DRIVES, AVENUES, AND SERVICE ROADS. 



Informal 

 drives. 



best, except where it is rather long in relation to its breadth, when an even rise 

 towards the house will lessen the foreshortening and give an effect of better proportion. 



Formal drives of this kind are usually enclosed between clipped hedges with a space 

 for grass between the hedge and the carriage-way, as shown on the plan just referred to, 

 and on the correct proportioning of the breadth of the roadway and grass verges and 

 the height and treatment of the hedge to the length of the whole, much of the ultimate 

 effect will depend. Such drives cannot, however, be made more 

 than a certain length without loosing the perspective and dwarfing 

 the mansion. No very hard-and-fast rule can be laid down 



FIG. 87. 



as to the greatest length possible, as so much depends on the height 

 and breadth of the facade of the house up to which it leads, but in 

 most cases, fifteen hundred feet would be a maximum. In public 

 boulevards and park avenues this length may be much exceeded by 

 placing a piece of statuary or other monumental feature in the middle of the roadway 

 at its central point, i.e., equidistant from either end, thus focusing the perspective ; but 

 in a private drive such an arrangement would usually be quite out of keeping. 

 Where the house is a long way from the highway, too far for a successful treatment 

 on these lines, the best way would be to make a shorter formal drive at the end 

 nearest the house, designed as a part of the more formal pleasure grounds, and treat 

 the rest of it in a free manner either with a drive laid down in sweeping curves, or 

 better still, where circumstances allow, by a bifurcated drive, as in the sketch (No 87). 

 The point where the formal arrangement ends will need very strongly marking and the 

 best way will be to place the lodges here with handsome gates between, preferably of 

 wrought iron, and to treat the more distant gates at the roadway quite simply with 

 simple wooden palings to the wings, the whole painted white unless in oak when rampart 

 roses could grow over it in luxuriant masses. 



The lodges to symmetrically planned drives will themselves usually be best if 

 symmetrically arranged, as shown in the two illustrations of this type of drive which are 

 given (111. Nos. 86 and 87). Those appearing on the heading to this Chapter would be suitable 

 in some instances, while, in others, where greater dignity is required, a gatehouse with an 

 arched portal and probably groined vaulting over the gateway would be more in keeping. 



In the making of informal drives, the whole effect depends on a careful consideration 

 of the contours, and an arrangement of the line of route which recognizes them and 

 emphasizes all that is pleasing in the lay of the ground. It is to these purely local 

 conditions and the way they are deftly woven into the scheme, that we owe much of 

 the pleasure derived from the approaches to many a country seat. 



In approaching the individual problem, the foremost consideration is to adopt a 

 route which, if possible, will allow the drive to leave the public road at a lower level 

 than the house, so that it may rise towards it and so increase its apparent elevation, 

 but this must be done without sacrificing directness and convenience or belying the 

 contours, or the result will be strained and affected in the extreme. 



74 



