“Much of this seems appertaining to parade, and therefore I am glad to leave it to describe the rest, which is all for conveniency. As first, a covered passage from the kitchen without doors; and another down to the cellars and all the offices within. Near this, a large and lightsome back stairs leads up to such an entry above, as secures our private bedchambers both from noise and cold. Here we have necessary dressing rooms, servants rooms, and closets, from which are the pleasantest views of all the house, with a little door for communication betwixt this private apartment and the great one. “These stairs, and those of the same kind at the other end of the house, carry us up to the highest story, fitted for the women and children, with the floors so contrived as to prevent all noise over my wife’s head, during the mysteries of Lucina. “In mentioning the court at first, I forgot the two wings in it, built on stone arches which join the house by corridores supported by Ionic pillars. In one of these wings is a large kitchen thirty feet high, with an open cupulo on the top; near it a larder, brew-house, and laundry, with rooms over them for servants; the upper sort of servants are lodged in the other wing, which has also two wardrobes and a store-room for fruit. On the top of all a leaden cistern holding fifty tuns of water, driven up by an engine from the Thames, supplies all the water-works[1] in the courts and gardens, which lie quite round the house; through one of which a grass walk conducts to the stables, built round a court, with six coach houses and forty stalls. I will add but one thing before I carry you into the garden, and that is about walking too, but ’tis on the top of all the house; which being covered with smooth milled lead, and defended by a parapet of balusters from all apprehension as well as danger, entertains the eye with a far distant prospect of hills and dales, and a near one of parks and gardens. To these gardens we go down from the house by seven steps, into a gravel walk that reaches cross the garden, with a covered arbour at each end of it. Another of thirty feet broad leads from the front of the house, and lies between two groves of tall lime trees, planted in several equal ranks upon a carpet of grass: the outsides of these groves are bordered with tubs of bays and orange trees. At the end of this broad walk, you go up to a terrace four hundred paces long, with a large semicircle in the middle, from whence is beheld the Queen’s two parks, and a great part of Surry; then going down a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal six hundred yards long, and seventeen broad, with two rows of limes on each side of it.