Aug. 29. to Sept. 5. - Nettlecombe Court. The road to this place from Williton is up the bottom of a winding combe, or valley, consisting of water meadows, woods, white cottages and their gardens, and some quarries, a fine brook, and hedge-row trees. Here is a water-mill, supplied with water by means of a course the sides and bottom of which are of stone laid in the Aberthaw lime, which has the property of setting under water, and being in that and other respects equal to Roman cement. The rock which produces this lime extends across from Wales, and proves of immense value both to builders and farmers. We passed the remains of a fine old alder; the shattered remains of a large old walnut tree, on the bark of which Cotyledon umbilicus was growing luxuriantly, while the living branches were loaded with fruit; a very large crab-tree; a cottage, the walls of which were covered with the broad and narrow-leaved myrtle, both 12 ft. high, and overspread with bloom; large hydrangeas, which become blue naturally in most places that we have seen them in both Somersetshire and Devonshire; and near Nettlecombe church some immense elms. We had not an opportunity of looking at the grounds of Nettlecombe Court till the following morning, when we were astonished and delighted with the view from the windows of the house, looking up the steep sides of the rounded hills that rose on every side, and which were mostly crowned with old oak woods. The immense difference between this kind of scenery, and any thing that is to be met with within a 100 miles of London, produced the effect alluded to; and we found it to be a sort of key-note to the impressions made by the scenery of Somersetshire and Devonshire generally. Rounded hills covered with grass to the top, with winding valleys having sloping sides; the valleys more or less wide, and the sides of the hills differing in degrees of steepness; occasionally with water in the bottom in the form of a small stream or brook, and rarely of a river or an inlet of the sea, characterise the greater part of the scenery of Somersetshire, and at least of the South of Devonshire. There is no hill, or range of hills, south of Dartmoor decidedly larger than the others, so as to constitute a feature. There is not even a sharply pointed hill, or one with concave sides; and certainly nothing that can be compared to hills similarly covered with grass in the South of Scotland; no hills like those of Teviotdale; and no valleys like those of the Tay and the Tweed. Almost all the outlines of the hills in the Devonshire district are convex, but the greater part of those in the Scottish and North of England scenery are concave. The cause of this difference in the outlines is, we apprehend, to be found in the kind of rocks; the upper ones in Scotland being chiefly basaltic, and protruded through the stratified rocks, which is not the case in the greater part of Devonshire. In England, however, the rich wooded valleys have no parallel in Scotland; and Somersetshire and Devonshire only require to have some features of the agriculture of Scotland and Northern England joined to their excellent grass-land husbandry, to exemplify the highest degree of cultivation of which such a country is susceptible.
The above text is from a section of JC Loudon's Gardener's Magazine (edited and © Gardenvisit.com) on: ART. I. Notices of some Gardens and Country Seats in Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Part of Cornwall. By the CONDUCTOR. , England, OCTOBER, 1842 |
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