GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



except at Oxburgh in Norfolk, and Tattersall Castle 

 in Lincolnshire ; but the brick tor the latter is 

 known to have been brought from Holland. There 

 is some reason for thinking that Faulkbourne belongs 

 in part, and very largely in style, to a somewhat 

 earlier period of brick architecture than most of the 

 Essex houses enumerated, the majority of which 



^.?* 



THE HUNTER. 



are purely "domestic" in type, not castellated or 

 crenellated (even ornamentally to any great extent). 

 In an account of Faulkbourne Hall, printed in 

 the Transactions of the Essex Archasological Society, 

 from the pen of Mr. F. Chancellor, the writer, 

 while very properly discrediting the curiously 

 ignorant accounts of the building, in which the 

 tower gateway was set down as Early Norman, 

 says, frankly, that he could find nothing older 

 than about I $00. But it is curious that at 



Faulkbourne the details of the older work are all 

 unlike what may be described as "common form " in 

 most of the other Essex houses. There are towers 

 and bartizans ; and the great tower in the north-east 

 angle has much in common with the work at 

 Tattersall. Every part of the original building was 

 of brick, all the window jambs and heads being made 



from moulded brick, not 

 an atom of stone being 

 used, while at Tattersall 

 the chimney-pieces and 

 handrail in the turrets 

 are of stone, though all 

 the vaultings of the 

 passages are of the other 

 material. There is a 

 remarkable staircase at 

 Faulkbourne within a 

 turret growing out of 

 the tower, with a handrail 

 of solid moulded brick, 

 brick steps and a brick 

 newel pillar. There are 

 eighty-three steps in the 

 turret stair, which leads 

 on to the leads, while a 

 door lower down gives 

 access to the guard-room 

 If we enquire into 

 the history of the demise 

 of this estate, and of the 

 probable dates at which 

 the older part of the 

 house was begun, we shall 

 find a good deal to con- 

 nect it with the dates of 

 Oxburgh and Tattersall ; 

 and though most of the 

 work the builders of 

 which are known, and on 

 which they have in some 

 cases left their signatures, 

 is a good deal later, it is 

 extremely likely that the 

 first who added to it may 

 have followed out the old 

 design, just as it is certain 

 that some of those who 

 added the modern parts 

 did, these being just good 

 imitations of the old. As 

 in almost all cases of the 

 demise of English land, 

 the story of its possession 

 is clear enough. It came 

 to the Rivers family in the 

 early part of the thirteenth 

 century as the portion of 

 Maud, the daughter of 



Richard de Lacy. It remained in the Rivers family 

 till 1.339, an d then became the property of Sir John 

 Montgomery, a famous soldier, who obtained, in 

 that same year, a licence to crenellate, and died 

 in 1449. This brings us to the Oxburgh and 

 Tattersall period ; and the house may well have 

 been begun by Sir John Montgomery, soon after 

 he obtained the licence, and continued by his son 

 Sir Thomas. There is this further in favour of 

 Sir Thomas Montgomery having been in a position 



