TRENTHAM. 87 



high gables, tall chimneys, bay windows, and a wide 

 terrace in front, encircled by a balustrade formed of an 

 open-work lettered inscription. In place of the old hall , 

 was built a long flat house of red brick with stone 

 facings, 



'& 



" in imitation," Scays Lord Ronald Gower in his reminiscences, " of one of the 

 ugliest houses in the land, old Buckingham House. As the fortune of the family 

 increased so did the size of this huilding. But it was only when Sir Charles 

 Barry was employed that it ceased to be supremely hideous. It is now, in spite 

 of the long ugly central portion, a really handsome mansion. The entrance 

 porch and adjacent colonnade, as well as the private wing, with its open terrace 

 of two stories high, are as perfect imitations of pure Italian architecture as 

 BaiTy ever designed. I know of nothing more graceful .and happy in its way 

 than the half-circle of a colonnade that forms at once a passage, a fernery, and 

 a vestibule, leading from the body of the house to the park entrance. But it is 

 not even what Barry has done for Trentham that has made it one of the great 

 lions of English show places. The late Duke of Devonshire — and a better judge 

 could not easily have been found — used to say that in his opinion the gardea ' 

 front at Trentham was unrivalled, his own glorious Chatsworth not excepted." 



The history of the house of Trentham and of the 

 Leveson-Gowers is not very eventful, and it would scarcely 

 be expected, in a history of the North Staffordshire Hunt, 

 that it should be dealt with at any length, but it may be 

 of interest to say that the Trentham estate came to the 

 Levesons by descent in the female line from Charles 

 Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and his queen consort. Sir 

 John Leveson, in the time of James I., left at his death 

 two daughters, his co-heiresses. One of these, Frances, 

 married Sir Thomas Gower, a Yorkshire cavalier, and 

 brought as her jointure Trentham, besides other property 

 in Staffordshire and Salop, both, especially the latter, well 

 stored with coal. This alliance, and others in later times 

 equally productive of great territorial results, have 

 brought the house of Trentham into its present unique 

 position. To quote Lord Ronald again — 



" Trentham is full of contrasts ; the old Norman church attached to the 

 modern Italian-like looking building is one of them. Nothing can be less sug- 

 gestive of beauty than that district of North Staffordshire known as the Potteries. 

 There it seems always muddy and miserable, squalid and unclean. Yet within a 

 couple of miles from Stoke lies this wonderful garden of Trentham, gay with 

 hanging woods mirrored in the still lake, with its terraces and statues, its shrub- 

 beries and miles of forcing houses, its great park and forest trees. A boon indeed 



