78 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



beside it, in times past, was so infinitely larger as quite to 

 eclipse it. Yet the entire abbey has so completely disappeared 

 that the only trace of monastic times, in the grounds of the house, 

 built on the same spot, is a small piece of water, the remains of the 

 fish-ponds. Such relics are to be seen in every part of England. 

 At Hurley-on-Thames the monks' fish stews are still in exist- 

 ence, while at Bisham Abbey, only a mile distant, the garden 

 is surrounded on three sides by a moat, a vestige of monkish 

 days. At Hackness, in Yorkshire, the monks' ponds have been 

 transformed into the present lake, but at Newstead Abbey, 

 Nottingham, they are untouched. There is a stew, over- 

 shadowed by old yews, and a piece of water undoubtedly a 

 survival of the Black Friars, a brass eagle lectern having been 

 found in its depths, full of valuable deeds relating to the 

 monastery, hidden there by the friars at the time of their 

 dissolution. At Hatton Grange, in Shropshire, on the site 

 of a cell of Buildwas Abbey, the ponds also remain as originally 

 made by the monks. There are four pools, still bearing their 

 old names — the Abbot's, Purgatory, Hell, and the Bath Pools. 

 They are in sequence, separated by broad dams of earth, and 

 are dug deep into the ground, with steep banks. Thus, although 

 the original gardens have vanished, the monastery lands were 

 granted to the great families of the day, and since they passed 

 into secular hands, stately houses have been built, and beautiful 

 gardens, though of a totatlly different character, have been 

 made, and now adorn what once were the precincts of the old 

 abbeys and priories. Woburn, Welbeck, Burghley, Syon, 

 Battle, Beaulieu, Ramsey, Audley End, and many others, are 

 among the number. 



The Earl of Surrey made extensive gardens round the house 

 he built on the site of St. Leonard's Priory, near Norwich, which 

 he called Mount Surrey. About this time the closing of some 

 of the common lands caused some considerable riots, and in 

 1549 all the trees in the appleyards at Mount Surrey were 

 destroyed by the rebels, and used for making tents and huts. 

 This was one of the earliest of important gardens laid out on 

 the site of a religious house, and it was not until a succeeding 

 generation, when the taste for gardening was still more universal, 

 that many others of the new proprietors followed this example. 



