page_title: Sandleford Priory (country house)
section_title: Mary Morgan 1791
hierarchical_section_title: Sandleford Priory (country house) / Past descriptions of the house and estate / Mary Morgan 1791
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of chapel at Sandleford Priory, 1906, by Evelyn Elizabeth Myers (c. 1872-1909).
context_page_description: Sandleford Priory is a largely 18th century country house at Sandleford in the civil parish of Greenham in the English county of Berkshire. It incorporates the chapel of a former monastery and is currently the home of St Gabriel's School.
  After the old monastery on the site was abandoned by its canons, the estate was given to the Dean and Canons of Windsor. They leased it out as a farm to various tenants before the Kingsmill family from Sydmonton Court converted it into a country house. This was subsequently much extended and elaborated by a later resident, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu.
context_section_description: Mary Morgan (died 11 July 1808, aged 59), one of the two daughters of the Ipswich composer Joseph Gibbs (died 1788), and wife to Rev. Caesar Morgan, DD, (died 1812, aged 62), vicar of Wisbech and then Rector of St James' Church, Stretham, Cambridgeshire and (from 1804) a Prebendary of Ely, in her A Tour to Milford Haven, in the year 1791 published in 1795, wrote (Letter V, To Miss B _ _ _ _ , Burfield [ Burghfield ], 13 July 1791):
  ...I felt myself sufficiently gratified, that a great portion of genius is possessed by my sex; I was entirely devoid of dread or envy.After driving twenty miles through a very pleasant country, and through the pretty town of Newbury, we entered Mrs. Montagu's park, which seemed to have undergone some recent improvements, as the trees were many of them newly planted. The approach to the house is a fine lawn, with sheep feeding upon it. This gives you the idea of beauty blended with utility, which always produces agreeable sensations in the mind...
  ...In this wing is an elegant dressing-room above stairs. This too has a large bow, on the outside of which there is a very spacious balcony, surrounded by iron balustrades. The balcony commands a distant view of the Hampshire hills, and an extensive diversified country. The small village of Newton in the Valley has an humble simplicity in it, that is agreeably contrasted with the lofty hills beyond it...
  ...When we withdrew to go to bed, we were ushered up stairs by the major domo, with a wax light in each hand. I found the bedroom lighted up, and a female waiting in it ready to undress me. Mrs M.-- was not conducted into my room, but into a dressing-room adjoining, by a door that opened into a passage. Reflecting on this, to me unusual ceremony, I almost began to fancy myself a bride again; or else, that I was transported into some fairy region, where I was to be waited upon by spirits, that were every where attending without being called for...
  ...In the dressing-room there was a collection of books; amongst them I found your friend Miss Cornelia Knight's Dinarbas. Here you may amuse yourself in the morning, if you please, till dinner calls you again to society.
  The grounds are laid out with the same Attic taste, as the house. Through a great part of them Mrs. Montagu has trained a river, which was little more than a ditch; and means to extend it still further... she has likewise cut a winding path through her plantations. It is a carriage way and is a mile in length. It is also a very pleasant walk, and may serve; 'or for study, or for love' being perfectly secluded. At agreeable distances are benches under the shadow of a large tree, or the shelter of a close hedge interwoven with woodbines and honeysuckles.
  When walking in the grounds, I observed an extraordinary degree of cleanliness and decency in the men, who were at work in them. Upon enquiry I found they were all fed and cloathed by her hand. I perceived too that many of them had some great defect, occasioned by age, natural infirmity, or misfortune, being either blind, deaf, dumb, or lame; yet she so paired them, and fitted their employments to their several faculties, that the remaining senses of one served to supply the deficiencies of the other. By this stroke of benevolent ingenuity, though she does not get so much work done, as she would by stronger and abler men; she has the heart-felt satisfaction of making those useful and happy members of society, whom nobody else would employ, and who, but for her, must be dependent upon a parish for an idle and scanty substance. I hope it is not prophane to say, she has made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk. 
  The whole of this place suggested to me the idea of a Roman villa. There is every thing for use as well as beauty. The farm and dairy are not omitted; they supply the family and table with all things necessary and delicate. In short, there is a style in every part of it, that bespeaks a superior degree of judgment. Nothing is gaudy or superfluous, yet nothing is wanting. Native genius, matured by 
caption: Photograph of the chapel at Sandleford Priory, 1906, by Evelyn Elizabeth Myers (c. 1872–1909).
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