off the blue glazes to great advantage. Going through the left-hand door on the far side the main staircase is reached (Fig. 9). It goes up round a square top-lighted well, and has a balustrade, of an excellent cast-iron design and given a bronze finish, which is continued along the galleries giving access to the first and second floors. The passages leading to the rooms on the garden front open out on to the staircase well, so gaining light and also providing an opportunity for an interesting architectural treatment. On the first floor there is a wide arch flanked by little oval lights ; on the floor above, a pair of columns with palm leaf capitals carries the enriched entablature across the opening.
The staircase hall is placed at the junction between the 1826 entrance hall and the older one on the garden front. It is not, however, axial to the latter, but the asymmetry is concealed by the two pairs of double doors seen in the bottom right-hand corner of Fig. 9. The left-hand pair are dummies, and the Georgian entrance hall is entered through the right-hand pair. Here hang an interesting collection of etchings, including works by
Rembrandt, Forain, Griggs, William Strang, and Sir Muirhead Bone. When the 1827 additions were made, the two little bow- fronted rooms of the Georgian house were redecorated at the same time, and these are perhaps the most charming rooms in the house. The one on the drawing-room side is a little library (Fig. 4), its walls lined with Regency bookcases of mahogany with wire guards. The pair flanking have their cornice carried across the fireplace, which is of white marble with voluted capitals below the mantelshelf. A pale yellow marbled paper for the walls, gold damask curtains, and a delightful flowered chintz, with panels of galloping horses, for the armchairs and settees make a very attractive decor. The sitting-room on the other side of the garden hall is equally charming with its pale green walls, flowered chintz curtains of brown and fawn shades, and Regency furniture (Fig. 8).
At the side of this room a door opens on to the loggia and the pleasant formal garden seen in Fig. 7, from which the ground drops down grass slopes, daffodil-carpeted in springtime, to the tree-girt margins of the lake. The loggia was designed by the late Sir Guy
Dawber, who was also responsible for laying out the gardens for Mrs. Clegg, Lady Ismay’s mother, when she bought the property in 1920. Not only the little formal garden, but the lay-out south of the house is due to him. The garden front is kept free of flower beds, opening on to a terrace and broad lawn, but southward the opportunity was taken of forming a series of grass plats of contrasting shapes, marked off by low stone walls and dwarf yew hedges, which give a touch of formality that is at the same time not too rigidly geometrical. Between these lawns and the drive are deep beds of massed flowers and shrubs. Flowering shrubs have also been planted here and there on the slopes of the lake, and where it narrows there is a water garden on the far side, reached by the Chinese bridge seen on the left of Fig. 6. In these developments, which have been continued and completed by Sir Hastings and Lady Ismay, added beauty has been given to the little landscape of trees, meadow and water, which the Gists devised for their house, but which lacked the colour that to-day we like to be able to see from the windows of our homes.
Arthur Oswald.