XX ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



attempts were made to make cider. This old garden was origin- 

 ally an oblong square, laid out in the Dutch style with grass 

 walks, and divided into squares by holly and yew hedges. Betwixt 

 the above square and the court of the old mansion is another 

 oblongj^ about half the size of the former, which had been 

 occupied as a bowling-green about a century ago (I7l6). It still 

 retains the name. The first repair in the garden was in 1775, 

 when the old wall running from part of the old mansion towards 

 the old Isle' (aisle = old church) 'was taken down and rebuilt 

 with hewn stone. In 1789 the noble proprietor removed the 

 decayed hedges, took up the grass walks, widened the borders, 

 introduced gravel walks, and laid it out in the modern style. 

 The Belsis^ garden was laid out and the walls built in 1770. . . . 

 The ground at the back of this garden (in which stands an old 

 pigeon-house) was taken in in 1800. . . . The yew-tree ^ in 

 18l6 measured 12 feet 7 inches in circumference at three feet 

 from the ground. The late Sir Andrew Louden [Lauder] Dick^ 

 of Fountain Hall (in the immediate neighbourhood) '^used to 

 measure the tree for a number of years, and from several observa- 

 tions found, in 1810, that it increased yearly in circumference 

 about three-quarters of an inch.' ^ 



Immediately to the west of the garden, and completely 

 hidden within a grove of giant trees, the growth of two 



1 With this should be read letter p. 52, beginning ' The large prickly 

 Cucumber,' upon which it throws much light. Cockburn calls it 'the lower 

 garden,' and refers to the bowling-green. What he calls * the Closs,' too, is the 

 court referred to above, and immediately behind the old house. The bowling- 

 green served as an open-air drawing-room in the seventeenth century mansions. 

 See also ' the little garden,' p. 45. 



2 'Belsis,' so often mentioned in the letters, could not therefore have formed 

 any part of Cockburn's gardening. His dovecot was not here, but in what he 

 calls the ' Pidgeon field,' now Dovecot park, immediately south of the garden. 



^ In 1792 {Statistical Account) it girthed ii feet, was 25 feet in height, and 

 covered, it was guessed, a twentieth of an acre. Mr. Hamilton finds it now 

 (1903) girths 15 feet 9 inches, is 36 feet high, and, along the line where the 

 outside branch touches the grass, measures 238 feet. 



^ On the succession of his son, the well-known Sir Thomas, the name was 

 changed to Dick-Lauder. A right-of-way to Fountainhill still exists, through 

 John Cockburn's * Big Wood.' 



^ This rate of increase had been maintained 1792- 18 16, but had it gone on 

 till now, the girth should have been about eighteen feet. The tree is, however, 

 still vigorous. There is a similar tree in size and form beside the old Douglas 

 Peel at Whittinghame, also historical, for tradition says that under its gloomy 

 shade the murder of Darnley was plotted. 



