iji Leicestershire. 427 



gardener, who has managed them for twenty-three years. The 

 park is finely wooded, and the young plantations, which are 

 very extensive, are doing remarkably well. One feature in 

 the management of those plantations is peculiar to Prestwould, 

 as far as my observations have yet extended in Leicestershire, 

 viz. judicious thinning and pruning. So much has been 

 written in your pages on this important subject, by men so 

 much abler in talent, and more experienced in practice, that 

 I shall only add that the plantations at Prestwould, when com- 

 pared with others in this part of the country, form the most 

 convincing proof, if proof were wanting, of the great benefits 

 attending a regular and systematic method of thinning and 

 pruning, from the original planting, to the full perfection of 

 the timber. 



Burton IVoidds ; C. G. Miindij, Esq. — The grounds varied 

 and extensive, but, with the exception of a flower-garden near 

 the house, the pleasure-grounds, when I saw them (April 26.), 

 in very bad order. Some good bearing trees in the kitchen- 

 garden, and the earliest crop of melons I had seen in the 

 county, with the exception of Belvoir. Adjoining the house 

 there is a very neat and well-constructed grotto, tastefully 

 decollated with rare and valuable shells. 



Whatton House ; — Daisoson, Esq. — About four miles to the 

 north-west of Loughborough. A small house, but from the 

 upper rooms there are some good views. The kitchen-garden 

 is good, and contains some good forcing-houses. The park 

 good; but the pleasure-grounds confined. In the centre of 

 them there is an ice-house, which Mrs. Dawson has orna- 

 mented with rockwork. It has a good effect, with the ex- 

 ception of the entrance, which is not properly concealed, and 

 consequently exposes the delusion it must have been intended 

 to create. 



Garendo?i Park ; T/io?nas March Phillips^ Esq., now M.P. 

 for the county. — Two miles north-west of Loughborough. 

 On the site of the present mansion was formerly a rich abbey 

 of Cistertian monks, founded in 1133 by Robert Bossu, the 

 good Earl of Leicester. There is an elegant gateway in the 

 park, in imitation of a triumphal arch, built by Ambrose 

 Phillips, Esq., an ancestor of the present possessor. There 

 is a very large garden in front of the house, principally dedi- 

 cated to fruit trees, hot-houses, and flowers. One of the 

 w^alls is now partially covered with magnolias and other choice 

 plants : it is intended, as the fruit trees die away, to fill their 

 places with those and the like choice shrubs. There is no 

 method in the range of glass houses. Their form, dimensions, 

 and exposure, are all different, and, as a whole, have a bad 



