THE GARDEN AT ISLIP. 
257 
quarried out of solid limestone, stood on a rock elevated 
nearly thirty feet above the level of the river Ray, and 
looked upon the bridge on which Cromwell defeated the 
Earl of Northumberland, Lord Wilmot, and Colonel Palmer. 
The garden to the south was laid out in terraces, and was 
surrounded on all sides by walls. In this sheltered, sunny 
spot the Dean and Mrs. Buckland were able to cultivate 
a great variety of plants : stonecrop and rock cistus throve 
amazingly ; vines and peaches flourished ; the strawberry 
beds, which can be seen in the foreground, were famed 
far and wide ; and from some Alpine plants, brought from 
Switzerland, would be often picked a dish of fruit quite 
late in the autumn. “ The roses,” writes Mrs. Buckland 
to Faraday, in July 1849, “are now blooming, and the 
strawberries ripening. Our small garden is exquisitely 
rich in perfume.” Fruit and flowers were not often to be 
seen in such profusion, growing side by side, as in that 
old seventeenth-century garden. In 1807 th.e garden had 
much good fruit planted in it by a tailor who rented the 
house from Sir R. Cope. Dean Vincent added a great deal 
more. “ The best of all sorts, there is no finer fruit any¬ 
where, and the soil is favourable,” writes old Dean Vincent 
in a manuscript book of notes about Islip which was kept 
in the Parish chest, and which the present Rector, the 
Rev. T. Fowle, kindly lent the biographer. The village 
school is of Dr. South’s foundation ; he managed it himself 
while living, and the first annual account bears date 1717, 
the year after his death. 
Twenty-one boys, chosen from Islip in preference, then 
from the nearest parishes, are always to be in the school, 
17 
