Port Eliot Red Book: Suggested Changes to the Park

VIEW FROM THE HOUSE

In the preceding sketch, I have shewn the old stables, barns, etc. Though destined to be taken down, it was impossible to give an exact representation of the present ground beyond them, divided into small inclosures. On the distant hill, I have suggested a building in which I confess I had some difficulty. Its use requires a handsome room to command the prospect, without the inconvenience of wind to which elevated situations are exposed, and its lofty situation does not require that it should be higher than one story from the ground. Besides, the vicinity of the opposite Church is a sufficient reason for not making a tower. An obelisk or an open ruin would have a good effect as objects, but they would be useless except as mere ornaments, and a Grecian building with columns would be incongruous with the general Gothic scenery (and we have already something of the kind, though not offensively conspicuous, in the covered seat on the Tumulus). In short, a building is necessary on this spot; not only as a convenient prospect-room, but also as an object from the House, to extend the idea of appropriated lawn or park, which is too much confined by the river to the north and the hill and town of St. Germains to the south. It may be observed that as the tumulus hill and [blank] hill are both cloathed over their whole summits, I have purposely avoided the same shapes on this more distant hill. By shewing naked lawn, it will not only confer variety on the scenery, but it will give an air of extent and freedom, which is never the case when the whole of the horizon is bounded by wood.

For ease of reading, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized.