There is nothing grander in the three kingdoms than Lord Waterford’s seat, Curraghmore.  Taken with the adjoining woods, the demesne contains five thousand acres.  The special feature of this superb place is grandeur; “not that arising from the costly and laborious exertions of man, but rather the magnificence of Nature.  The beauty of the situation consists in the lofty hills, rich vales and almost impenetrable woods, which deceive the eye and give the idea of boundless forests.  The variety of the scenery is calculated to please in the highest degree, and to gratify every taste.”

At Lyme Park, the splendid old seat of the Leghs in Cheshire, “a very remarkable custom,” says Lysons, “of driving the red deer, which has not been practiced in any other park, either in England or abroad, was established about a century ago by an old park-keeper, who occupied that position for seventy years, dying at over one hundred years of age.  It was his custom in May and June, when the animals’ horns were tender, to go on horseback, with a rod in his hand, round the hills of this extensive park, and, having collected the deer, to drive them before him like a herd of common horned cattle, sometimes even opening a gate for them to pass through.  When they came to a place before the hall called the Deer-Clod, they would stand in a collected body as long as the spectators thought fit; the young ones following their dams, and the old stags rising one against another and combating with their fore feet, not daring at this season of the year to make use of their horns.  At the command of the keeper they would then move forward to a large piece of water and swim through the whole length of it, after which they were allowed to disperse.”

Following the example of the abbots, many of the bishops formerly had deer-parks, and up to 1831 the bishop of Durham, a prince-palatine in his diocese, had a park at his country-seat, still his residence, Bishops-Auckland; but now the only prelate enjoying this distinction is the bishop of Winchester, at Farnham Castle, in Hampshire.

“There are some,” says a writer in an early number of the Westminster Review, “who enclose immense possessions with walls and gates, and employ keepers with guns to guard every avenue to the vast solitudes by which they choose to be surrounded.  Let such men pitch their tents in the deserts of Sahara or the wild prairies of America.  What business have they here in the midst of a civilized community, linked together by chains of mutual obligation and dependence?” These observations apply to few private parks now-a-days.  Permission to drive, ride or walk through them is rarely refused.  Almost the only cases where there is much strictness in this respect are those of parks situated near a great watering place, such as Brighton or Tonbridge Wells.  Thus, at the former, Lord Chichester’s rule is that all persons on horseback or in carriages may pass through his ground, but foot-passengers are not allowed.