CHAPTER II

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.

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.

£ _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:

_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.