Lyme Park
Lyme Park is a large estate south of Disley, Cheshire, England. It is managed by the National Trust and consists of a mansion house surrounded by formal gardens and a deer park in the Peak District National Park. The house is the largest in Cheshire and is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building.
The estate was granted to Sir Thomas d'Anyers in 1346 and passed to the Leghs of Lyme by marriage in 1388. It remained in the possession of the Legh family until 1946, when it was given to the National Trust. The house dates from the latter part of the 16th century. Modifications were made to it in the 1720s by Giacomo Leoni, who retained some of the Elizabethan features and added others, particularly the courtyard and the south range. It is difficult to classify Leoni's work at Lyme, as it contains elements of both Palladian and Baroque styles. Further modifications were made by Lewis Wyatt in the 19th century, especially to the interior. Formal gardens were created and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The house, gardens and park have been used as locations for filming and they are open to the public. The Lyme Caxton Missal, an early printed book by William Caxton, is on display in the Library.
History
The land now occupied by Lyme Park was granted to Piers Legh and his wife Margaret d'Anyers, with letters patent dated 4 January 1398, by Richard II, son of Edward, the Black Prince. Margaret d'Anyers' father, Sir Thomas d'Anyers, had taken part in retrieving the standard of the Black Prince at the Battle of Crécy in 1346 and was rewarded with annuity of 40 marks a year by the Black Prince, drawn on his Cheshire estate, and which could be exchanged for land of that value belonging to the Black Prince. Sir Thomas died in 1354 and the annuity passed to his daughter Margaret, who married the first Piers Legh in 1388. Richard II favoured Piers and granted his family a coat of arms in 1397 and the estate of Lyme Handley in 1398 redeeming the annuity. However, Piers was executed two years later by Richard's rival for the throne, Henry Bolingbroke.When Sir Piers Legh II was wounded in the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, his mastiff stood over and protected him for many hours through the battle. The mastiff was later returned to Legh's home and was the foundation of the Lyme Hall Mastiffs. They were bred at the hall and kept separate from other strains, figuring prominently in founding the modern breed. The strain died out around the beginning of the 20th century.
The first record of a house on the site is in a manuscript folio dated 1465, but that house was demolished when construction of the present building began during the life of Piers Legh VII, in the middle of the 16th century. This house, by an unknown designer, was L-shaped in plan with east and north ranges; piecemeal additions were made to it during the 17th century. In the 1720s, Giacomo Leoni, an architect from Venice, added a south range to the house creating a courtyard plan, and made other changes. While he retained some of its Elizabethan features, many of his changes were in a mixture of Palladian and Baroque styles. During the latter part of the 18th century Piers Legh XIII bought most of the furniture which is in the house today. However, the family fortunes declined and the house began to deteriorate. In the early 19th century the estate was owned by Thomas Legh, who commissioned Lewis Wyatt to restore the house between 1816 and 1822. Wyatt's alterations were mainly to the interior, where he remodelled every room. Leoni had intended to add a cupola to the south range but this never materialised. Instead, Wyatt added a tower-like structure to provide bedrooms for the servants. He also added a one-storey block to the east range, containing a dining-room. Later in the century, William Legh, 1st Baron Newton added stables and other buildings to the estate, creating the Dutch Garden. Further alterations were made to the gardens by Thomas Legh, 2nd Baron Newton and his wife during the early 20th century. During the Second World War, the park was used as a Royal Air Force lorry depot. In 1946 Richard Legh, 3rd Baron Newton, gave Lyme Park to the National Trust. From 1947, the estate was managed by Stockport Corporation and its successor Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council until 1994, when the National Trust took direct control.
House
Exterior
The house is the largest in Cheshire, measuring overall by round a courtyard plan. The older part is built in coursed, squared buff sandstone rubble with sandstone dressings; the later work is in ashlar sandstone. The whole house has a roof of Welsh slates. The symmetrical north face is of 15 bays in three storeys; its central bay consists of a slightly protruding gateway. The arched doorway in this bay has Doric columns with a niche on each side.Above the doorway are three more Doric columns with a pediment, and above this are three further columns. Over all this are four further columns with an open pediment bearing an image of Minerva. The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner referred to this gateway as "the craziest Elizabethan frontispiece." The endmost three bays on each side project slightly forwards. The ground floors of the three outer bays on each side are rusticated, and their upper storeys are divided by large Composite pilasters. The west front is also in three storeys, with nine bays; the outer two bays on each side project forward. The ground floor is rusticated and the upper floors are smooth.
Image:Lyme Hall 02.jpg|thumb|left|Gateway and north front of house
The symmetrical 15-bay three-storey south front overlooking the lake is the work of Leoni. Although Leoni had been influenced by the works and principles of Andrea Palladio, both Pevsner and the authors of the citation in the National Heritage List for England agree that the design of this front is more Baroque than Palladian.
The bottom storey is rusticated with arched windows, and the other storeys are smooth with rectangular windows. The middle three bays consist of a portico of which the lowest storey has three arches. Above this arise four giant fluted Ionic columns supporting a triangular pediment. Standing on the pediment are three lead statues, of Neptune, Venus and Pan. The pediment partly hides Wyatt's blind balustraded ashlar attic block. The other bays are separated by plain Ionic pilasters and the end three bays on each side protrude slightly. The nine-bay three-storey east front is mostly Elizabethan in style and has Wyatt's single-storey extension protruding from its centre. The courtyard was remodelled by Leoni, who gave it a rusticated cloister on all sides. Above the cloister the architecture differs on the four sides although all the windows on the first floor have pediments.
On the west side is a one-bay centrepiece with a window between two Doric pilasters; on the south and north are three windows with four similar pilasters; and on the east front is the grand entrance with a portal in a Tuscan aedicule. This entrance is between the first and second storeys and is approached by symmetrical pairs of stairs with iron balusters, which were made in 1734 by John Gardom of Baslow, Derbyshire. In the centre of the courtyard is an Italian Renaissance well-head, surrounded by chequered pink and white stone, simulating marble.
Interior
The Entrance Hall, which is in the east range, was remodelled by Leoni. It is asymmetrical and contains giant pilasters and a screen of three fluted Ionic columns. The doorway to the courtyard has an open pediment. A hinged picture can be swung out from the wall to reveal a squint looking into the Entrance Hall.Also in the Entrance Hall are tapestries which were woven at the Mortlake Tapestry Works between 1623 and 1636. They were originally in the Leghs' London home in Belgrave Square and were moved to Lyme in 1903. In order to accommodate them, the interior decorator, Amadée Joubert, had to make alterations, including the removal of a tabernacle and cutting out four of the pilasters. To the south of the Entrance Hall is the Library, and to the east is Wyatt's Dining Room, which has a stucco ceiling and a carved overmantel both in a late 17th-century style, as well as a frieze. The decoration of this room is considered to be a rare early example of the Wrenaissance style.
To the north of the Entrance Hall are the two principal Elizabethan rooms, the Drawing Room and the Stag Parlour. The Drawing Room is panelled with intersecting arches above which is a marquetry frieze. The ceiling has studded bands, strapwork cartouches and a broad frieze. Over the fireplace is a large stone overmantel, which is decorated with pairs of atlantes and caryatids framing the arms of Elizabeth I. The stained glass in this room includes medieval glass that was moved from the original Lyme Hall to Disley Church and returned to Lyme in 1835. The Stag Parlour has a chimneypiece depicting an Elizabethan house and hunting scenes, and it includes the arms of James I.
The other Elizabethan rooms in the house are the Stone Parlour on the ground floor, and the Long Gallery, which is on the top floor of the east range. The Long Gallery also has a chimneypiece with the arms of Elizabeth I. The Grand Staircase dates from the remodelling by Leoni and it has a Baroque ceiling. The Saloon is on the first floor of the south range, behind the portico. Its ceiling is decorated in rococo style, and the room contains wooden carvings that have been attributed to Grinling Gibbons. The Chapel, in the northeast corner of the ground floor, also contains detailed carvings.