54 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



rubbish and hope to preserve him." His descrip- 

 tions also of the fighting sounds very desperate, 

 with its guns, grenades, fire-balls, flaming furze 

 faggots, and scaling ladders. 



Nothing now remains of this house but one Ivy- 

 covered gable, and the Strangeways family, after 

 the Civil Wars, added to and took up their abode 

 in the Manor House (which is now used as a 

 rectory and stands opposite the church) until 1780, 

 when the first Lady Ilchester built the present 

 castle, close to the sea and a mile from the village. 

 Lady Ilchester's eldest daughter, Lady Susan Fox- 

 Strangeways whose romantic marriage with 

 Mr. O'Brien, the actor, was the talk of the town 

 and recorded by Walpole and all the gossips of 

 the day mentions in her diary (still preserved at 

 Melbury) having assisted at her mother's removal 

 into the new house in 1780, and planned the Rock 

 Gardens in front of it, sloping down to the sea, 

 with stone Arbours at each of the four corners to 

 give shelter from whichever quarter the wind 

 might blow. 



The Rock Garden she made, the Fig trees she 

 planted, and the Arbours she built are there un- 

 changed, and have an eighteenth-century air about 

 them, forming a veritable " souvenir heureux " of a 

 very charming woman. Seventy or eighty varieties 

 of Mesembryanthemum (commonly known as Ice 

 Plant) run wild over the stones ; and Orange Mari- 



