EAST SUSSEX is rich in beautiful houses of Tudor times; many precious relics remaining of those days and of the Jacobean reigns, of important manor-house, fine farm building and labourer’s cottage. These were the times when English oak, some of the best of which grew in the Sussex forests, was the main building material. The walls were framed of oak, and the same wood provided beams, joists and rafters, boards for the floors, panelling, doors, window-mullions and furniture. In those days the wood was not cut up with the steam-saw, but was split with the axe and wedge. The carpentry of the roofs was magnificent; there was no sparing of stuff or of labour. Much of it that has not been exposed to the weather, such as these roof-framings, is as sound to-day as when it was put together, with its honest tenons and mortises and fastenings of stout oak pins. In most cases the old oak has become extraordinarily hard and of a dark colour right through.
Brickwall, the beautiful home of the Frewens, near Northiam, is a delightful example, both as to house and garden, of these old places of the truest English type. A stately gateway, and a short road across a spacious green forecourt bounded by large trees, leads straight to the entrance in the wide north-eastern timbered front. The other side of the house, in closely intimate relation to the garden, has a homely charm of a most satisfying kind.
The wide bricked path next the house, so typical of Sussex, speaks of the strong, cool soil. The ground rises just beyond, and again further away in the distance. The garden is divided into two nearly equal portions by the double flower-border, backed by pyramidal clipped yews, that forms the subject of the picture, and is enfiladed by the middle windows of the house. In the left hand division is a long rectangular pool with rather steep-angled sides of grass, looking a little dangerous. There is a reason here for the water being a good way below the level of the lawn, for this is much above that of the ground floor of the house; still it is a matter of doubt whether it would not have been better to have had a flagged or bricked path some four feet wide, not much above the water-level, with steps rising on two sides to the lawn, and dry walling, allowing of some delightful planting, from the path to the lawn level.
On the two outer sides of the garden, parallel with the middle walk, are raised terraces, reached by steps at the ends of the bricked path. These have walls on their outer sides, and towards the garden, yew hedges kept low so that it is easy to see over. These low hedges run into a much higher and older one that connects them towards the upper end of the garden.
The clipped yews which give the garden its character are for the most part of one pattern, a tall three-sided pyramid, only varied by some tall cones. One cannot help observing how desirable it is in gardens of this kind that the form of the clipped yews should for the most part keep to one shape, or at any rate one general pattern, just as the architecture, whatever its character or ornament, within some kind of limit remains faithful to the dominant idea.
The picture shows a double flower-border in August dress; good groups of the best hardy plants combining happily with some of the pyramids of yew. To the right is the fine summer Daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum), with the lilac Erigeron and the spiky blue-purple balls of the Globe Thistle, the tall double Rudbeckia Golden Glow, Lavender, Poppies and Phlox. To the left, Phloxes and the tall Evening Primrose, the great garden Tansy (Achillea Eupatorium), seed-heads of the Delphiniums that bloomed a month ago, White Mallow, and the grand red-ringed Sweet-William called Holborn Glory. Everything speaks of good cultivation on a rich loamy soil, for those fine yews want plenty of nutriment themselves, and would also be apt to rob their less robust neighbours. But then the good gardener knows how to provide for this.
There is always an opportunity for beautiful treatment, when, as in this case, the garden ground ascends from the house. The garden is laid out to view, almost as a picture hangs on a wall, in the very best position for the convenience of the spectator; and there is nothing that gives a greater sense of dignity, with something of a poetical mystery, than separate flights of steps ascending one after another in plane after plane—as they do in that magnificent example, Canterbury Cathedral. It matters not whether the steps are under a roof or not—the impression received is the same. And there is much beauty in the steps themselves being long and wide and shallow. Looking uphill we see the steps; looking downhill they are lost. It is not the foot only that rests upon the step, it is the eye also, and that is why any handsome steps with finely-moulded edges are so pleasant to see. The overhanging edge may have arisen from utility, in that, where a step must be narrow it gives more space for the foot; but in the wide step it affords still more satisfaction, giving a good shadow under the moulded edge, and accentuating the long level lines that are so welcome to the eye.
BRICKWALL, NORTHIAM
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
MR. R. A. OSWALD
