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FAWLEY COURT.

and gave them all sorts of corn, in the straw. They also broke down the park pales, killed most of the deer, carried off, or destroyed, the furniture, and rendered the place unfit for future residence. The title deeds of the estate, many valuable manuscripts, and some very ancient courtrolls, relating to the manor, were among the papers wantonly destroyed at this period."

The present house is a large, square, handsome, brick structure, erected in the latter end of the seventeenth century, and supposed to be after a design of Inigo Jones, though so many years subsequent to the death of that great architect. It contains a succession of spacious and commodious apartments. With the marbles, &c. which furnish the hall, is a fine cast of Mr. Locke's Discobolus. The saloon is adorned with pictures by Cuyp, G. Poussin, Titian, Rembrandt, &c. among which there is a head of an old man, by Elmer, so well known for his excellence as a painter of dead game, &c. It is a very finely painted picture, and maintains its situation among some very good specimens of the old masters.

The lawns, which surround the house, are deficient in variety of surface; but a judicious and gentle sinking of a part of it, between the house and the river, gives the former an appearance of elevation, which greatly relieves the actual level of its situation. The surrounding hills, however, make ample amends for the flatness of the bottom. The ground rises rather boldly from the meads, beyond the river, on the Berkshire side of it; some parts being richly cloathed, and others only fringed with wood; while the opposite part of the picture consists of the uplands of Fawley, clad with beeches, in clumps and groves; and the more distant woods of Hambledon. The view up the river embraces Henley-Bridge, one of the most pleasing structures of its kind on the Thames, and adorned with the sculpture of the Honourable Mrs. Damer; with the rich brow of Park Place, the seat of the Earl of Malmsbury, and its varied plantations, rising above it; while the stately

FAWLEY COURT.

and venerable tower of Henley Church appears over a thick grove, which has been planted to prevent any part of that town from being seen but that principal and pleasing object. The view down the river includes a very fine reach of it, which is enlivened by an island, tastefully planted, and decorated with a building of some elegance. The eye then stretches on to Greenland and Medmenham, and the high grounds that hang over Culham Court.

The church of Fawley, which is situated in the upper part of the parish, is a neat, ancient structure; and that its interior appearance is of a superior kind will be readily believed, when it is known that it is fitted up with the entire furniture of the chapel at Cannons, the magnificent seat of the Duke of Chandois, near Edgeware, in Middlesex. On the dilapidation of that stately pile, for sale, about the middle of the last century, the wainscoting, seats, gallery, pulpit, &c. were purchased by an ancestor of the present Mr. Freeman, for the purpose to which they have been so well applied. In the church-yard there is also an elegant, and well-constructed, mausoleum, for the final repose of the Freeman family.

The parsonage-house, though not visible from the Thames, possesses one of the most beautiful situations, in point of extent, variety, and romantic character, that is to be found in the vicinity of the river, from its source to the sea. The last incumbent was the Rev. Dr. Powys, Dean of Canterbury, an elegant scholar, and an excellent man; who, while this page was preparing for the press, concluded his venerable and valuable life.

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