SPELTHORNE HUNDRED 



way.' Tijou also designed the screen of St. Paul's 

 Cathedral. 663 



Queen Anne retained Wise in her service as 

 royal gardener, and her chief action with regard to 

 the gardens was to cause all the box edgings which 

 he and London had planted to be removed in 

 1 704. She seems also to have done away with 

 some of William's elaborations, as Switzer says that 

 she caused the gardens ' to be laid into that plain 

 but noble manner they now appear in.' w The 

 small canals seem also to have been made wider 

 during her reign. 68 Ralph Thoresby, a topo- 

 grapher of Leeds, who visited the gardens in 

 1712, was chiefly impressed by the 'noble statues 

 of brass and marble,' and the ' curious iron balus- 

 trades, painted and gilt in parts,' which separated 

 the gardens from the parks. The ' Lion Gates ' 

 and 'a figure hedge-work, of very large evergreen 

 plants in the Wilderness, to face the iron gates,' 

 were also erected in 1714, the last year of Queen 

 Anne's reign, 69 and show that the plan for a great 

 north entrance to the 

 palace, as designed by 

 Wren, had been given up. 

 The stone piers of the 

 gates bear Anne's cipher 

 and crown, but the iron 

 gates, which are by no 

 means worthy of the 

 piers,' contain the initials 

 of George I. 



Queen Caroline, the 

 wife of George II, was 

 the next sovereign to leave 

 some mark of her taste 

 and the taste of her period 

 on the gardens, as well as 

 on the palace, and her 

 designer was Kent, who 

 was no more accomplished 

 as a gardener than as 

 painter or architect, but 

 his influence was not so 

 disastrous out of doors as 

 it was within. His wide 



lawns are really an improvement on the former 

 ' parterres and fountains,' although Pope stigma- 

 tized them as ' a field.' " 



George III entrusted the gardens to Lancelot 

 Brown, the famous landscape gardener, better 

 known as ' Capability ' Brown, who had been 

 appointed royal gardener in 1750 by George II. 

 Fortunately he did not attempt to adapt them to 

 the very different style which had then become 

 the fashion, although the king wished him to do 

 so. He replaced some of the terrace steps in the 

 Privy Gardens by slopes of gravel and grass, ' be- 

 cause we ought not to go up and down stairs in 



HAMPTON 



the open air,' but he does not appear to have done 

 anything more drastic. The ' Great Vine,' which 

 is one of the best-known sights of Hampton Court, 

 was planted by Brown in 1 769. It is a ' Black 

 Hamburgh,' and was a slip from a vine at Valen- 

 tines, in the parish of Ilford, near Wanstead in 

 Essex, which had been planted in 1758, and also 

 attained a great size." Twenty years after the 

 Hampton Court vine was planted it was said to 

 have produced 2,200 bunches, which weighed on 

 an average a pound each. The stem was already 

 13 in. in girth, and the main branch 1 1 4 ft. long. 73 

 At its best period (about 1 840) the vine yielded 

 on an average from 2,300 to 2,500 bunches every 

 year, but it fell off very much for a time ; in 

 1874 the crop was only 1,750 bunches. Under 

 better care it improved again, 74 but has not been 

 allowed of late years to bear more than about 

 1,200 bunches, as many as 2,000 bunches being 

 sacrificed sometimes to improve the quality of the 

 rest. The stem now measures 3 ft. 9 in. in girth, 



HAMPTON COURT PALACE : HUNTINGDON SHAW'S SCREENS 



and the branches cover a space of 2,300 square 

 feet. The vine house is 90 ft. long. 76 There are, 

 of course, larger vines in Britain, all of the Black 

 Hamburgh variety, 76 the largest being one at 

 Kinnel House, Breadalbane, Scotland, which covers 

 4,375 ft. of wall space. 



' Capability ' Brown lived for many years at 

 Hampton Court. He was much esteemed by 

 George III, who made a personal friend of him, 

 and was also received familiarly by the Duke of 

 Northumberland at Syon House, and Lord Chat- 

 ham wrote of him that he was ' an honest man, 

 of sentiments much above his birth.' 77 ' Wilder- 



7 Defoe, op. cit, (ed. 1742), i, 240. 



.,_,,. Pope, Work, ' Epistle to the Earl 



'7 Ichnograpbia Rutttia, i, 83. See of Burlington/ He does not actually 

 p. 387 for her alterations in the refer to Hampton Court, but to the 



taste of the period. 



" a Nttii and Queriet, xii, 404. 



78 Lysons, Midd. Parishei, 72. The 



Ma Rice, Arch. Journ. lii, 158, 172 

 ('895). 



parks. 



48 Cal. Treat. Bki. cxrvi, no. xi, 12 



Oct. 1710. 



Ibid, clrxix, no. 35 



house was said to be 72 ft. long and 

 385 



20 ft. wide the year before ; B.M. Add. 

 MS. no. 6341, fol. 2/-. 



7< Under the present gardener, Mr. 

 Jack. T> Law, op. cit. iii, 297 et seq. 



'* Barren, fines and Vint Culture (ed. 

 1883), 188. 



77 Chatham Correspondence, IT, 179, 

 430 (cit. Law). 



49 



