THE 



GARDENER'S MAGAZINE, 



JULY, 1842. 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



Art. I. Recollections of a Gardening Tour in the North of England 

 and Part of Scotland, made from June 22. to September 30. 1841. 

 By the Conductor. 



[Continued from p. 197.) 



July 28, 29. — The road from Bothwell Castle to the village 

 of Hamilton presents some grand masses of wood on hilly 

 ground, and crosses the Clyde and its steep rocky banks, also 

 crowned with wood. The plantations belonging to the park of 

 Hamilton Palace border the road on each side, from the bridge 

 till we arrive at the village. This village, which in 1804, when 

 we first saw it, was a dirty miserable place, with scarcely a good 

 house except the inn, is now entirely changed. It contains a 

 number of substantial houses, some in streets, but the greater 

 number detached. The old inn is turned into the office of the 

 Duke of Hamilton's land-steward, and there is a most substantial 

 new inn built, in which we obtained most excellent fresh salmon 

 and old whiskey, and the very best treatment ; but very indif- 

 ferent potatoes and other vegetables, from there being no market- 

 gardener at Hamilton, and no early potatoes grown in the land- 

 lord's garden, and from every vegetable, except potatoes, being 

 obtained from Glasgow. We do not recollect a single objection 

 to this inn, except that the upper sashes of all the rooms, 

 whether bed-rooms or sitting-rooms, were fixed, and, conse- 

 quently, the rooms could never be properly ventilated. We 

 afterwards found this to be the case with the windows of even 

 the best houses in Princes Street, Edinburgh, which we were 

 not so much surprised at, as they have been built half a century ; 

 but we did not expect to find it in a first-rate inn, built by the 

 Duke of Hamilton within a few years. The fault is of course 

 the architect's or the carpenter's, for it cannot be supposed for a 

 moment that an individual so exalted in station, so liberal in 

 sentiment, and of such excellent taste, more especially in archi- 

 tecture, as the present Duke of Hamilton, would build other- 

 3d Ser. — 1842. VII. z 



