348 THE OLD MANOR HOUSE 



is its yew hedge, one of the largest in the country, 

 fourteen feet high and eighteen feet deep, taking us 

 back, it is said, to the time of Henry VIII. Solemn 

 and melancholy - looking enough through three- 

 quarters of the year, it is, during the remaining 

 quarter, when its young fresh shoots are putting 

 themselves forth, a perfect mosaic of light browns, 

 greens, and yellows. This outside ; but, as you pass 

 through the archway which has been cut through 

 the living wall of sombre green, and glance down 

 the vista, on either side, of its gnarled and knotted 

 branches interlacing with each other, without a sign 

 of life, and which have not, for centuries, seen the 

 garish light of day, you might fancy that you were 

 looking at the blasted trees, in one of the weird 

 visions of Dante's Inferno. 



And now a word about the wild animals of the 

 neighbourhood and their favourite haunts. Three 

 miles from Bingham's Melcombe, is a large tract 

 of woodland, called Melcombe Park. It has been, 

 in a sense, ' 'af-fo rested " ever since Saxon times. 

 All round it "the purlieus" as they would have 

 been called in the days of old are big fields of 

 rough pasture interspersed with smaller coverts, 

 and tangled with thickets of blackthorn, and 

 bramble, and gorse, and broom. On the south 



