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