The Aubreys are a Yorkshire family--the younger branch of the ancient
and noble family of the Dreddlingtons. Their residence, YATTON, is in
the north-eastern part of the county, not above fifteen or twenty miles
from the sea. The hall is one of those old structures, the sight of
which throws you back a couple of centuries in our English history. It
stands in a park, crowded with trees, many of them of great age and
size, and under which two or three hundred head of deer perform their
capricious and graceful gambols. In approaching from London, you strike
off from the great north road into a broad by-way; after going down
which for about a mile, you come to a straggling little village called
Yatton, at the farther extremity of which stands a little aged gray
church, with a tall thin spire; an immense yew-tree, with a kind of
friendly gloom, overshadowing, in the little churchyard, nearly half the
graves. Rather in the rear of the church is the vicarage-house, snug and
sheltered by a line of fir-trees. After walking on about eighty yards,
you come to high park-gates, and see a lodge just within, on the left
hand side, sheltered by an elm-tree. Having passed through these gates,
you wind your way for about two-thirds of a mile along a gravel walk,
among the thickening trees, till you come to a ponderous old crumbling
looking red brick gateway of the time of Henry VII., with one or two
deeply set stone windows in the turrets, and mouldering stone-capped
battlements peeping through high-climbing ivy. There is an old
escutcheon immediately over the point of the arch; and as you pass
underneath, if you look up, you can plainly see the groove of the old
portcullis still remaining. Having passed under this castellated
remnant, you enter a kind of court formed by a high wall completely
covered with ivy, running along in a line from the right hand turret of
the gateway till it joins the house. Along its course are a number of
yew-trees. In the centre of the open space is a quaintly disposed
grass-plot, dotted about with stunted box, and in the centre of that
stands a weather-beaten stone sundial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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