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Lyme Park

Lyme Park is an estate and park in the county of Cheshire, although the estate lies wholly within the Peak District National Park. It is an ancient estate that was given to Sir Thomas Danyers in 1346 by a grateful King Edward III after a battle at Caen. Danyers then passed the estate to his son-in-law, Sir Piers Legh, in 1388. It remained in the family until 1946, when it was given to the National Trust. The principal feature of the park is Lyme Hall, which offers a memorable glimpse of a genteel and extravagant age and has now become even better known since its use as the location for “Pemberley”, the home of Mr. Darcy, the BBC’s 1995 production of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice. The grounds now form a country park owned and managed by the National Trust and supported by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council. A leaflet has been produced to help you get the best out of the grounds and gardens.

Not much remains of the original Elizabethan manor house; in the 18th century the house was redesigned to resemble an Italian palazzo, the work of Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni. Undaunted by the bleak landscape and climate of the surrounding Peak District, Leoni built a corner of Italy here in this much harsher countryside. Inside the mansion there is a mixture of styles: the elegant Leoni-designed rooms with rich rococo ceilings, the panelled Tudor drawing room, and two surviving Elizabethan rooms. Much of the three-dimensional internal carving is attributed to Grinling Gibbons, though a lot of the work was also undertaken by local craftsmen. Another glory of the house is the collection of early 17th-century Mortlake tapestries, produced in what was then the village of Mortlake outside London.

As well as the fantastic splendour of the manor house, the estate includes a 17-acre Victorian garden, laid out with impressive bedding schemes, a sunken parterre, an Edwardian rose garden, Jekyll-style herbaceous borders, a reflection lake, a ravine garden and Wyatt conservatory. The garden is surrounded by 1,400 acres of medieval moorland, woodland and parkland, and is home for many Red Deer and Fallow Deer. Also within the garden is an unusual landmark, The Cage: built as a hunting lodge, it served as a watchtower from which to follow the stag hunts but was later used as a lockup for poachers. After years of disuse it has now been restored.