East Sussex is rich in beautiful houses of Tudor times; many precious
relics remaining of those days and of the Jacobean reigns, of important
manor-house, fine farm building and labourer’s cottage. These were the
times when English oak, some of the best of which grew in the Sussex
forests, was the main building material. The walls were framed of oak,
and the same wood provided beams, joists and rafters, boards for the
floors, panelling, doors, window-mullions and furniture. In those days
the wood was not cut up with the steam-saw, but was split with the axe
and wedge. The carpentry of the roofs was magnificent; there was no
sparing of stuff or of labour. Much of it that has not been exposed to
the weather, such as these roof-framings, is as sound to-day as when it
was put together, with its honest tenons and mortises and fastenings of
stout oak pins. In most cases the old oak has become extraordinarily
hard and of a dark colour right through.
Brickwall, the beautiful home of the Frewens, near Northiam, is a
delightful example, both as to house and garden, of these old places of
the truest English type. A stately gateway, and a short road across a
spacious green forecourt bounded by large trees, leads straight to the
entrance in the wide north-eastern timbered front. The other side of the
house, in closely intimate relation to the garden, has a homely charm of
a most satisfying kind.
The wide bricked path next the house, so typical of Sussex, speaks of
the strong, cool soil. The ground rises just beyond, and again further
away in the distance. The garden is divided into two nearly equal
portions by the double flower-border, backed by pyramidal clipped yews,
that forms the subject of the picture, and is enfiladed by the middle
windows of the house. In the left hand division is a long rectangular
pool with rather steep-angled sides of grass, looking a little
dangerous. There is a reason here for the water being a good way below
the level of the lawn, for this is much above that of the ground floor
of the house; still it is a matter of doubt whether it would not have
been better to have had a flagged or bricked path some four feet wide,
not much above the water-level, with steps rising on two sides to the
lawn, and dry walling, allowing of some delightful planting, from the
path to the lawn level.
On the two outer sides of the garden, parallel with the middle walk, are
raised terraces, reached by steps at the ends of the bricked path. These
have walls on their outer sides, and towards the garden, yew hedges kept
low so that it is easy to see over. These low hedges run into a much
higher and older one that connects them towards the upper end of the
garden.
The clipped yews which give the garden its character are for the most
part of one pattern, a tall three-sided pyramid, only varied by some
tall cones. One cannot help observing how desirable it is in gardens of
this kind that the form of the clipped yews should for the most part
keep to one shape, or at any rate one general pattern, just as the
architecture, whatever its character or ornament, within some kind of
limit remains faithful to the dominant idea.
The picture shows a double flower-border in August dress; good groups of
the best hardy plants combining happily with some of the pyramids of
yew. To the right is the fine summer Daisy (_Chrysanthemum maximum_),
with the lilac Erigeron and the spiky blue-purple balls of the Globe
Thistle, the tall double Rudbeckia Golden Glow, Lavender, Poppies and
Phlox. To the left, Phloxes and the tall Evening Primrose, the great
garden Tansy (_Achillea Eupatorium_), seed-heads of the Delphiniums that
bloomed a month ago, White Mallow, and the grand red-ringed
Sweet-William called Holborn Glory. Everything speaks of good
cultivation on a rich loamy soil, for those fine yews want plenty of
nutriment themselves, and would also be apt to rob their less robust
neighbours. But then the good gardener knows how to provide for this.