ENGLISH GARDENS OF i6th, ijth AND i8th CENTURIES 225 



the abolition of the formal garden altogether. A bitter attack was made by 

 those who declared that the formal garden was opposed to nature, which they 

 proposed not to leave untouched but to " improve." " Nor is there anything 

 more ridiculous and forbidding than a garden which is regular," says Batty 

 Langley, and this was the opinion generally held by garden designers for a 

 century, as far as the more 

 ambitious schemes were con- 

 cerned, but in the quiet 

 country places the older 

 tradition was never entirely 

 obliterated. 



The eighteenth - cen - 

 tury country gentleman took 

 a keen delight in erecting 

 here and there a good, sub- 

 stantial garden house and 

 realized that besides being an 

 ornamental feature it should 

 be able to withstand the 

 vagaries of our climate. 

 Generally speaking they seem 

 to have been of two types, 

 those that closed a vista in 

 a garden at the end of a 

 long walk and those that 

 were placed in the corner of 

 a bowling green or court. 

 These were raised a few steps 

 above the terrace on which 

 they stood, which in its turn 

 sloped down to the bowling 



green below. There is a good example of this type at Clifton Maubank in 

 Somerset, and another is illustrated in an old view of Oxenhoath in Kent 

 with elaborate pilasters and gabled roof. With the dilettantism of the latter 

 half of the eighteenth century the substantial summer house gave place to 

 the Greek temple and Chinese pagoda. 



Q 



GAZEBO AT OXENHOATH. 



