90 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND. 



Queen. The Abbot ended his days in captivity, and his abbey 

 was soon after transformed into a College, but some of his elm 

 trees, or their successors, remain to this day. 



That which has most often survived destruction, to find a 

 place in a modern garden, on the site of some old cloister, is 

 the fish-pond, although, strictly speaking, it did not always form 

 part of a monastery garden. But it was found useful, and has 

 frequently been spared even by the landscape gardener, who would 

 rather alter than destroy it. At Cirencester, the present parish 

 church is a fine building, but the abbey church beside it, in 

 times past, was so infinitely larger, as quite to eclipse it. Yet now 

 the abbey church and adjoining buildings have so completely 

 disappeared, that almost the only trace of monastic times, in the 

 grounds of the house, built on the same spot, is a small piece 

 of water, the remains of the old fish-ponds. At Hurley-on- 

 Thames the monks' fish stews are still in existence, while at 

 Bisham Abbey, only a mile distant, the garden is surrounded on 

 three sides by a moat, also a relic of monkish days. At Hackness, 

 in Yorkshire, the monks' ponds have been transformed into the 

 present lake, but at Newstead Abbey, Nottingham, they remain 

 untouched. There is a stew, overshadowed by old yews, and a 

 piece of water undoubtedly a survival of the Black Friars, a brass 

 eagle lectern having been found in its depths, full of valuable deeds 

 relating to the monastery, hidden there by the friars at the time of 

 their dissolution. (See illustration, page 31). At Hatton Grange, in 

 Shropshire, on the site of a cell of Buildwas Abbey, the ponds also 

 remain as originally made by the monks. There are four pools, 

 still bearing their old names the Abbot's, Purgatory, Hell, and 

 the Bath Pools. They are in sequence, separated by broad dams 

 of earth, and are dug deep into the ground, with steep banks. 

 Thus although the original gardens have vanished, the monastery 

 lands were granted to the great families of the day, and since 

 they passed into secular hands, stately houses have been built, 

 and beautiful gardens, though of a totally different character, 

 have been made, and now adorn what once were the precincts of 

 the old abbeys and priories. Woburn, Welbeck, Burghley, Syon, 

 Battle, Beaulieu, Ramsey, Audley End, and many others, are 

 among the number. 



