1 82 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vm 



variously arranged. The garden-walls of Ham 

 House have a rather elaborate brick coping. 

 The buttresses came to be treated as piers with 

 moulded cornices and finial balls or urns, and 

 the wall space between was treated variously, 

 either kept low with an iron grille between the 

 piers, as was commonly done at the end of 

 walks or where any particular view was desired ; 

 or the wall and its coping was shaped as a curve 

 rising to the piers on either side. At Pendell 

 House the wall along the raised walk at the end 

 of the garden is built with great flat curves 

 between the piers some 2S ^^^^ apart. 

 Instead of buttresses, the wall was sometimes 

 built on a serpentine line, as at Stubbers, 

 in Essex. By means of the resistance of the 

 curves on plan, a thin wall would stand without 

 buttresses ; but the effect is not pleasant, and 

 a good deal of ground is wasted. A thin wall 

 in the garden looks popr ; the old garden-walls 

 were seldom less than i8 inches thick, and 

 some were thick enough to contain bee-hives and 

 peacock -hutches. At Packwood House, in 

 Warwickshire, on the south side of the terrace- 

 wall there are thirty small niches for bee-hives, 

 two and two between the piers ; and at Riddles- 

 den, in Yorkshire, there still exist the cells for 

 peacocks, built into the thickness of the garden- 

 wall. There are four of these, two above and 

 two below, with shelves for nesting. The lower 

 pair have hooks for doors, which are gone, the 



