“It was the view painted on the drop curtain- the great house standing upon its high-buttressed walls, the bright parterre of the Italian garden outspread beneath; the white plume of the fountain in the centre for ever rising and falling, and the sound of it clear and distinct carried across the intervening valley on the still windless air”.
Phyllis Sandeman. (please see here and here for my outside photoshoots).
The history of Lyme Park dates back to the Battle of Crecy, 1346; after we defeated France in this battle, Sir Thomas Danvers was rewarded with these lands by Edward, the Black Prince, son of Edward III.
Although he died in 1376, before his father, and thus never became king, the Black Prince’s legacy lives on through his warring exploits and here. In 1398, Margaret, grandson of Sir Thomas, married Piers Legh, a Lancashire landowner, and the Legh dynasty was founded.
Leghs, like Sir Thomas Danyers, were always fighters; Piers fought at Azincourt (also against France, 69 years after Crecy!) and his heirs fought in the Wars of the Roses (they were Yorkists; please see here for more on those battles), at Flodden (against Scotland), and at sea (against Spain).
Things settled down somewhat and the first draft of the modern house was built in 1570, commissioned by Sir Piers Legh VII (himself a veteran of Scottish wars). Piers, though not afraid to fight, skilfully held his own throughout the battles between Catholics and Protestants which began after Henry VIII brought the Reformation to England in 1536; although remaining Catholic, the Leghs in his day and those of his heirs, kept on the right side of England’s Protestant rulers.
The next upheaval came in 1642, when Parliamentarians rebelled against King Charles I and started the British Civil Wars. Because Richard Legh was only eight years old at the time, he was not attacked by either side.
Although there was bloodshed throughout, the victorious Parliamentary leader Oliver Cromwell executing Charles and setting up his own dictatorship (1649-58), this did not scathe Lyme.
Richard Legh served as an MP under Oliver’s son and heir Richard Cromwell (1658-60) but, while covertly supporting Sir George Booth’s uprising against Richard Cromwell (George Booth was a fellow Cheshire aristocrat; please see his home at Dunham Massey) , he managed not to piss anyone off
After Richard Cromwell was overthrown in 1660, Richard Legh (who did not seem to have any solidarity with fellow Richards!) held office under Charles I’s son, Charles II, who became king in 1660. Oliver Cromwell’s corpse was dug up and hanged but Richard Cromwell, who kept his head down, lived in English country retirement until 1712.
Charles II reigned, mostly peacefully, for 25 years, but a crisis came when his Catholic brother, James II, became king in 1685. Although James could count on the staunch support of Peter Legh (1669-1744), he was unpopular for his faith, links to France, and the belief that he wanted to make himself an absolute monarch as his father, Charles I, had tried to.
James II was overthrown by his own daughter and son in law (not everyone valued family as much as the Leghs!) William and Mary, who became monarchs in 1689. James II was exiled to France and lived until 1701, but never wielded power in England. Lacking the canny instincts of his father, Richard Legh, Peter XII was twice imprisoned for being A Jacobite, loyal to the deposed James.
After getting out of prison, Peter XII gave up politics and lived quietly at Lyme as his father had done. The Jacobites, loyal to James II and his son, James Francis Edward Stuart, and grandson, Charles Edward Stuart, rebelled against the Hanoverian monarchs (heirs of William and Mary) in 1715 and 1745.
Peter Legh XII and his son, Peter Legh XIII (1708-92), though vaguely sympathetic, did not go out of their way to support the Jacobites and accepted that their plans failed. (I’m not sure when the Leghs lost their Catholic faith and became Anglicans, but unlike some other families they were not Catholics in the modern age). Giacomo Leoni, famed Venitian architecht, sculpted a new house of peace in the 1720s (see below).
The Leghs thus came to terms with the modern world and its industry, beginning in Peter Legh XIII’s very long life. They owned mines and much of the nearby town of Disley, so had sources of income as well as the farmland they owned.
Thomas Legh (1792-1857) great-nephew of Peter XIII, further diversified and welcomed the railway to Disley, a process which began in1852 and was done by 1864. As Disley became a suburb of Stockport and came in the orbit of Manchester, Thomas built a legacy for his nephew William John Legh (1828-98), a country gentleman who had other sources of wealth and thus held his own even as the aristocracy began to decline in a process charted by David Cannadine.
William John Legh, a Tory parliamentarianwho was called “a model country gentleman” by Benjamin Disraeli, was made 1st Baron Newton and presided over the heyday of Lyme, as did his son Thomas Woodhouse, 2nd Baron Newton (1857-1942).
Lyme was powered by a small army of servants; in 1910 there were 22 house servants and 102 gardeners and farm labourers. They toiled hard; Mary and Helen Rowlinson recalled that “it was like being in a big hotel at Christmas, father used to say. But it was more like a factory when it came down to brass tacks”.
Yet it wasn’t all work; the Leghs hosted balls at Christmas and New Year where they mixed in the entrance hall on equal terms with their tenants and employees, before leaving them to get on with the ball.
The paternalistic approach was, for a time, liked by employees who would be taken care of and knew their place. However, the forces Cannadine declared could not be held off forever and workers began to leave for factory jobs in nearby Stockport and Manchester. Although they would have to fend for themselves, often in direc conditions of which Robert Roberts wrote, many did prefer this to the even lower wages and quasi-feudalism of Lyme.
The trickle of servants turned to a flood after WW1 (in which Thomas Woodhouse’s son Richard William Davenport (1888-1960) fought)- 302 Disley men fought in the war, of whom 101 died) and WW2 (in which Richard William Davenport’s son Francis Michael (1919-84) fought) and here the old country life, which had been teetering for thirty or so years before 1914, collapsed.
Richard William Davenport gave Lyme to the National Trust in 1946 and lived to see his legacy safeguarded, as did his sister Phyllis, quoted above, who saw the life of her childhood disappear but also saw Lyme values still treasured at the time of her death in 1986, as they are today. (Please read Phyllis’ book Treasure on Earth about her aristocratic childhood at Lyme; it’s more interesting than my writing, anyway!)
Here are (1,2) the entrance hall, (3) drawing room, (4) the saloon- designed by Leoni, (5) the stairs , (6) the bright gallery, (7) long gallery- a full 120 feet long!, (8) the Edwardian bathroom, (9) state bedroom, (10) the yellow bedroom.
Although a wrench to Richard, his family’s loss was the nation’s gain and we know why (and taking pleasure in the National Trust carrying on their work), The Spectator magazine said in 1917, “every member of the family was rooted to the soil whence he had sprung. To the Leghs as they reveal themselves in their letters, Lyme was ‘dear Lyme, sweet Lyme’”
kianamaiart
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
2087
turnnoffyourmind
