It’s 1849 and spring is giving way to summer. On 29 May someone called P.W. Lachlan signs into our Visitors’ Book at Chatsworth. He names his place of origin as Lyme Hall. This was and is a large country house in Cheshire, and has many similarities with Chatsworth.

Like Chatsworth it was originally built in the 16th century but radically altered in a later age. The house was built for a family called Legh, who had owned the land since the fourteenth century. The building was remodelled in the 1720s by an Italian architect named Giacomo Leoni. He was influenced by both Palladian and Baroque architecture. The British architect Lewis Wyatt (1777-1853) made further alterations in the nineteenth century. The gardens we see today were developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In another parallel with Chatsworth Lyme has, in its grounds, a former hunting tower. At Lyme it is known as The Cage. It dates from 1580 but was rebuilt in 1737.

Lyme is surrounded by a deer park that merges with the moors of the Peak District. Red deer and fallow deer are the two dominant species. Both can also be found in parkland at Chatsworth. Fallow deer are smaller than their red cousins and have palmate antlers. They are often spotted but not always. A few are black while a few others are white. They share Lyme with Highland cattle.

Lyme Hall

Chatsworth is still a seat of the family for whom it was built. Not so Lyme. In 1946 Richard Legh, 3rd Baron Newton, gave the house and park to the National Trust and they own it today. At first it was managed by Stockport Corporation, then the Trust took direct control in 1994. In 2019 the park suffered severe flooding and part of the garden was washed away.

Lyme shelters a rare book printed by William Caxton in 1487 known as the ‘Lyme Caxton Missal.’ It is a prayer book and was one of the first books to be printed in two colours, red and black. During the reign of Edward VI, this form of mass was banned so the book was hidden. It was rediscovered in 1874 by a scholar called William Brenchley Rye. Books like this which were printed before 1501 are known as ‘incunabula’ and there is an impressive collection of these held at Chatsworth.

In 1995 the BBC broadcast a series based on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Lyme served as the location for Pemberley, the home of Mr Darcy. The famous scene where Darcy (Coilin Firth) goes for a swim was filmed in Lyme Park. Ten years later, Chatsworth was used as Pemberley in a different adaptation of the same novel. This was the film starring Keira Knightly and Matthew Macfadyen.

Unfortunately we do not know the identity of P.W. Lachlan, the 1849 visitor to Chatsworth from Lyme. He may have been a friend of the family, or perhaps more likely one of their staff.