Windsor Great Park

“ The east terrace, continuing the north, overlooks the gardens in front of the private apartments, and the south terrace continues farther, as far as the George IV. gateway. The Home Park lies adjacent to the castle on the south, east and north. The Great Park extends south of Windsor, where the land, rising gently, is magnificently timbered with the remnant of the old royal forest. The village of Old Windsor (in distinction from which the name of New Windsor is given to the borough) lies by the river, south of the Home Park. ”

“ Padlocked gates prevent you from walking precisely as you please from the north-east of the lake through Windsor Park, and it is not impossible to miss the right path through the trees. But if you are walking north from the lake it is worth while to make your way to the Cumberland obelisk—a gaunt column which the clustering ivy and shrubs at its base will some day topple down among the grass and heather—and to reach the Bishop's Gate through the single narrow stretch of Windsor Great Park that lies in Surrey. In winter, pheasants crouch under the brushwood or splutter through the trees ”

“ The rabbits of Windsor Park, by the way, are endowed with matchless impudence. They treat you with a familiarity which borders too close on contempt to be gratifying. They will scarcely get out of your way. They sit comfortably before their holes, lazily watching you go past with as much indifference as a country gentleman seated at his own door would the passing of a travelling tinker. The same may be said of the game generally with which the park abounds. The flocks of deer will go on browsing comfortably till you almost tread on their little black noses. ”

“ There is no house of public entertainment in Eton which is distinguished by the modernised term, hotel; but there are some decent inns, the most comfortable of which is reported to be the “Christopher.” It is a direct continuation of Eton into Windsor across the bridge connecting the Berkshire with the Buckinghamshire town, the town being to all intents and purposes one. Windsor Great Park—thus designated in distinction from the Home Park of 500 acres, which adjoins the Castle, and is the enclosure which contained Herne’s Oak—should now be seen. ”

“ Enough of the forest remains, in conjunction with the park, to enable the visitor to make many delightful excursions. The most agreeable way of seeing this sylvan country is on horseback. Perhaps nowhere in the world can one get a more delicious canter. By a little management it is easy to take a ride of twenty-five miles without more than a couple of miles off the turf. In 1607 the Great Park was stated at 3650 acres: it consists now of about one thousand acres less.
The principal royal park in modern days, next to Windsor, is Richmond. ”

“ It is well to disregard what they have to say, and to manœuvre the cycle through the gate. Here we are within the bounds of Windsor Great Park. Directly in front stretches the beautiful sheet of water, said, on insufficient authority, to be “the largest artificial lake in England.” It is, however, very large: one and a half miles long, and with two arms, each half a mile in length. It was formed considerably over a hundred years ago by intercepting the waters of the Bourne, a little stream rising near Ascot and falling into the Thames at Chertsey, and by damming them in a natural hollow. ”

“ The influence of the beautiful is predominant over all others. We think only of the scene before us, and must thoroughly enjoy it for its own sake before we can bestow a thought on a single association connected with it. We forget all about the walls we are standing on. We do not even reflect that the golden river is our old friend the Thames. It never strikes us that that expanse of green out there to the right, so thickly planted with massive elms and chestnuts, is a very celebrated place called the Home Park of Windsor, or indeed that it is called anything else—or anything at all. ”

“ After a very pleasant stay inside the buildings, we take a look at the exterior and the grounds. The latter, so far as seen by the visit we made, were simply bare, macadamized squares, but just outside the walls, on the other sides, are the great and elegant park-grounds, arenas, gardens, ponds, waterfalls, fountains, fine old tree-shaded walks; and every production that brain can devise or wealth procure has been lavished on these acres. The building called Windsor Castle is a vast deal more than a single edifice ”

“ I envy people maunching and maunching peaches and grapes, and I not daring to eat a bit. My head is pretty well, only a sudden turn any time makes me giddy for a moment, and sometimes it feels very stuffed; but if it grows no worse, I can bear it very well. I take all opportunities of walking; and we have a delicious park here just joining to the castle, and an avenue in the great park very wide, and two miles long, set with a double row of elms on each side. Were you ever at Windsor? ”

“ Beautiful Windsor, Richmond Park, Kew Gardens, Epping Forest, and the ideally delightful Edens that nestle along the bends of the upper Thames, are all within the twenty-five mile circle, though one can find fifty fairy-grounds within five miles from any city station, where one can sprawl on the velvet grass beneath some spreading oak, and drink in the balmy scent-laden air, out of sight and sound of bricks and mortar. ”

“ This covers more than two thousand acres, and, thanks to the railway, may almost be regarded as a lung of London, being only eight miles distant from the city. Richmond Park is as replete as Windsor with historical association, and came into especial importance in the reign of Charles I. That king, who was excessively addicted to the sports of the field, had a strong desire to make a great park, for red as well as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large wastes of his own, and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit for the use he designed it for ”

“ There was also a large district extending from Maidenhead and Bray to Wokingham and Twyford, which was called the Fines Bayliwick, and of which Sir Henry Neville claimed to be Keeper by inheritance.
Several parks are marked in the forest. Of these the [147] Little Park is now the Home Park, Windsor, and the Great Park and Moat Park are in the present Windsor Great Park. Sunninghill Park, Foliejon Park, Easthampstead Park, and Bagshot Park, the last mostly in Surrey, still remain.
Ascot Race Course
Besides the Parks there were certain enclosed places called Rails. ”

“ They rode at a furious pace for five or six miles over the great park, the keepers wondering where their unearthly leader was taking them, and almost fancying they were hurrying to perdition, when they descended a hillside leading to the marsh, and halted before a huge beech-tree, where Herne dismounted and pronounced certain mystic words, accompanying them with strange gestures. ”

“ Yesterday we had the company of another German at dinner, Count ——, who is come to buy horses. He seems to have a good deal of money, and is young enough to enjoy it; ‘au reste,’ the perfect picture of a good-natured country gentleman (Landjunker,) —of a truth, a most happy sort of man:—I only wish I were one.
As to your opinion about parks, I must remark that the extent of them, especially when properly rounded, can never be great enough. Windsor park is the only one which has fully satisfied me as a whole, and the reason for that is its enormous size. ”

“ The Home Park, bounding the palace on two sides, is not open to the public; but the Great Park is freely open, to persons on foot, on horseback, or in vehicles. The Long Walk through this park, extending 3 miles, is one of the finest things of the kind in England.
Eton College, with its school-rooms for 900 boys, chapel, quadrangles, and playing-fields, lies beautifully situated opposite Windsor Castle. ”

“ Herne’s oak has gone now. It stood in the Home Park, a grim withered riven stump near the footpath to Datchet, until some fifty or sixty years ago; and few cared to pass it at midnight.
But Windsor Park in daytime has nothing eerie about it. It, and the wide bracken-covered, sandy forest country that surrounds it, is delightful in Spring, or on a hot summer’s day. Or in autumn, when the leaves and bracken are turning, one must go far to find a more beautiful district. The whole country is steeped in history and romance. ”

“ This is now eighteen hundred acres in extent, and holds a thousand fallow deer and a hundred red deer, Cranbourne Park holding a small herd of white deer.
Though crossed by public footpaths and roads, it is at most times and places clear that the Park is the front garden of Windsor Castle. There is even a sense of privacy unintentionally disturbed at spots here and there where the family grief or rejoicing of royalty has been celebrated by planting a tree—as when Queen Victoria planted an oak to mark the place where the Prince Consort finished his last day's shooting, November 23, 1861. ”

“ In the fourteenth century it was reckoned that the Court employed an army of 20,000 of such people. These would all have to be housed somehow, and the nearer the protection of the castle the better; hence the town on the slopes.
The Home Park, in which is the mausoleum, borders the river. It is separated by a road from the Great Park, made for hunting. Pope's poem on "Windsor Forest" is not particularly beautiful ”

“ There are a thousand excellent or notable things—some due to chance and antiquity, some to deliberation and design—but the Park as a whole has no supremacy over others of the same or even less extent. I have no sooner admired the exquisite giant birches, or the craggy vast oaks, or the perfectly formed younger ones, than I come to lines of rhododendrons, the symbols of very modern riches, or to lines of venerable stately trees which are not satisfying except on the rare occasions when they overhang some human stateliness or splendour. ”

“ But the charm is faded and the grandeur confounded, and the Park should either be artistically treated as a whole, or allowed a century of nature and wise neglect, if these qualities are to return in a measure worthy of its repute and history. ”

“ From the state rooms we were taken to the top of the Round Tower, where we gained a magnificent view of the Park of Windsor, with its regal avenue, miles in length, of ancient oaks; its sweeps of greensward; clumps of trees; its old Herne oak, of classic memory; in short, all that constitutes the idea of a perfect English landscape. The English tree is shorter and stouter than ours; its foliage dense and deep, lying with a full, rounding outline against the sky. Everything here conveys the idea of concentrated vitality, but without that rank luxuriance seen in our American growth. ”

“ I now went down a gentle declivity into the delightful park at Windsor, at the foot of which it looks so sombrous and gloomy that I could hardly help fancying it was some vast old Gothic temple. This forest certainly, in point of beauty, surpasses everything of the kind you can figure to yourself. To its own charms, when I saw it, there were added a most pleasing and philosophical solitude, the coolness of an evening breeze, all aided by the soft sounds of music, which, at this distance from the castle, from whence it issued, was inexpressibly sweet. ”

“ The congested capitals of Europe had already learnt this lesson; traveled Americans, like William Cullen Bryant, brought it home; and Central Park, planned in 1853, was the first of the great landscape parks to serve as a people’s pleasance. Conceived in contrast to the deflowered landscape and the muddled city, the park alone re-created the traditions of civilization—of man naturalized, and therefore at home, of nature humanized, and therefore enriched. And even today our parks are what our cities should be, and are not. ”

“ John Evelyn was at Windsor on June 8, 1654, and found the Castle rooms "melancholy and of ancient magnificence", but walking on the terrace, he thought that "Eton, with the park, meandering Thames, and sweet meadows yield one of the most delightful prospects". Ten years later, Pepys exclaimed: "Lord! the prospect that is in the balcony in the Queen's lodgings, and the terrace and walk, are strange things to consider, being the best in the world, sure". Swift told Stella that Windsor was "a delicious place". ”

“ Of these, none were more agreeable to me than the promenades in the great parks—Hyde Park, the Green Park, Regent’s Park, which last, alone, is several English miles in circumference. On Sundays, one sees them crowded with well-dressed people, mostly of the working classes; children tumble about freely on the green turf, which remains green and fresh notwithstanding, or feed with bread the beautiful swans or other aquatic birds which swim about on the river-like winding pieces of water. ”

“ The town must agree to take care of it always.
To arrange for this, the people of Westmore met in June. They voted to accept the meadow, and promised that forever and forever, they would keep it as a park.
They asked the Judge if he would like them to call it Winslow Park, but the Judge said not. Both he and Mrs. Winslow knew that Lieutenant Ned would not want the park to bear his name, when the four other Westmore boys gave their lives for their country just as truly as he did. The memorial was to be for them all. Why not call it the Victory Park? ”