DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49977#0052
30 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND.
fish pond is generally the only survival. The wall enclosing a
corner of the garden at Ashridge is part of the old cloister, and
near it there is also a thick yew hedge surrounding another
small piece of garden. These, if not actually the same as in the
days when the place was a monastery, are on the same lines,
and have been kept as gardens ever since the days when the
monks enjoyed the solitude of the cloister. In like manner the
garden at Newstead Abbey still retains many pleasing traces of the
Black Friars who for many years lived there. The times we have
been considering were periods of constant strife, when the cloister
was the only place in which quiet and retirement could be found,
and to those who sought refuge within its walls, how7 dear must
those peaceful hours in their gardens have been. Perhaps some
inmate of Sopwell (a cell of St. Albans) was too fond of early
morning or late evening strolls in the garden, for Abbot Michael
(about 1338) made the rule that in winter “the garden-door be
not opened (for walking) before the hour of prime, or first hour
of devotion :—and in summer that the garden and the parlour
doors be not opened until the hour of none (? nine) in the
morning :—and to be always shut when the corfue rings.” *
Even the warlike Hospitaller Orders, the Templars and
Knights of St. John, contributed something towards the
improvement of Horticulture. In their wanderings in the East
during the Crusades, they may have remembered some garden
in England, and brought back plants for it, as, for example,
the splendid Oriental plane at Ribston, the planting of which
tradition attributes to the Templars. The surveys of the manors
all over the kingdom belonging to these Orders show the large
number of gardens of which they were possessed. At the
Chancery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England, in
Clerkenwell, there was a garden in the time of Prior Philip
de Thame (in 1338) which was still existing in the reign of
Henry VIE,J and the Hospitallers had also a house with gardens
attached at Hampton, on the site of the present gardens of
* Rev. Peter Newcome, History of St. Albans, p. 468.
t Close Roll, Henry VII., a.d. i486.
fish pond is generally the only survival. The wall enclosing a
corner of the garden at Ashridge is part of the old cloister, and
near it there is also a thick yew hedge surrounding another
small piece of garden. These, if not actually the same as in the
days when the place was a monastery, are on the same lines,
and have been kept as gardens ever since the days when the
monks enjoyed the solitude of the cloister. In like manner the
garden at Newstead Abbey still retains many pleasing traces of the
Black Friars who for many years lived there. The times we have
been considering were periods of constant strife, when the cloister
was the only place in which quiet and retirement could be found,
and to those who sought refuge within its walls, how7 dear must
those peaceful hours in their gardens have been. Perhaps some
inmate of Sopwell (a cell of St. Albans) was too fond of early
morning or late evening strolls in the garden, for Abbot Michael
(about 1338) made the rule that in winter “the garden-door be
not opened (for walking) before the hour of prime, or first hour
of devotion :—and in summer that the garden and the parlour
doors be not opened until the hour of none (? nine) in the
morning :—and to be always shut when the corfue rings.” *
Even the warlike Hospitaller Orders, the Templars and
Knights of St. John, contributed something towards the
improvement of Horticulture. In their wanderings in the East
during the Crusades, they may have remembered some garden
in England, and brought back plants for it, as, for example,
the splendid Oriental plane at Ribston, the planting of which
tradition attributes to the Templars. The surveys of the manors
all over the kingdom belonging to these Orders show the large
number of gardens of which they were possessed. At the
Chancery of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England, in
Clerkenwell, there was a garden in the time of Prior Philip
de Thame (in 1338) which was still existing in the reign of
Henry VIE,J and the Hospitallers had also a house with gardens
attached at Hampton, on the site of the present gardens of
* Rev. Peter Newcome, History of St. Albans, p. 468.
t Close Roll, Henry VII., a.d. i486.