The Treatment of Small Sites. 



57 



no examples are extant of the garden as it appeared in the Middle Ages. If it is 

 desired to reconstruct its features, recourse must be made to illuminated MSS. and 

 paintings of the period. From such sources we learn about such enchanting features 

 as the Ladies' gardens, which usually consisted of a little square enclosure surrounded 

 by high walls. Even when we turn to much later periods we cannot be certain that 

 the formal gardens adjoining old houses at all faithfully represent their original form. 

 Succeeding owners and gardeners have impressed their own ideas on the gardens under 

 their control. It is indeed doubtful whether any garden of even so recent a period 

 as the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century appears to-day as it did 

 when first made. A gazebo here 

 or a fountain there may occupy its 

 original place, but such elements 

 as parterres, paths and hedges are 

 likely to have been altered beyond 

 recognition. The student is often 

 impressed by the divergence between 

 the existing condition of historic 

 gardens and their presentment in 

 early prints. The outlines and 

 main divisions may be the same, 

 but with details such as the 

 widths of borders and paths and 

 the placing of statues so altered 

 as to destroy the original pro- 

 portions and quality of the com- 

 plete scheme. The value of Mr. 

 Triggs' work has been enhanced by 

 the creative ability which he brought 

 to his labours. It follows that the 

 gardens which he has himself de- 

 vised are based on a wide know- 

 ledge of what gave to the old 

 gardens of England their peculiar 

 attraction. In the many houses 

 which are the fruit of his part- 

 nership with Mr. Unsworth we do 

 not look in vain, therefore, for 

 scholarship and original fancy. Of 

 these, Little Boarhunt, which is 

 his own home, is a good example. 

 It shows how the qualities that 

 make the beauty of the historic formal gardens may be reproduced in little for 

 houses of moderate size. 



Whether or not it be true that King John ran a boar from Liphook to Southsea 

 before killing, Boarhunt has been the name of a Liphook manor since the Middle 

 Ages. The site of the house now illustrated has been called in turn Deadman's and 

 Fry's Farm, but Mr. Inigo Triggs did wisely in reviving so pleasant a name as Little 

 Boarhunt. Other monarchs than John have been identified with the place, which is 

 easy to be explained, for the old road from London to Portsmouth once passed through 



FIG. 68. LITTLE BOARHUNT: STEPS, GATE AND WALL. 



