L e i g h C o u r t , S o m e r s e t s h i r e . ^ * This park,' says M r . I lulling,' ‘ which once
contained a herd of “ W ild ” Cattle, formerly belonged to the Augustinian Canons
of Bristol, and was beautifully wooded. It is now the property of Sir William
Miles, Bart., whose father in 1808 purchased it from the heirs of Lady Norton.
Two years previously—».«, in 1806— the Wild Cattle there had become so savage
that the owner was obliged to have them shot.2 There is no clue to their origin,
and this is the only instance yet known of a wild herd in the West of England.’
No pictures of this herd appear to exist.
L y m e P a r k , C h e s h i r e .— Formerly part of the Forest of Macclesfield, Lyme
Park was granted at the end of the fourteenth century by Richard II. to Sir Piers
Legh, who was standard-bearer to Edward the Black Prince at the battle of Crecy.
The breed of cattle was considered to be as old as the enclosure of the park.
Bewick, writing in 1790, mentions the herd, but gives no particulars of it.
Hansall in his.'History of Cheshire’ (1817) says: * In Lyme Park, which contains
about one thousand Cheshire acres, is a herd of upwards of twenty wild cattle,
similar to those in Lord Tankerville’s park at Chillingham, chiefly white with
red ears. They have been in the park from time immemorial, and tradition says
they are-indigenous.’ Storer visited the park in August 1875, and found that the
herd only consisted of four animals, a bull, a cow, and two heifers. The
numbers in past times had seldom exceeded fourteen or fifteen. Storer says that
they were of * the genuine ancient type,’ pure white with black muzzle and black
circle round the eyes* and hoofs. They had also some black above the hoof on
the front of the fore leg. The ears were generally red, but in some cases they
were tipped with blue. The horns were of an intermediate character between the
Chillingham and Chartley breeds; larger and not so upright as those of the
Chillingham animals.
I give illustrations of the pure type and that obtained after the Gisburne
cross (introduced in 1859), taken from some photographs kindly lent to me by
Mr. T. A. Coward. It is interesting to note that after the cross with the * polled ’
Gisburne the horns are of the * longhorn ’ character.
In habits the old Lyme herd resembled the Chillingham Cattle. In size it
is generally admitted that they were larger than any of. the ‘W ild ’ Cattle now
existing in this country. The neck and dewlap was large, and there was an
abundance of long curly hair on the head and fore quarters.
‘ Batista B ritish Animals, pp. 239, 240. s shirleJti D a r p ^ ^ ^
* No traces of this appear in the photographs of stuffed Bonds
Mr. Charles Oldham says 1 that between 1856 and i860 there was from thirty
to thirty-five head in the park. * Had the wiser policy,’ he says, 1 adopted at
Chillingham, of steering the animals when from two to four years old, and thereby
ensuring a good bull selection, been practised at Lyme, the cattle might have
survived till now, for one cause of the decline of the herd was the retention at
one time of a single bull, which proved infertile.’
In June 1877 Mr. A. H. Cocks found two bulls, two cows, and two heifers
at Lyme. In spite of introductions from Vaynol and Chartley the herd gradually
dwindled away, and ceased to exist in 1884.
Mr. J. Whitaker, who has contributed many excellent notes on the White
Cattle, was one of the last to see the remnants of this herij in 1879: He writes2:
‘When I looked over (the wall) I found they were within about one hundred
yards of where I was: a bull, a white cow, and a dark-coloured cow. This
(last-named) animal is the result of a cross with a Chartley bull.’
In August 1884 Mr. T. A. Coward found only a white cow, a black cow, and a
young bull bred from the black cow by a Chartley bull which had been introduced
in 1877, and which was shot in 1882 or 1883. In November 1885 the last two
cows were shot, and the bull was steered and fattened for the butcher (Oldham).
M i d d l e t o n P a r k , L a n c a s h i r e .— Tradition says that the Middleton herd
came originally from Whalley, but it is possible that they may have been driven
in from the old forest of Bowland. Dr. Leigh thought that they came originally
from the Highlands of Scotland. In 1765 the herd was removed to Gunton
Park, Lord Suffield’s estate in Norfolk, where they were domesticated. Here
they declined and died out in 1853. Some, however, were transferred to Blickling
Hall between the years 1793 and 1810, and others were bought by Mr. Cator of
Woodbastwick near Norwich, and were subsequently crossed with shorthorns. In
187s there were twenty-three of these cattle at Blickling, and in 1887 the herd
consisted of twenty-one individuals.
Formerly these cattle were pure white, some with black and some with
brown ears, but those at Blickling to-day are frequently spotted all over like flea-
bitten Arab horses. They have black, brown, red, and white ears.
The Woodbastwick herd originated in 1840 as an offshoot of the Gunton
Park herd. For twenty years they were kept pure, but in i860 a shorthorn bull
was introduced, so that their subsequent history is of little interest to naturalists.
In 1887 the herd numbered twenty-six animals.
l ZMhgisS, 1891, pp. 81-87. ’ Scribblitsgs o f a Htigtrsm ifa lttra lisl, p. 54.