62 
XATURE NOTES 
ings. The interfoi' was designed to get the maximum of sun and 
also to enable the indwellers to enjoy perpetually the outside 
beauties of nature. The verandah is enclosed at either end by 
the projecting walls of chimney and drawing-rooms, so that it 
resembles the “ stoop” of a South African Dutch farm. It can 
be closed in front by large rolling glass doors, where in the 
coldest weather one can sit and feel “out-of-doors,” and watch 
the ever-changing lights and shades and scenes. 
A large living-room opens into the verandah, from which the 
staircase ascends at the further end, lighted with a big window, 
framing tree-tops against the sky. A capacious inglenook with 
an old Sussex iron fireback with the royal arms, and dogs, 
dated 1672, form a delightful feature in this homey room. In 
order to avoid the usual drawback of draughts down the stair- 
case rushing up the inglenook chimney, a glass-panelled screen 
runs along the top of the staircase, and a glass door closes the 
stairway. 
From every window enchanting views meet the eye. Distant 
blue hills, with Fairlight church above the southern cliffs, bound 
our horizon. On a nearer ridge are green fields and hop gardens 
set in high-treed hedges, and an old church tower whose bell- 
chimes make sweetest music over hill and dale. 
Nearer still a deep-red-roofed farmhouse, with picturesque 
ancient barns and quaint oasthouse, nestles in a cherry orchard — 
in springtime a cloud of snowy bloom. Below the house you 
look down on a mass of tree-tops, while close round the house 
and terrace groups of pines, with their velvety green needle-tufts 
and red-brown stems, fill up portions of the sky with lovely 
branch tracery, guarding the house from wintry blasts, and 
throwing, in the summer heat, spaces of cool shade, and at all 
times filling the air with delicious balmy perfume. A small lawn 
slopes away from the terrace, and immediately beyond the ground 
breaks into sheer wildness. Where our friends thought we 
ought to lay out flower-beds, billows of bracken weave a pale 
emerald lace-work. From June to October through the tall 
fern-fronds shows an underglow of red bell-heather, while long 
delicate spikes of the rose-mauve heather overtop the bracken as 
it is turning in the autumn to a rich tawny gold, draping the 
whole hillside betw'een the scattered tree-stems with a glory of 
green, gold-bronze, and royal purple. 
It is true that we struggle in vain to make proper lawns ; 
after a year or two the native heather reasserts its right and 
forms spreading patches in the shaven grass. Nevertheless our 
friends agree that they know no croquet lawn to equal ours in 
beauty, surrounded as it is with tall whispering pines, birches 
and spruce firs, the sun glinting on gorgeous vistas of red heather, 
and the croquet balls rolling rather erratically over the heathy 
turf make the game all the more exciting to the less serious- 
minded players. 
Throughout our woodland run endless heather - bordered 
