Identifier: vertebratefaunao01cowa (find matches)
Title: The vertebrate fauna of Cheshire and Liverpool Bay
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Coward, T. A. (Thomas Alfred), 1867-1933
Subjects: Vertebrates Vertebrates
Publisher: London : Witherby
Contributing Library: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Text Appearing Before Image:
over Macclesfield Forest.. Mr. J. Whitaker‡ states that there
were in 1892 about one hundred and seventy head of rather
small but stoutly-built Deer ; the average weight of stags
is two hundred and twenty pounds and of hinds one hundred
and twenty pounds. There are at the present about three
hundred head. Some of the Deer are confined within the
park, but the majority roam over the open moorland of
some eight hundred acres, known as the Park Moor, which
extends from Bowstonegate to Bakestonedale.
The custom of driving the Deer at Lyme, in order to
count them, which obtained during the eighteenth century,
is the subject of a picture in the Hall. The scene was
painted by T. Smith, and a print, engraved from this picture
by F. Vivares in 1745, bears the inscription: " A view
in Lyme Park (with that extraordinary custom of driving
* Journal Archit, Archaeolog. and Hist. Soc. of Cheshire, 1905, pp. 104-
108.
† Sir Jone Done, wearing the horn ; an oil painting, dated 1619, in the
possession of the Earl of Haddington at Arderne Hall, Tarporley.
‡ A Descriptive List of Deer Parks, etc., pp. 29-32.
Text Appearing After Image:

DRIVING THE DEAR AT LYME
From a print of the oil painting in the possession of Lord Newton.

MAMMALS 67

the stags), the property of Peter Legh, Esq., to whom this
plate is inscribed by his most humble servant, T. Smith."
In the middle distance the Deer are seen swimming across
a pool, their heads only above water ; in the foreground
three have landed, and two, reared on their hind-legs, are
striking at one another with their fore-feet. On the far
side of the pool are Mr. Legh and his lady on horseback,
accompanied by Joseph Watson, the park-keeper, also
mounted. Joseph Watson, according to the record on his
monument in Disley churchyard, first perfected the art of
driving the Deer ; he died at the age of one hundred and four
in 1753, having been park-keeper at Lyme for sixty-four
years. Watson* once undertook to drive twelve brace of
stags, for a wager of five hundred guineas, from Lyme to
Windsor Forest, and successfully accomplished the feat.
Arthur Wilson, the historian, who was born in 1569, went,
when a young man, to Lyme in the train of the Earl of Essex.
The following story is from his autobiography, which was
edited by Francis Peck in 1732† :—


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