East Sussex is rich in beautiful houses of Tudor times; many precious relics remaining of those days and of the Jacobean reigns, of important manor-house, fine farm building and labourer’s cottage. These were the times when English oak, some of the best of which grew in the Sussex forests, was the main building material. The walls were framed of oak, and the same wood provided beams, joists and rafters, boards for the floors, panelling, doors, window-mullions and furniture. In those days the wood was not cut up with the steam-saw, but was split with the axe and wedge. The carpentry of the roofs was magnificent; there was no sparing of stuff or of labour. Much of it that has not been exposed to the weather, such as these roof-framings, is as sound to-day as when it was put together, with its honest tenons and mortises and fastenings of stout oak pins. In most cases the old oak has become extraordinarily hard and of a dark colour right through. Brickwall, the beautiful home of the Frewens, near Northiam, is a delightful example, both as to house and garden, of these old places of the truest English type. A stately gateway, and a short road across a spacious green forecourt bounded by large trees, leads straight to the entrance in the wide north-eastern timbered front. The other side of the house, in closely intimate relation to the garden, has a homely charm of a most satisfying kind. The wide bricked path next the house, so typical of Sussex, speaks of the strong, cool soil. The ground rises just beyond, and again further away in the distance. The garden is divided into two nearly equal portions by the double flower-border, backed by pyramidal clipped yews, that forms the subject of the picture, and is enfiladed by the middle windows of the house. In the left hand division is a long rectangular pool with rather steep-angled sides of grass, looking a little dangerous. There is a reason here for the water being a good way below the level of the lawn, for this is much above that of the ground floor of the house; still it is a matter of doubt whether it would not have been better to have had a flagged or bricked path some four feet wide, not much above the water-level, with steps rising on two sides to the lawn, and dry walling, allowing of some delightful planting, from the path to the lawn level. On the two outer sides of the garden, parallel with the middle walk, are raised terraces, reached by steps at the ends of the bricked path. These have walls on their outer sides, and towards the garden, yew hedges kept low so that it is easy to see over. These low hedges run into a much higher and older one that connects them towards the upper end of the garden.