98 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 
within, a terrace was raised along one side of the square of the 
wall. “ I have seen a garden/’ says Sir Henry Wotton, “ into 
which the first access was a high walk like a terrace, from 
whence might be taken a general view of the whole plot below.” 
De Caux, the designer of the Earl of Pembroke’s garden at 
Wilton, made such a terrace there “ for the more advantage of 
beholding those platts.” 1 Another is described at Kenilworth 
in 1 575 ' Hard all along by the castle wall is reared a pleasant 
terrace, ten feet high and twelve feet broad, even under foot, 
and fresh of fine grass.” 2 The terraces, as a rule, were wide 
and of handsome proportions, with stone steps either at the 
ends or in the centre, and were raised above the garden either 
by a sloping grass bank or brick or stone wall. At Kirby, in 
Northamptonshire, a magnificent Elizabethan house, now 
rapidly falling into decay, all that remains of a once beautiful 
garden, “ enrich’d with a great variety of plants,” 3 is a terrace 
running the whole length of the western wall of the garden. 
It is now planted with potatoes, and the garden it overlooked 
is merely a meadow. The lines in Spenser’s Ruins of Time 
might have been written on this garden had he but seen it in 
its present state : 
“ Then did I see a pleasant paradize 
Full of sweete flowers and daintiest delights, 
Such as on earth man could not more devize ; 
With pleasure’s choyce to feed his cheerful sprights. 
Since that I sawe this gardine wasted quite. 
That where it was scarce seemed anie sight; 
That I, which once that beautie did beholde. 
Could not from teares my melting eyes with-holde.” 
At Drayton, another Elizabethan house in the same county 
as Kirby, there is a wide terrace against the outer wall of the 
garden with a summer-house at each end, as well as a terrace 
in front of the house, and other examples exist. 
The “ forthrights,” or walks which formed the main lines of 
the garden design, were “ spacious and fair.” Bacon describes 
the width of the path by which the mount is to be ascended as 
1 Le Jar din de Wilton, De Caux, 1615. 
2 Robert Laneham, Letter describing the Pageants at Kenilworth 
Castle, 1575. Extract in Praise of Gardens, Sieveking, 1885. 
3 Morton, Natural History of Northamptonshire, 1712. 
