BRICKWALL 



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-muUions 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, 



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