GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



Copyright. 



THE FORMAL GARDENS ON THE NORTH FRONT. 



" Country Lije.'' 



Hill and hollow, wood and meadow, the tangled brake and the 

 heathery moor, the orchard richly fruited and the green corn 

 yellowing for the sickle all the summer long, villages nestling 

 in the hollows with thatched roofs, gay in the estival days, 

 warm within when the winter winds blow, the lanes where the 

 roses hang overhead from the hedges, the tall elms and 

 beeches full in their leafage, or bare but beautiful when 

 October has blown this is the Somersetshire land. And that 

 part of the county which is near the Severn has charms quite 

 its own, as you may see from the pictures of Clevedon Court. 

 Lying along the great estuary, Somersetshire looks sometimes 

 indeed from sandy flats but far more often from swelling hills 

 across to distant Wales ; and there is much of hill at Clevedon 

 Court, which has developed the garden, shaped as we see. 



Copyrigkt. 



THE SOUTH TERRACE. 



The house is a wonderful architectural pile in this green 

 and glorious setting. Here are parts of a mansion that stood' 

 in Edwardian days, when the warder kept watch at the 

 heavily buttressed and portcullised door, and, grafted upon 

 them, the most beautiful features of Tudor and Jacobean times. 

 There exist still the winding stairways by which the watch- 

 man ascended to the outlook towers, the chapel in which 

 olden worshippers knelt, the rooms where gentlemen in doublet 

 and hose and ladies in ruff and farthingale dwelt. A place 

 about which romance seems to linger and that fancy may 

 people with many fair imaginings. Clevedon Court is a 

 notable house even in a county that contains such splendid 

 and interesting places as Montacute, Dunster, Brympton, and 

 Venn House, to name no more of the many mansions of 



Somerset. Fire dealt unkindly 

 with the west front in 1882, when 

 the Elizabethan library, with its 

 fireplace carved with the arms 

 and badges of the Wakes, was 

 burned ; but tasteful hands have 

 made all good again, and Nature 

 has lent her aid, so that now 

 the fine old place is vested with 

 luxuriant creepers, myrtles climb- 

 ing almost to the gables, and 

 thickly blossoming magnolias and 

 fragrant roses adorning the walls. 

 It is garlanded, indeed, just as 

 such places should be beautified, 

 but not concealed. 



The Wakes, who were the 

 ancient possessors of Clevedon, 

 parted with it to the Digbys, 

 Earls of Bristol, who again sold 

 it to the family of the present 

 possessor in 1709. Sir Charles 

 Elton, the sixth Baronet, so well 

 described the place in his poem, 

 entitled "The Two Brothers," 

 published in 1830, that some 



" Country Life." 



