BALCASKIE 



FIFE 



|HE glory of the garden at Balcaskie, 

 like that at the neighbouring Balcarres, 

 consists in its huge terraces, which 

 command the same enchanting prospect 

 of wood and water, field and firth, and 

 the once bitterly hostile principality of Laudonia or 

 Lothian. But the terrace work at Balcaskie has 

 the double advantage over that at Balcarres of 

 having been planned by a great master of archi- 

 tecture in the Jacobean style of his own day, and 

 of having been softened by the lapse of more than 

 two centuries. What Sir Robert Sibbald described 

 in 1710 as "a very pretty new house, with all 

 modish conveniences of terraces, park, and plainting 

 [sic]" has now become a very pretty old house, and 

 the terraces, once so painfully spick and span, have 

 mellowed into tender greys and browns, with stains of 

 lichen and velvet cushions of moss, mouldering here 

 and there into hospitable chinks and crannies, where 

 thoughtful hands have established thriving colonies 

 of saxifrage, Erinus and other wall-loving herbs. 



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