Lyme Park

My third and final Lyme Park post, featuring photographs on no particular topic.

While I was climbing the hill up to The Cage, I kept thinking of Jane Austen, and that it looked like a location from her novels. I don’t know why, because I was sure she was never this far north (she wasn’t). But I still had the feeling that it had a Jane Austen aesthetic. The house on the above picture has a souvenir shop inside it (there are tours but they were closing down as I got there, they close earlier now because of the pandemic), so I went in there–and it turns out that the 1995 Pride and Prejudice mini series was filmed here! It’s the one with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Of course, I bought a Mr Darcy fridge magnet.

I took a lot of pictures of the view from the hill on which The Cage is, but I couldn’t decide which ones to post, so I link you my video.

The Deer at Lyme Park

As promised, here is another Lyme Park post, this time animal-themed. Because they have deer.

See them, in the distance? (Also why climbing that hill was worth it.)

And here they are, closer. I don’t know what made them come down to the foot of the hill, but they look curious about something.

What I know is that they legged it back straight away. Getting this shot was pure luck, it would not have been possible only seconds later.

Apparently, the deer have been present at Lyme Park for over 600 years.

Looking it up, I see that there are a few collective nouns for deer: a bevy, a brace, a bunch, a gang, a herd, a leash, a mob, a parcel, and a rangale (never heard that word before). Oh, deer.

Finally something new to my animal collection that isn’t a cat or a bird!

Although… last September I went for a walk to one of my usual places, the wooded area near my home, pictures of which have featured on this blog numerous times, when I spotted a doe with two little ones. I literally stopped like “eh?” and she saw me too, and swiftly as a deer, they ran to hide away, before I took my phone out of my pocket. Understand that, though it is a wild, wooded place, it’s still the inner city of Manchester, so not a location where you expect this type of wildlife. How in seven hells did they get there, or indeed why they’d want to stay there, is a mystery.

I haven’t encountered them since. I hope nothing bad happened to them.

The Cage at Lyme Park

It’s not a literal cage, it’s just named that way.

Lyme Park is a huge estate to the south-east of Manchester, near the village of Disley, Cheshire. It was recommended to me ages ago but it wasn’t until I got some time off work this June that I finally made a visit there.

I ended up with around 140 photographs, which for my outings is pretty average; but now I’m struggling with what to post on the blog. So I’m going to split them into groups, same as I did with my trip to Haworth. This post is dedicated to The Cage, a structure on a top of a hill. Climbing up there took effort, not gonna lie, but the result was worth it.

More pictures from Lyme Park will follow.

ETA: When I made this post, I was either too tired or too lazy to add more info about The Cage, so I’m adding it now.

The Cage was built by the warrior priest, Sir Piers V, in 1524, and was used either as a hunting lodge or a watchtower. In 17th century it was a holding prison for poachers awaiting trial, and this is where its name comes from. In the 1730s, Giacomo Leoni rebuilt it to make it more hospitable, so that it could be used as a banqueting room. Later it was a home for estate workers.