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down to it and to that park and mansion of Barham Court which, had his ancestors of remote times done their duty by posterity, the author of the Ingoldsby Legends firmly believed would have been his.

But here we are come, on the high road, to a striking entrance to a park. The place seems strangely familiar, yet the "Eagle Gates," as the countryfolk call them, of this domain of Broome Park are certainly unknown to us. The mystery is only explained by referring to the woodcut which prefaces most editions of the Ingoldsby Legends, and purports to be a view of "Tappington, taken from the Folkestone Road." Then it is seen that the illustration rather closely resembles this spot, with the trifling exceptions that eagles, and not lions, surmount the pillars, and that the mansion of Broome is really not to be seen through the gateway, although clearly visible a few yards away, when it is seen to be not unlike the house pictured. Many have been the perplexed pilgrims who have vainly sought the ancestral Ingoldsby gates and chimneys between Canterbury and Folkestone, lured to the quest by the original Preface to the Legends. Broome Park, whose lovely demesne is criss-crossed by turfy paths and tracks freely open to the explorer, is beautifully undulating and thickly wooded. In its midst stands the mansion, built in the last years of the seventeenth century by one of the extinct Dixwell family, and gabled, chimneyed, and generally as picturesque as Barham "most pseudonymously described it, under the title of "Tappington Hall."

The Oxenden family have long owned the beautiful old place, which still contains a "powdering

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BROOME PARK: THE REAL ORIGINAL OF TAPPINGTON HALL.

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closet," as used in the bygone days of huge headdresses and powdered hair. My lady would sit in her boudoir with her head thrust through a hatch in the wall into the "powdering closet"-a contrivance necessary to prevent the powder being scattered over everything.

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Here, by the " Eagle Gates," the road branches, the left-hand route continuing to Dover, the righthand to Folkestone. This is the "beautiful green lane" of the Preface to the Legends. "Here," says that Preface, addressed to the incredulous who did not believe in the existence of Tappington Hall -"here a beautiful green lane, diverging abruptly to the right, will carry them through the Oxenden

plantations and the unpretending village of Denton, to the foot of a very respectable hill-as hills go in this part of Europe. On reaching its summit, let them look straight before them-and if, among the hanging woods which crown the opposite side of the valley, they cannot distinguish an antiquated manor house of Elizabethan architecture, with its gable ends, stone stanchions, and tortuous chimneys rising above the surrounding trees, why, the sooner they procure a pair of Dollond's patent spectacles the better. If, on the contrary, they can manage to descry it, and, proceeding some five or six furlongs through the avenue, will ring at the Lodgegate-they cannot mistake the stone lion with the Ingoldsby escutcheon (Ermine, a saltire engrained Gules) in his paws-they will be received with a hearty old English welcome."

Let us, then, proceed along the Folkestone Road, with the Oxenden plantations-now grown into dense woods of larch and pine-on the right. Wayfarers are scarce, and the lovely scenery of Broome Park and the road into Denton is quite solitary. A ladder-stile leaps the rustic fence; birds chatter and quarrel in the trees, but as you come into the hamlet of Denton, it is, in its quaint oldworld appearance and apparent emptiness, like some stage scene with the actors called off. Denton is a triangular strip of village green, surrounded by picturesque cottages, and with the old sign of the "Red Lion inn planted romantically in the centre. Beyond it comes Denton Court, screened from the road by its timbered park, with Denton Chapel close by. Of this you may read in the Legends; but those who, relying too implicitly upon

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