the park seem to have broken loose and lost themselves in the garden. The garden is not the less charming in detail, but is impossible to gather together or hold in a clear mental grasp, from the absence of general plan.
Besides the old clipped yews in the picture, others, apparently of the same age, inclose an oval bowling-green. In form they are as if they had been at first cut as a thick hedge with a roof-like sloping top. From this, at fairly regular intervals, spring great rounded masses, that, with the varying vigour of the individual trees and the continual clipping without reference to a fixed design, have asserted themselves after their own fashion. Though symmetry has been lost, the place has gained in pictorial value. Four ways lead in; the larger bosses guarding the entrances.
So it is throughout this charming but puzzling garden. Ever a glimpse of some delightful old-world incident, and then the baffled effort to fit together the disjointed members of what must once have been a definite design.
The portion of the garden that is simplest and clearest is a broad walk opposite the house, on the further side of the moat, and raised some ten feet above it; backed by an old yew hedge some twenty feet high, of irregular outline. Just opposite the middle of the house the line of the hedge is interrupted to give a view into the park, with a vista between groups of fine elms; but the hedge stretches away southward the whole length of the long arm of the moat and the walled gardens. At regular intervals along the old hedge are ranged, on column-shaped pedestals, busts that came from an Italian villa. About half way along steps lead down to the moat, where there is a ferry-punt propelled by an endless rope, such as is commonly used in the fenlands. At the end of the long walk is a curious seat with a high carved back, that looks as if it had once formed part of an old ship or state barge, in the bygone days of two hundred years ago, when a fine style of bold and free wood-carving was lavishly used about their raised poops and stern-galleries.
Towards the end of the second division of the walled garden is an old orangery or large garden house, that probably was in connexion with the scheme of the yew hedges. It has the usual piercing with large lights but no top-light. The original purpose of these buildings was the housing of orange and other tender trees in tubs, and the fact of its presence might possibly throw some light on the mystery of the garden’s former planning.
THE YEW HEDGE, CAMPSEY ASHE
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. H. W. SEARCH
Good hardy flowers are everywhere in abundance. Specially beautiful in the later summer is a grand pink Hollyhock of strong free habit, with the flowers of that best of all shapes—with wide, frilled outer petals and centres not too tightly packed.
It would be interesting work for some one with a knowledge of the garden design of the past three centuries in England to try to reconstruct the original plan of some one time. Though on the ground the various remaining portions of the older work cannot be pieced together, yet, if these were put on paper to proper scale, it might be possible to come to some general conclusions as to the way in which the garden was originally, and again perhaps subsequently, laid out. Some of the remaining portions of the older work of quite different dates may now seem to be of the same age, but the expert would probably be able to discriminate. The result of such a study would be worth having even if actual reconstruction were not contemplated.
