.6 4 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW. 



and protect! 113; hill of oak trees and the road, which 

 runs parallel with and nearer to the river, is occupied 

 by a series of terraces, all different in their width, 

 their height, their features and their garden purposes. 

 The nanvw space between the first and second walls 

 below the wood admits of a flower-bordered gravel 

 walk only, but below this is a broad expanse, accom- 

 modating not merely pati\s and borders, but a stretch 

 of lawn forming the groundwork for tree and bush, 

 flower-bed and lily-pool. Below, again, are three 

 more plats, the lowest of which is level with and runs 

 up to road and avenue, and affords ample space for 

 the happy, homely mixture of fruit and flower, of 

 vegetable ground and orchard, of grassy plat and 

 bushy pleasaunce. All this bears surface evidence 

 of to-day's gardening spirit and of the present 

 choice of plants, but in substance it is original. 

 It belongs, as much as the house does, to a 

 fashion centuries old. No " Capability Brown " ever 

 came to supplant its pleasant terraces with formless 

 clumps and wearisome belts ; no landscape gardener 

 destroyed its honestly formal walks and replaced them 

 with artificially-natural serpentines. This is not a 

 garden after the old style, it is the old style itself ; 

 it is the thing and not an imitation. House and 

 garden are harmoniously synchronous, a single 

 untouched composition. Nor do we breathe a 

 different atmosphere when we cross the threshold, for 

 within there is the same savour of undisturbed 

 antiquity, of unbroken ownership ; indeed, the 

 ancient owners are there to greet us. Here is 



Edward Vaughan himself, and there the lad who was 

 to have been his heir. Near by is his sister Anne, 

 who took his place when he died at twenty years of 

 age, and carried her father's house and lands to the 

 young man who was later on to be known as " the 

 great Sir Watkin," and whom we also find here as 

 Hudson's brush depicted him. Nor do these 

 canvases look down on an unfamiliar scene. There 

 is still much of the surroundings that they lived with ; 

 furniture and tapestry, plaster-work and panel. Nay, 

 are there not old four-post bedsteads valanced, 

 curtained and covered with the linen richly and 

 heavily embroidered by the ladies of the house in the 

 arduous and solid needlework of stems and leaves, 

 of fruit and flower, of bird and butterfly, which 

 eighteenth century dames found leisure and patience 

 to produce ? 



One interesting reminder of the lives and aims 

 of Watkin Williams and Anne Vaughan has most 

 appropriately arrived here in more recent times a 

 jewel presented to the late Lady Williams- Wynn in 

 1869. It was the presidential badge of a club which 

 was then dissolved, having long outlived its principles 

 and its purpose the Cycle Club, founded by Cheshire 

 and North Wales Jacobites in 1710, when Britain 

 was wearying of the Whig Government of Marl- 

 borough and Godolphin, and was growing Tory, if 

 not even occasionally glancing sideways across Channel 

 to St. Germains, where the exiled Stuart lay the 

 brother, and why not the successor, of Anne ? Why 

 not, indeed, thought Sir Watkin throughout his 



//v'O.l/ 77/A /:A//v'.JAC'A TERRACE BONDERS Ol-' WHITE HKATHER. 



