EARLY TUDOR GARDENS 
77 
Dissolution there were over seven hundred religious houses 
scattered all over the kingdom. We cannot say that each of 
these possessed a garden, as some were in towns, in spaces too 
confined, and some Orders did not devote any of their attention 
to agriculture. The Benedictines and Cistercians predominated 
in numbers, and they were, for the most part, large landowners, 
farmers of their own land, and skilled in horticulture.- But 
of the gardens which surrounded Fountains, Jervaulx, or 
Netley, Glastonbury, St. Albans, or Whitby, and many another 
fine abbey and stately priory, nothing remains. In some 
instances mention is made of the gardens by the officers of the 
Crown, who carried out the visitations and appropriated 
everything of value. At Oxford, they regretted that the Austin 
Friars had felled all their trees, but the Franciscans had 
“ good lands, woods, and a pretty garden.” The Cistercians 
of Waverley were very poor at the time, and the Abbot was 
granted leave “ to survey his husbandry whereupon consisteth 
the wealth of his monastery.” Few traces of old monastery 
gardens are left. At Westminster there was a fine garden, 
celebrated for its damson trees, and a garden by the Infirmary 
where the sick monks could take the air. Part of this remains 
in the garden belonging to the College, but some portion of it 
was built over at the beginning of the last century, when the 
new College buildings were erected. When Elizabeth came 
to the throne, she sent for Abbot Feckenham, who had been 
reinstated in the Abbey of Westminster during Mary’s reign. 
He was planting elms in his garden in the part now known as 
Dean’s Yard, when he received the summons, and finished his 
work before he would attend on the Queen. The Abbot ended 
his days in captivity, and his abbey was soon after transformed 
into a College, but some of his elm trees, or their successors, 
remain to this day. 
That which has most often survived destruction, to find a 
place in a modern garden, on the site of some old cloister, is 
the fish-pond, although, strictly speaking, it did not always 
form part of a monastery garden. But it was found useful, 
and has frequently been spared even by the landscape gardener, 
who would rather alter than destroy it. At Cirencester, the 
present parish church is a fine building, but the abbey church 
