Gents Mag 1849 part 2 p.256

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 2 p.256 description left by a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1748, appeared "one of the loveliest and most sacred seats of simplicity, almost covered with noble trees, amidst which was the ancient mansion of the Philipsons," was, from the designs of a celebrated landscape gardener, laid out in its present style of park-like elegance; and the old fortified house of its early lords was made to give way to an edifice whose classic appearance has occasioned its being, with more harmony of versification than architectural descrimination, poetically noticed as - A Grecian temple rising from the deep, erected from the designs of the late eminent architect, Sir William Chambers. On sinking the foundations of this handsome building, many pieces of armour, weapons, and cannon-balls, indubitable memorials of the days of its hero Robin, were found embedded in the soil; and other curiosities, reminiscences of that more distant aera when Roman domination governed England, testifying the former existence on this insular paradise of a structure of that powerful people, were likewise disinterred from their long repose of ages. Like most of the other neighbouring families of ancient lineage and local prominence, the Philipsons are gone also. Their race has died out, and been forgotten in the very place which they once occupied with all the authority of feudal lords. Their mouldered dust lies beneath the pavement in Windermere church, and their homes, for the most part but grey and naked ruins, know them no more. Perishing, however, as these fabrics are, thay have outlived the power of their early possessors; and, though mute and motionless in their desolation, they yet stand to proclaim the instability of all earthly greatness. Now, save this shattered remnant of their antique hall, the monument which covers their last resting-place beside the altar in the neighbouring church, some scanty records of their genealogy gathered by the local historians, the literary relics in Cartmel church, and the vanishing traditions floating about the vicinage or preserved in a contemporary ballad - all vestiges have disappeared of a family who for ages exercised an important influence over the surrounding country. H.C.M.
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