The Garden and Park
§ i
You come out of the cool shadowy house on to the warm garden, in the
summer, and there is a scared flutter of white pigeons up to the roof as
you open the door. You have to look twice before you are sure whether
they are pigeons or magnolias. The turf is of the most brilliant green;
there is a sound of bees in the limes; the heat quivers like watered
gauze above the ridge of the lawn. The garden is entirely enclosed by a
high wall of rag, very massively built, and which perhaps dates back to
the time of the archbishops; its presence, I think, gives a curious
sense of seclusion and quiet. Inside the walls are herbaceous borders on
either side of long green walks, and little square orchards planted with
very old apple-trees, under which grow iris, snapdragon, larkspur,
pansies, and such-like humble flowers. There are also interior walls,
with rounded archways through which one catches a sight of the house, so
that the garden is conveniently divided up into sections without any
loss of the homogeneity of the whole. Half of the garden, roughly
speaking, is formal; the other half is woodland, called the Wilderness,
mostly of beech and chestnut, threaded by mossy paths which in spring
are thick with bluebells and daffodils.
[Illustration:
_Airco Aerials Ltd._
KNOLE FROM AN AEROPLANE
]
The old engravings show the gardens to have been, from the seventeenth
century onwards, very much the same as they are at present. There are a
few minor variations, but as the early engravers were not very
particular as to accuracy their evidence cannot be accepted as wholly
reliable. We have, besides these engravings, a fairly large number of
records relating to both the park and gardens. The earliest of these
that I have been able to trace is dated 1456, to the effect that
Archbishop Bourchier in that year enclosed the park—a smaller area then
than is covered by it now; and in 1468 there is a bill, “Paid for making
1000 palings for the enclosure of the Knole land, 6_s._ 8_d._” But the
first accounts for the garden proper appear to date from the reign of
Henry VIII (State papers of Henry VIII), when, in 1543, Sir Richard
Longe was paid “for making the King’s garden at Knole.” Then there is a
gap of nearly a century, save for the references to the garden in Lady
Anne Clifford’s Diary, such as “_25th October, 1617_. My Lady Lisle and
my Coz: Barbara Sidney [came?] and I walked with them all the Wilderness
over. They saw the Child and much commended her. I gave them some
marmalade of quince, for about this time I made much of it”; and her
constant notes of how she took her prayer-book “up to the standing”
[which I take to be what we now call the Duchess’ Seat], or of how she
picked cherries in the garden with the French page, and he told her how
he thought that all the men in the house loved her. For the year 1692,
however, there are some bills among the Knole papers, such as “Mr.
Olloynes, gardener, wages £12 per annum,” and some bills for seeds and
roots, “Sweet yerbs, pawsley, sorrill, spinnig, spruts, leeks, sallet,
horse-rydish, jerusalem hawty-chorks,” and another bill for seeds for
£2. 0_s._ 5_d._ Coming to the eighteenth century, there are more
detailed accounts, amongst others an agreement of what was expected in
those days of a head gardener and the remuneration he might hope to
receive:
_14th Aug., 1706._ Ric. Baker, Gardener with Lionel Earl of Dorset and
Middlesex. To serve his Lordship as Gardener at Knole for the term of
one year ½ to begin in March 1706. That he will reserve all the fruit
which shall be growing in the garden for his Lordship’s use. That he
will at his own charge during the said term preserve all Trees and
Greens now in the garden, and will maintain the trees in good
husbandlike manner by pruning and trimming, dunging and marling the
same in seasonable times, and likewise at his own charge will provide
all herbs and other things convenient for my Lord’s kitchen there when
in season. He undertakes to maintain at his own charge all such walks
as are now in ye said Garden, by mowing, cleaning, and rolling the
same, and will preserve all such flowers and plants as are now in the
gardens, and that he will be at all the charges of repairing all the
glass frames, etc. belonging to the Garden Trade, and will provide for
the present use of the Gardens 50 loads of dung.
In return for this service he was to be allowed £30 per annum, and
rooms and conveniences in the house for his business, and to hand all
such dung, etc. as shall be made about the house for the use of ye
gardens, and that he may have the privilege of disposing [for his own
use] all such beans, peas, cabbages, and other kitchen herbs as shall
be spared, over and above that what is used in my Lord’s kitchen.
[Illustration:
THE GARDEN SIDE (SOUTH FRONT)
]
£ _s._ _d._
_April 28, 1718._
Planting trees in new Oak Walk, 5 men, 8 to 18 days
each 3 12 4
Planting walnut trees round the Keeper’s lodge, 3 men,
5 days each at 1/2 each per day 0 17 6
Cutting Bows in the yew at end of new Oak Walk 0 2 4
_November 11, 1723._
Cutting and levelling new walk in ye Wilderness and
making ye mount round ye Oak tree, 8 men, 5 to 11
days each 3 10 0
Alterations made in the Fruit Walks, 16 men, from 14 to
43 days each 23 19 10
Cutting 10,600 turfs at 8_d._ per 100 3 10 8
Planting ye quarry in the Park 6 7 0
10 May Duke Cherries in ye garden 0 6 8
6 peach and nectarine trees in ye garden 0 12 0
2400 quick-set for ye kitchen garden 0 12 0
1000 holly for ye kitchen garden 0 10 0
Planting 2000 small beeches in ye park 0 18 6
200 Pear stocks 0 6 0
300 Crab stocks 0 3 0
200 Cherry stocks 0 6 0
500 Holly stocks 0 5 0
700 Hazel stocks 1 15 0
For new making the Mulberry garden and sowing ye front
walk with seed 14 12 9
20 Gascon Cherry trees 0 10 0
50 bushels sweet apples for cyder 2 10 0
1 bushel Buckwheat for ye Pheasants 0 3 6
10,000 seedling beeches for my Lady Germaine 0 10 0
_December 24, 1726._
Getting 80 load of ice and putting it in ye Ice House 1 15 3
_June 15, 1728._
Planting 160 Elms in field which was Dr. Lambarde’s
next Tonbridge road and sowing the field with furze
seed 7 9 3
_April, 1730._
1000 Asparagus plants from Gravesend 1 0 0
2 doz. Apricots 0 2 0
300 beeches 8ft. high 1 15 0
250 large beeches planted in ye Park 3 10 0
It is not very clear where such a large number of fruit trees were to be
used, but on an engraving of about 1720 I find a wall extending right
across the garden to the two stone pillars which, surmounted by carved
stone urns, still remain, this wall being planted with fruit trees, so I
should think it very probable that this would account for it.
In 1777 new hot-houses and “Pineries” were built, and £175 paid for “two
hot-houses full stocked with pine apples and plants.”
§ ii
Surrounding the house and gardens lies the park, with its valleys,
hills, and woods, and its short brown turf closely bitten by deer and
rabbits. Its beeches and bracken, its glades and valleys, greatly
excited the admiration of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, who visited it in the
beginning of the nineteenth century, and she wrote with enthusiasm of
shade rising above shade with _amazing_ and _magnificent_ grandeur, and
of one beech in particular spreading “its light yet umbrageous fan” over
a seat placed round the bole. With all its grandeur and luxuriance, she
said, there was nothing about this beech heavy or formal; it was airy,
though vast and majestic, and suggested an idea at once of the
_strength_ and _fire_ of a _hero_. She would call a beech tree, she
added, and this beech above every other, the hero of the forest, as the
oak was called the king.
As I have said, the park was first enclosed by Bourchier in 1456, the
year in which he bought Knole on the 30th of June. In the muniments at
Lambeth are a number of papers relating to the expenses of this great
builder, and there is the interesting fact that glass-making was carried
on in the park, and I only wish that more detailed accounts existed of
this industry, which, thanks to the Huguenots, had been pretty widely
introduced into the South of England. I should like to know exactly
where their glass-foundry was, and whether they made use of the sand on
the portion known as the Furze-field, now a rabbit warren; and I should
also very much like to know whether—as seems probable—they supplied any
of the glass for the windows in the house.
It would appear that the park, now entirely under grass, was once
ploughland, for there is at Knole a deed of the time of Richard
Sackville, fifth Earl of Dorset—that is to say, the middle of the
seventeenth century—which accords to four farmers “the liberty to plough
anywhere in the Park except in the plain set out by my Lord and the
ground in front of the house, and to take three crops, and it is agreed
that one-third of each crop after it is severed from the ground shall be
taken and carried away by my Lord for his own use. The third year, the
farmers to sow the ground with grass seed if my Lord desires it, and
they are to be at the charge of the seed, the tillage, and the harvest.”
Later on, in the time of Charles I, hops were grown, not only around the
park, but also in it. Women employed in picking the hops were paid 5_d._
a day, but for cleaning and weeding the ground they only received 3_d._
At this time also cattle were fed in the park during the summer, and
belonging to the same date (about 1628) are the bills for “Moles caught,
1½_d._ each”; “Mowing the meadows,” at the rate of 1_s._ 6_d._ per acre;
“Making hay,” also at 1_s._ 6_d._ per acre; “Carriage of hay from the
meadows to Knole barn,” 1_s._ 4_d._ per load; “one hay fork and 2 hay
forks together,” 1_s._ 8_d._ For “hunting conies by night and ferret by
day” 4_s._ was paid; the expenses involved by the “conies” for one year
were exactly £10, which included £5 5_s._, a year’s wages for the
“wariner”; but, on the other hand, this was money well expended, for the
revenue from “conies sold” covers no less than a fifth part of the
year’s total income. The “wariner,” although his £5 5_s._ a year hardly
seems excessive, did better than the “wood-looker,” who, for his
woodreeveship for a year, was paid only £2.
The accounts of how and when the various outlying portions of the park
were taken in can only be of local interest, and I do not therefore
propose to go into them. They were mostly bought by John Frederick, the
third duke, and by Lord Whitworth, who had married John Frederick’s
widow. The ruins round the queer little sham Gothic house called the
Bird House—which always frightened me as a child because I thought it
looked like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel, tucked away in its
hollow, with its pointed gables—were built for John Frederick’s
grandfather about 1761, by one Captain Robert Smith, who had fought at
Minden under Lord George Sackville, of disastrous notoriety, and who
lived for some time at Knole, a parasite upon the house; they apparently
purport to be the remains of some vast house, in defiance of the fact
that no upper storey or roof of proportionate dimensions could ever
possibly have rested upon the flimsy structure of flint and rubble which
constitute the ruins. They, together with the Bird House, form an
amusing group of the whims and vanities of two different ages. But, to
go back to the park, I conclude with the following letter, which is
among the papers at Knole:
[Illustration:
A GATEWAY INTO THE GARDEN
]
_To his Grace the_ DUKE of DORSET.
My Lord,
I Elizabeth Hills sister and executor of Mrs. Anne Hills deceased of
Under River in the Parish of Seal and whose corpse is to be interred
in the Parish Church of Seal: but the High Road leading thereto by
Godden Green being very bad and unsafe for carriages: I beg leave of
yr Grace to permit the proper attendants to pass with the corpse, in a
hearse with the coaches in attendance through Knole Park: entering the
same at Faulke [_sic_] Common Gate and going out at the gate at Lock’s
Bottom: and you’ll oblige
Your Grace’s most obedient serv^t
ELIZA HILLS.
UNDER RIVER,
_18 Oct., 1781_.
§ iii
So much, then, for the setting; but it is no mere empty scene. The
house, with its exits and entrances, its properties of furniture and
necessities, its dressing-tables, its warming-pans, and its tiny silver
eye-bath still standing between the hair-brushes—the house demands its
population. Whose were the hands that have, by the constant light
running of their fingers, polished the paint from the banisters? Whose
were the feet that have worn down the flags of the hall and the stone
passages? What child rode upon the ungainly rocking-horse? What young
men exercised their muscles on the ropes of the great dumb-bell? Who
were the men and women that, after a day’s riding or stitching, lay
awake in the deep beds, idly watching between the curtains the play of
the firelight, and the little round yellow discs cast upon walls and
ceiling through the perforations of the tin canisters standing on the
floor, containing the rush-lights?
Thus the house wakes into a whispering life, and we resurrect the
Sackvilles.