SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 207 



within that, encompassed with a pale, a dainty bowling-green, 

 set about with laurel, firs, and other curious trees," * and in 

 1681 the Duke of Norfolk's garden near Norwich is described 

 by the same writer, Thomas Baskerville: "Taking a boat for 

 pleasure to view this city by water, the boatman brought 

 us to a fair garden belonging to the Duke of Norfolk, having 

 handsome stairs leading to the water, by which we ascended 

 into the garden, and saw a good bowling-green, and many 

 fine walks." In all his journals, Baskerville notices the 

 public bowling-greens at all the small towns, and attached 

 to many of the inns he stayed at. Thus, of Pontefract 

 Castle, he writes, " of which now only remains the plat- 

 form and stump of the bottom of the wall 2 or 3 yards above 

 ground, but yet it is handsome, because employed to fine 

 gardens and a bowling-green, where you may have for your 

 money good wine," also at Bedford " the ruins of an old 

 castle, containing within it a fine bowling-green." Among 

 others he notes Saffron Walden, " a very good bowling-green 

 without the town," and of Watton, a small town in Norfolk, 

 he says there is little remarkable, save a fine new bowling- 

 green at the " George Inn." These pieces of good turf must have 

 added much to the beauty of the gardens, and in the small towns 

 served as a public garden and recreation ground. 



Every garden also contained one or more sundials. They 

 formed, as a rule, a centre of the design, and were in themselves 

 a fitting ornament to a garden. The sundial has frequently 

 survived destruction, when all other traces of an old garden 

 have been obliterated. At Exton, in Rutlandshire, the old 

 sundial stands in front of the house which was burnt down, 

 almost the only vestige of the garden which formerly lay in 

 front of its windows. In some dials, as in the case at Euston 

 in Suffolk, the owner's coat of arms was used to form the style, 

 or in others the motto of the family was inscribed round the 

 dial, which is often a great help in fixing the date of the 

 construction.f Occasionally an entire garden was laid out like 



* Thomas Baskerville's Journal MSS. of the Duke of Portland, Hist. MSS. 

 Report 13. 



t For descriptions and mottoes on sundials see The Book of Sundials, 

 collected by Mrs. Alfred Gatty, 1872. 



