Port Eliot Red Book: Unity Between the House and Church

OF UNITY

It is not only by uniting the house with the Abbey that we may expect to produce that "tout en semble" which is always desirable, but the whole town of St. Germains – by the neatness of repair and some attention to the public buildings – may be made to appear what it really is: a part of the place. The School or Court House is so very conspicuous from its situations that it can never effectually be hid by any plantation. I must therefore advise that the front towards Port Eliot (at least) should be battlemented, that it may not be at variance in its character. The new stables – together with every other building in the town, by assuming the Gothic style, would become parts of the same magnificent and picturesque whole.

So far, the buildings only will contribute to the unity of design, but this unity should also be extended to the Grounds. The several parts of Port Eliot are truly beautiful in themselves, but they are disjointed and detached from each other, and there is evidently a deficiency of that kind of Park or lawn which modern gardening expects as an accompaniment to a large Mansion. The confinement of small inclosures, and the motley appearance of land appropriated to agriculture, is very incompatible with the scenery of a park.*

*This subject has been fully treated in my remarks on Antony, a Seat of R. P. Carew Esqr.

For ease of reading, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized.