“I walked round the park this morning, it does not consist of many acres, but the disposition of the ground, the fine verdure and the plantations make it very pretty: it resembles the mistress of it, having preserv’d its native simplicity, tho’ art and care has improv’d and soften’d it, and made it elegant.”
She mentions a miserable inn on Bagshot Heath, which they drove over, “situated in the middle of a dreary Heath, which has been famous for robberies and murders. The inn has for its sign the effigies of a man who practised this dreadful trade 40 years.”
[92] The French ambassador.
SHEEP LEAS
Whilst at Hatchlands Mrs. Boscawen took her guest to Sheep Leas, belonging to Mr. Weston, also to Sir John Evelyn’s and Mr. Hamilton’s places. Of Sheep Leas, in a letter to Sarah, who was with Lady Barbara at Badminton, is this description—
“The Sheep Lees consists of a most beautiful down, adorn’d with noblest beeches, commanding a rich gay and extensive prospect, a prodigious flock of sheep enliven the scene; it has a noble simplicity, and one imagines it to be the abode of some Arcadian Prince.... Our next visit was to Sir John Evelyn’s,[93] you pass over a high hill, finely planted, at the bottom of which lies the good old seat, which is venerable and respectable, and put me in mind of the song of ‘the Queen’s old Courtier,’ and it has a library of good old books, handsome apartments furnished and fitted up just as left them by their ancestor, the Sylvan Evelyn.[94] I cannot but own that tired of papier maché ceilings and gilt cornices, I was glad to see an old hall such as ancient hospitality and the plain virtues of our ancestors used to inhabit before country gentlemen used to make fortunes in Parliament or lose them at ‘White’s,’ hunted foxes, instead of Ministers, and employ’d their finesse in setting partridges. The garden at Sir John Evelyn’s is adorn’d with jets d’eaux in the old style, then you pass on to the woods, which are great and noble, and lye on each side a fine valley.”
[93] Leigh Place.
[94] John Evelyn, born 1620, died 1706. Author of the “Sylva, or Discourse on Forest Trees,” etc., etc.
PAINSHILL
Mrs. Ann Evelyn is mentioned as deserving this habitation.