Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/847

 VILLAS IN VARIOUS STYLES. ars be placed on a gentle eminence, in a tame fertile country ; and we have disposed of the approaches, walks, kitchen-garden, and other details of a villa residence, in the manner which is now generally considered as in the best modern English taste. The water is supposed to be on a considerably lower level than the house, and to have such a supply as to keep it always clear ; and it is therefore less likely to generate mephitic vapours. The grouping of the trees and shrubs, the botanical interest of their different kinds, the water, the grass, and the gravel, constitute the home or foreground beauties of such a residence ; and those of the distance are very seldom of any marked character in the midland counties of England. A hill is rarely to be seen, a mountain never ; and all that can be hoped for, is a peep at the spire of the village church. A village, a town, a farm-house, a cottage, or the appearance of another villa, at a nearer distance than two or three miles, is considered an intolerable nuisance by the high aristocracy of England. The great object, in laying out the grounds of villas for this class of society, is, to produce the appearance of an interminable natural forest ; the villa being placed in one of its most agreeable glades, and every thing seen around ap- pearing to belong to it : such is the kind of solitary grandeur described as the sumniitm bonum of an English country residence. The essential cause of this feeling is to be found in the immense chasm which exists between the rich and the poor in this country, not only in point of wealth, but in point of cultivation and taste. Design II. — The Accommodations of a Villa of moderate Size, exhibited in the Ground Plan of the House and Offices, and their relative Connection with the Gardens and Grounds. 1742. The Object of this Design is, to show by lines, rather than words, the requisite arrangement of a moderate-sized villa, where accommodation is more the object than architectural display. It has been furnished us, at our request, by James Main, Esq., of Chelsea, and evinces his knowledge of what is requisite to constitute a country residence, as well as his good taste and great experience as a landscape-gardener. No elevation is given, because we have judged it expedient to afford the young Architect an opportunity of devising one, either in the Gothic or Grecian style. Besides, the object, in this Design, is to confine the attention to the accommodation required, and to the connection of the house and the offices with the kitchen and other gardens, the pleasure-ground fence, and the approach-roads and walks. 1743. The General Arrangement is shown in fig. 1445. The grounds consist of a kitchen- garden, containing about two acres, and dressed ground exterior to it, and including a lawn surrounding the house ; the whole separated from the park by an endless dotted line in the figure, representing an open iron railing, or a sunk fence, or ha-ha. Beyond this dressed ground, the park may extend to fifty or one hundred acres, or upwards. In the general plan, a is the entrance-court and offices ; b, the coach-yard court, with two dung-pits surrounded by low walls ; c. drying-ground ; d, conservatory, with flower- garden around ; e, ice-house, formed under a raised mound planted with evergreens ; the door is in the sunk fence, indicated by the dotted iine which encloses the whole of the dressed groimd and the kitchen-garden, and /, the melon-ground j g, compartment fur