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valuable crop of Oak remains on the ground. It is not now intended, however, 

 to recommend with old Tusser — 



" Sow acornes ye owners that "timber do love." 

 Though this might be done, but it is suggested that young Spanish Chesnut trees 

 should be planted in the many places where the Larch must have failed during 

 the late dry summer. Let these Spanish Chesnuts be thus properly educated, 

 too, and then, if tree for tree, and space for space, they are not one-third more 

 valuable than the Larch in the year 1S90, your Commissioner will forfeit a silver 

 threepence if the fact is proved to him on the spot. ' ' If you are planting for 

 profit, on good ground," said an old Herefordshire timber-dealer in a confidential 

 way, " plant Sweet Chesnuts. They are much quicker in growth, and up to 30 

 years old are more valuable than Oak itself." 



Moor Court, in its retirement, is certainly very umbrageous. The music 

 of tree foliage is never absent. To each breath of wind that sweeps over the 

 valley the branches ever 



" A ceaseless utterance give 

 To soothe the fantasies of waking hearts 

 Or lull the dreams of night." 



There are, too, attaching to the place certain signs of a lost history that 

 give it a peculiar interest. "What means that small canal, apropos to nothing 

 that runs straight along the paddock and under the carriage road, being an arti- 

 ficial continuation of the Curl brook, which runs from Elsdon and Lionshall 

 through the Moor Court meadows '? On the lawn, too, are certain double grooves 

 in the tuif cut in an angular form, and carefully renewed from time immemorial. 

 A mulberry tree occupies the centre, to which they all tend. This tree is of no 

 great size, but rugged and knarled enough to be of considerable age. What were 

 the lawn games these turf grooves indicate, and who played them ? It may 

 be that they were not intended for any games, but simply indicated paths to 

 be trimly shorn, leaving triangular plots within their lines which were suffered 

 to grow more wildly. It is said that such was the case at an old mansion of 

 Flemish character in Surrey, where, and where only, the same converging turf 

 tracks as at Bloor Court are to be seen. The house itself, altered and enlarged 

 agiin and again, tells nothing more than may be surmised from its secluded posi- 

 tion in the valley. As might be expected, however, some rays of light are thrown 

 upon its history by the legal records and documents connected with it. 



Here is a sketch of its history so far as can be made out from this source 

 and from the consideration of certain frames and pictures which have descended 

 with the Estate, and which like it have lost their authentic history. 



In the imperfect will of Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, dated June 14, 

 1576, and preserved in the Prerogative Court of the diocese of Dublin, among 

 the lands devised are the Manors of Webley, Lionhales, Moor Court, and Byford, 

 com. Hereford : and when the litigation arising out of the will of the Earl of 

 Essex, the Parliamentarian general, was finally settled, his sister, the Marchioness 



