Introduction 1 1 



of the garden at Heslington, near York, which was 

 laid out by Beaumont before 1687. The clipped 

 yews would therefore date from this rather than 

 from the Tudor period, 1560, when the house was 

 built. The gardens at Hampton Court were laid 

 out by the same person. The clipped yews at 

 Levens, Westmoreland, are old and remarkable 

 examples of this kind of work, the British Lion, 

 Queen Elizabeth and ladies, the Judge's Wig, etc., 

 being formed early in the eighteenth century. 1 At 

 Albury there is a hedge 10 feet high and a quarter 

 of a mile long, said to have been designed by 

 Evelyn for the Earl of Arundel. At Bedfont, 

 Middlesex, there are two large peacocks cut in 

 yew, with the date I7o8. 2 In Ireland there are 

 some good hedges, as at Headfort, near Kells. At 

 Milford, Co. Mayo, in the garden of Mr. Ormesby- 

 Millen, there is one of great age, some of the trees 

 being from 10 to 13 feet in girth, with the branches 

 much welded together.' 



The old yew-tree at Harlington, Middlesex, was 

 clipped in 1729 into a series of circles, and must 

 have been about 50 feet high. In 1780 or 1790 

 it ceased to be clipped, and was allowed to assume 

 its natural form. It is now one of the finest trees 



1 Gardeners Chronicle, 1880. 



2 ' The local tradition is that they represent satirically two sisters who lived 

 at Bedfont, and who were so very naughty that they both refused the hand 

 of some local magnate, who thus immortalised their being "as proud as 

 peacocks.'" Walford, Greater London, vol. i. p. 195. 



