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of a cell of Buildwas Abbey, the ponds also remain as originally 
made by the monks.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 tlie 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 gardeningwas still more universal, 
that many others of the new proprietors followed this example. 
