V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 99 



rule they only exist where the house has been 

 allowed to decay, and the court is so abundantly 

 filled with apple-trees and gooseberry bushes, 

 that it appears as nothing more than an ordinary 

 kitchen garden in front of a tumbledown house. 

 In larger houses the fore court was a very 

 important feature. It extended at least the full 

 width of the facade, but sometimes it was twice 

 or three times that length. There was a grand 

 fore court at Althorp, flanked by the stables on 

 the left, and the gardens on the right ; the whole 

 of the space in front of the house was gravelled ; 

 to the right and left of this were two grass plots 

 divided and surrounded by broad gravel paths. 

 The entrance was usually in the centre, but in 

 some cases, as in the Earl of Burlington's house 

 at Chiswick (Kip, 30),' the entrance was placed 

 to one corner. At New Park, in Surrey 

 (Kip, 23)i the entrance was in the centre, but 

 the walls on either side, instead of continuing 

 the line of the gates, formed the side walls by 

 reversed curves. At Bretby, in Derbyshire, the 

 fore court was oblong, running the whole length 

 of base court, house, and garden, with iron gates 

 and grilles at each end, and a fountain in a semi- 

 circular bay opposite the centre of the house ; a 

 raised walk with a row of polled trees ran 

 parallel to the fore court on the side to the 

 house, and was separated from the house court 

 by an iron grille. The fore court was often 

 repeated, so that there were two or three fore 



H 



