232 THE FRUIT GROWER'S GUIDE. 



on the steep southern slope of a hill at Deepdene, Dorking ; Defoe found " the vineyards 

 at Deepdene neglected " in 1726. Sir Henry Lyttleton made wine from grapes at Over- 

 Ashby, a warm nook in Staffordshire. Dr. Shaw's vintage at Kensington " equalled 

 the lighter wines of France," and the Hon. Charles Hamilton made "excellent cham- 

 pagne " from grapes produced at Pain's Hill, near Cobham, on the south side of a 

 gentle hill, where the soil was warm, gravelly, and dry. Collinson, writing to Linnaeus 

 under date of October 3rd, 1748, ays : " We have had a fine summer. . . . My vineyard 

 grapes are very ripe. ... A considerable quantity of wine will be made this year in 

 England." There was a noble vineyard at Arundel Castle, Sussex, and in 1763 there 

 were sixty pipes of English Burgundy in the Duke of Norfolk's cellars there, " better 

 than imported and very superior to what is generally drunk in France." A cycle of wet 

 cold summers commenced in 1790, and " vineyard grapes ceased to yield good vinous juice 

 for a period of twenty -five years." The art of wine-making then appears to have been 

 lost, and prejudice completed the ruin of vineyards in England ; yet we have shown that 

 for many centuries this country was satisfied with the wine of its own growth, and there 

 are many dry sunny slopes in the warmest parts of England which might be profitably 

 covered with vines, while it is well known that vines flourish and produce grapes 

 against the south walls of buildings in various parts of this country, as far north as York, 

 the wine made from them excelling the trashy mixtures sold from the Continent. This 

 is a branch of vine cultivation deserving of more attention. 



Artificial heat was first employed for the production of grapes in England in 1718. 

 Lawrence's Fruit Calendar says : " Fires were constantly kept up from Lady Day to 

 Michaelmas behind the slope-walks on which the vines were trained," at the Duke of 

 Eutland's, at Belvoir Castle. Gilpin states that the Black Hamburgh vine at Valen- 

 tines, Ilford, Essex, was planted in 1758. This vine still exists in suckers from the 

 parent stem, which is dead. The Hampton Court vine is said to have been a cutting 

 from the vine at Valentines, and was planted in 1769. It has a stem 3J feet in circum- 

 ference, occupies a house 66 feet long by 30 feet wide, and produces 1,700 bunches of 

 useful grapes yearly. The old vine at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Park, ripens 2,000 

 bunches of grapes. It was found in a cucumber pit about 1800, and now occupies a 

 house 138 feet long and 20 feet wide ; its stem is nearly 4 feet in circumference. The 

 fruit produced by these two vines is small but of excellent quality, and is reserved for 

 Her Majesty's table. A great vine exists at Sillwood, Sunninghill, and is said to be a 

 descendant of the Black Hamburgh vine at Cumberland Lodge. It occupies a house 



