The Great Wall
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Opposite these houses is first the Heath Extension and then the Great Wall, a masterly derivation by Charles Wade from "early Lutyens". It has been said so often (and rightly) that Unwin was inspired by medieval German towns, particularly Rothenburg in creating this illusion of a "city wall" that it has been overlooked how much its detailed design is derived from Lutyens's garden at Orchards, near Godalming (designed 1897, completed 1900). The big round-arched entrance to the gardens behind the wall, with their radiating voussoirs of tiles-on-edge, are derived directly from those which flank the kitchen garden at Orchards; the perky weather-boarded gazebos are influenced by the Orchards' bothies. Furthermore, Wade must have observed how Lutyens had himself created a "city wall" at Orchards by means of a raised parapet walk giving views over the surrounding countryside. Behind the wall a second line of defence is given by the backs (as carefully considered as the fronts) of the large individual houses, the most expensive in the Older Suburb, which form a varied but continuous solid band of horizontal geometry behind which rises Lutyens's great steeple of St. Jude's.


 
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