By Joseph Sabine, Esq. 



The house* is sixty-three feet long, six feet and a half 

 wide, and twelve feet high, the trees having now covered the 

 back wall to the very top, and appearing in want of more 

 room it seems desirable that the height should have been 

 originally extended to fifteen feet. 



The upright front of the house is principally of glass, 

 measuring six feet from the ground to the wall plate ; it 

 would have been better, perhaps, had this height been one 

 foot less ; such alteration, together with the advised exten- 

 sion of the back wall, would have given greater obliquity to 

 the sloping glass, than it has at present. There are doors at 

 each end. The walls are built on arches, and the trees are 

 planted in the earth near the back wall of the house, against 

 which they are trained on a trellis, which projects at the bottom, 

 about a foot from the wall, and gradually approaches the top, 

 the bars of which being about nine inches apart. There 

 is only one flue, which enters at one extremity, passes along 

 the front, and goes into the chimney at the other, dipping at 

 the door ways at its entrance, and exit. The house is, how- 

 ever, almost too long for a single fire, so great a length of flue 

 without a return in the furthermost part, must cause the end 



* Note by Mr. Torbron. The wood and glass of this house were at first 

 constructed for exotics, and erected at the Mansion House. They were after- 

 wards moved to the Kitchen Garden, and placed against an old wall. Had the 

 back wall been from fourteen to sixteen feet high, and the width of the house from 

 twelve to fourteen feet, there would have been room for a row of Fig-trees along 

 the middle of either, in large tubs, to remove elsewhere occasionly for greater or less 

 heat, as the sorts might require, or at different stages of their growth; or planted 

 in the ground, where they would have produced (I think) more plentifully than 

 against a trellis, on which the pruning that is required causes them often to grow 



vol. v. 3 R 



