VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE i8i 



made clumsy and awkward. A wrought-iron 

 gate can be made as light as you please, and 

 instead of being an inert mass, it has a tough 

 vitality of its own. The craft as usual lingered 

 longest in the country. In the villages of 

 Somerset and Devonshire there are still to be 

 seen pretty little wrought-iron gates to the 

 cottage gardens, not yet supplanted by the 

 odious castino^s of the hardware dealer. 



The garden-walls should be of brick or stone, 

 brick for preference, because it is better adapted 

 for nailing fruit-trees, and retains the heat better 

 than stone, and the creepers cling to it more 

 readily. Rea gives 9 feet as the proper height 

 for the outer wall of the garden, and 5 or 6 feet 

 for cross-walls. Markham says that "james or 

 offshoots" should be built 12 or 14 feet apart 

 as buttresses to reduce the amount of brickwork 

 and shelter the fruit. Worlidge, who repeats 

 this advice, adds that pieces of wood should be 

 built in, or iron hooks to project about 3 or 4 

 inches from the wall, to carry wooden rails to 

 which the fruit-trees can be fastened. There is 

 a good instance of plain walling at Hampton 

 Court beside the Long Walk. The offsets are 

 18 inches wide, composed of blocks of stone 

 alternating with five courses of brickwork ; a 

 moulded stone coping covers the top, the section 

 of which is changed when it returns round the 

 offsets. The copings can be of brick on edge 

 with tile Greasings, or of stone, or of brick 



