What do you know? It's raining again! despite the rain, Malcolm and I managed two short walks this morning, firstly to Aldi for a little shopping and then a quick walk to the Manners Floods lake. Both walks taken with umbrella at the ready!
Yesterday's walk up the hill to the site of the old Shipley Hall, revealed evidence of the grand gardens of the estate and a cunning device designed to keep animals - wild or domestic - out of the formal, Italianate gardens around the house. I refer to the Ha-ha.
The Ha-ha is, essentially a deep trench, sloping on one side and held vertically on the other by a wall. It was designed as an 'invisible' boundary around a garden. Invisible from the main house. As you can see in the following drawing, the line of sight from the 'house' is uninterrupted by the wall, which remains an effective barrier to prospective interlopers.
The Ha-ha around old Shipley Hall is built in a most attractive herringbone pattern of red brick and is rather less of a barrier than it once was as the trench has filled in somewhat and has been breached by trees and brambles.
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