Beyond the pale

I've just had a wonderful afternoon out with a few friends walking part of the line of the pale - the old boundary of the deer park - at Leagram, and looking for evidence of salters. The deer park was enclosed to keep the deer inside, ready for hunting, and the pale was made of a deep ditch, planted with thorn bushes and topped with a wooden fence. A salter was a place where deer outside the park, in our case in the Royal Forest of Bowland, could leap over the pale to eat the lush grass in the park. It was built in a clever way: lower on the inside and higher outside, so that once the deer had got into the park they could not jump back out again. Here's a sketch from Jennie showing what a salter might have looked like:

We have unearthed a couple of old maps from 1595 and 1608 which show the line of the pale and the site of gates and salters, and we are trying to locate these in today's landscape.

A 1595 map of Leagram Park, reproduced by kind permission of Lancashire Archives (DDST Box 15 No.9)

We hope to survey some of the pale in detail, with expert guidance provided by English Heritage, and we are planning a workshop on Sunday 28th April so please get in touch if you would like to join in and help: cathy.hopley@lancashire.gov.uk

Discoveries at the Harris Art Gallery

Yesterday I went to the Harris Art Gallery in Preston with a small group of our volunteer researchers. We had arranged to meet the cuartor there to view some watercolours painted in the 1840's by John Weld who was the owner of Leagram Park estate: one of our deer parks. The paintings are not currently on view, so we were allowed 'behind the scenes' to see them and to arrange to have digital copies made of them.

Here we are viewing the paintings

John Weld was a fascinating man who travelled around Europe and much of England drawing and  painting pituresque scenes and church interiors. He was also an archaeologist and historian, and he wrote a 'History of Leagram' which was the basis of much of our research into the deer park.

We hope to be able to display copies of some of the paintings on our website, and to trace some house and family histories related to them and the tenants of the park. If possible we will arrange for the originals to be on view at an open day in Chipping which we are planning for later on in the year.

further research and sketching

What a glorious day here in Bowland today, the oystercatchers are calling and Spring is in the air!

Back at the deer park we are continuing to research our two parks at Radholme and Leagram, and focussing interest on the late 15th century. Jennie is drawing reconstruction illustrations to include some local families and places too. We have decided to set them in the 1480's when Edward Stanley was the park keeper and our schools pack will include some role-playing about him, his family and local villagers. This will tie in with the primary school history curriculum which focusses on the Tudor period - and it is great for me as I am in the middle of reading Hilary Mantel's books about Thomas Cromwell, largely set in 1535! Sadly, Henry VIII never visited our Royal Forest, but  the books do give you an idea of what England was like at that time.

We are also continuing to look into the boundary dispute between Richard Shireburn, who owned Leagram Park in 1608, and the Master Forester of nearby Bowland Forest. We have a wonderful map from The National Archives which was drawn up to help resolve the argument, and it is very accurate. In the coming months we will be using it to do some field surveys to map out the line of the pale and the many deer leaps that appeared to exist along it. If you'd like to get involved in this, please get in touch: cathy.hopley@lancashire.gov.uk

Have a look at one of Jennie's sketches of leaping fallow deer on her facebook page