I met Randal and the gig at the bottom; and, falling into a side road to the left, we drove sedately round, through the gateway, and into the great court in front of the house.
The road by which we had come lay right at the back.
Hanbury Court is a vast red-brick house--at least, it is cased in part with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place are of brick,--with stone facings at every corner, and door, and window, such as you see at Hampton Court.

At the back are the gables, and arched doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady Ludlow used to tell us) that it was once a priory.

There was a prior's parlour, I know--only we called it Mrs.Medlicott's room; and there was a tithe-barn as big as a church, and rows of fish-ponds, all got ready for the monks' fasting-days in old time.

But all this I did not see till afterwards.

I hardly noticed, this first night, the great Virginian Creeper (said to have been the first planted in England by one of my lady's ancestors) that half covered the front of the house.