The house itself stood in a shallow valley, surrounded by sloping meadows, well sprinkled with elm trees, at the end of a small village of cottages, each well provided with a garden, scattered about prettily on either side of the road.  It was sufficiently commodious to hold pupils in addition to a growing family, and was in those times considered to be above the average of parsonages; but the rooms were finished with less elegance than would now be found in the most ordinary dwellings.  No cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling; while the beams which supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their naked simplicity, covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash:  accordingly it has since been considered unworthy of being the Rectory house of a family living, and about forty-five years ago it was pulled down for the purpose of erecting a new house in a far better situation on the opposite side of the valley.

North of the house, the road from Deane to Popham Lane ran at a sufficient distance from the front to allow a carriage drive, through turf and trees.  On the south side the ground rose gently, and was occupied by one of those old-fashioned gardens in which vegetables and flowers are combined, flanked and protected on the east by one of the thatched mud walls common in that country, and overshadowed by fine elms.  Along the upper or southern side of this garden, ran a terrace of the finest turf, which must have been in the writer’s thoughts when she described Catharine Morland’s childish delight in ’rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.’

But the chief beauty of Steventon consisted in its hedgerows.  A hedgerow, in that country, does not mean a thin formal line of quickset, but an irregular border of copse-wood and timber, often wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart track.  Under its shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found; sometimes, the first bird’s-nest; and, now and then, the unwelcome adder.  Two such hedgerows radiated, as it were, from the parsonage garden.  One, a continuation of the turf terrace, proceeded westward, forming the southern boundary of the home meadows; and was formed into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, entitled ‘The Wood Walk.’  The other ran straight up the hill, under the name of ‘The Church Walk,’ because it led to the parish church, as well as to a fine old manor-house, of Henry VIII.’s time, occupied by a family named Digweed, who have for more than a century rented it, together with the chief farm in the parish.  The church itself—­I speak of it as it then was, before the improvements made by the present rector—­

         A little spireless fane,
   Just seen above the woody lane,