DAY TRIPS : NATIONAL TRUST LYME
A DAY OUT AT LYME PARK
A MILE UP THE ROAD
The brown tourist information sign invited me to turn right, through the ornate gates, to Lyme Park.
It was a short drive, down one of those narrow roads that makes you breathe in when a car comes the other way, to the ticket hut. Even on a Thursday lunchtime, before the school holidays, there were a couple of cars ahead of me.
Once it was my turn to pull up at the ticket hut, with its menu of pricing options, I unwound my window. I got a friendly greeting and showed my pass. I had entered an unrelated prize draw and won a free National Trust day pass. This was where I was choosing to use it.
I collected a map, which even at first glance showed there was a lot to see in a day, and that was me ready to start my visit.
“Carry on for a mile up the road and you will find the house and car park”. A mile! You forget how big some of these estates were.
Its not a put your foot down kind of place, so I drove slowly along the tarmac road through open moorland, and a sprinkling of trees.
A tower on the hill came into view. Underneath a herd of animals. Those were antlers. There was a herd of deer just minding their own business.
I hadn’t even reached the car park and already I knew I was in for an interesting day at National Trust Lyme.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Where is National Trust Lyme?
National Trust Lyme Park is located in the North West of England, in Disley in the county of Cheshire. It is close to Stockport, on the boundary of Greater Manchester and is also close to the Peak District National Park.
Entry Fees
I was getting a free visit to the house and gardens of Lyme Park, with my one day National Trust pass.
In fact it is free for National Trust members generally.
Other than that you can pay to just visit the grounds, which would definitely be worth it for a day trip. A combined ticket for the house and grounds costs a bit more. Car parking is included with both.
They make a point of letting you know that the price is per person, not per car, although they do have a family ticket.
HELPFUL HINT: The house is closed on Wednesdays. Beware if visiting that is part of your plan.
Parking Up
There was plenty of space in the car park when I arrived. It is overlooked by the side of Lyme House.
It had taken me about an hour and a quarter to drive from home and was around lunchtime when I finally parked up.
The car park has a kiosk which served drinks, snacks and ice cream. There were also a few picnic tables scattered about.
ice cream
There are a couple of cafes around the estate too, so food and drinks are available if you need them.
I had actually taken a packed lunch, so thought I’d build up my energy for the afternoon before I began and ate that in the car. It felt like a proper day trip out!
Then to my next thought. The nearest toilets were up at the house, so that really decided where I was going to start my afternoon.
LYME HOUSE
To the house
I’m not entirely sure if its officially called Lyme House. Everything I read, on the National Trust website and elsewhere, referred to Lyme Park and “the house”, so its an educated guess.
The tree lined path goes uphill to the entrance. Its a fairly easy walk, but a bit steep.
They cater for mobility issues with a volunteer run buggy service that you can pick up at the car park.
The path leads, through a gated entrance way, to a house with an imposing, if quite square facade. You have time to admire it as you walk along the driveway inside.
Passing through the central entrance arch then leads into a covered walkway, that surrounds a courtyard.
This pathway lead to the toilets (phew!), a cafe, a decent gift shop and the ticket office to buy tickets to tour the house. Again mine was included so I was ready to explore this stately home.
A brief history
Along the wall of the corridor was a timeline giving a brief history of the Lyme Park estate.
It had been owned by the Legh family for generations. Their family first came to own the park over 600 years ago and successive generations built and added to the house. The oldest parts date to the 16th century and there are still Elizabethan features as well as the later styles that were added over hundreds of years.
Formal gardens were added around the house in the 19th century, but the deer park I had seen was first created in the late 1300’s.
In 1946, after the social changes following two world wars, Lyme Park was given to the National Trust in order to preserve the estate which has so much history.
My visit to the house took me through this history, but I soaked it up as I went, rather than getting a full on history lesson.
Follow the corridors
Now I will admit from the start that I have been to more elaborately decorated stately homes. This is not one of those that has gilding on every rafter and rooms in every colour of the rainbow.
I did worry that it might be just a stuffy old house as I walked into what felt like a very brown and dimly lit entrance hall.
But there were a couple of welcoming volunteers, who offered the fairly simple housekeeping advice, to follow the corridors and “so long as you are going forwards you won’t get lost”.
Side tables had folders of information about the house and its treasures if you wanted details. I noticed a few clipboards with things for kids to look out for.
And then I paused for a look at the room and realised the browns were actually intricate tapestries. They quite possibly had been every colour of the rainbow in their day. There were lots of details to see if you just took the time to look.
I’m quite bad for looking at things through the eye of my camera. I’m forever telling myself to look with my eyes. This was a perfect case in point.
Feeling more curious I set off up the stairs to the next corridor.
Keep going forwards
Lyme House is typical of other stately homes I have visited, in that it has corridors that connect each room in turn. Its like every room was set up as a tableau in anticipation of the visitors who would coming to look at them hundreds of years later.
However these passageways were a bit more winding than others. It made the house feel more like you could live in it.
You guide yourself, so I passed through a hallway into the library. This was a much brighter room and set up in what felt like a quite “modern” early twentieth century style. You could imagine Agatha Christie leaving a victim in this library.
The ceiling, like one or two others was decorated with the family crest. A greaved arm holding the flag of England. I’m sure I saw that counting these was one one of the tasks for the kids.
And so the tour continued. The dining room, with its wood panels, that turned out to be plaster painted to look like wood. I would never have known had that room’s volunteer not pointed it out to me.
The stag room, where the gentlemen retired after dinner for port.
A drawing room, had a corner alcove with colourful stained glass windows.
Staircases were covered in paintings of family members, pets, even a loyal servant who lived to be over a hundred. I especially liked the portrait of Thomas Legh, who went travelling and collected many items for the house. There was a painting of him over the staircase, dressed exotically as an explorer. I like that idea!
The ghost in the bedroom
The yellow bedroom mostly lived up to its name. It also had an embroidered bedspread, made by a young woman hundreds of years ago. She died young, so it was folded up and put away. Now it is displayed as it should have been then, but unlike the tapestries has kept its rainbow of colours like new.
This room also had a small closet, complete with Tudor glass window, called the wig room. The servants would clean the wigs of their owners in here, with a powder that killed the lice that crawled in them. Effectively an insecticide. It was a bit too good and also worked as a “servanticide” as well, killing a few of them! Every room had its stories to be shared.
The Knight’s bedroom came with a legend of the ghost of a priest who died in the priest hole hidden under the floorboards. His skeleton was discovered during renovations, so another volunteer eagerly told me. “Well you’d feel cheated not having a ghost in a 600 year old house!”
There is also an unproven legend that Mary, Queen of Scots stayed in that room. It was decorated in very dark wood, as you imagine Elizabethan houses to be. I liked the style of it much more than the yellows and tapestries of the yellow bedroom.
Finally I continued along the Long Gallery, that doubled as an exhibition space with paintings of the house and back downstairs to the courtyard where I came in.
TREASURES ALONG THE WAY
The Lyme Sarum Missal
One of the rooms had a glass case, containing a book. I had seen a facsimile copy of this book in the library on open display. Red and black ink and written in Latin.
In itself it looked quite ordinary. As I read about it I discovered it was indeed just an ordinary book.
This was a Missal, a book of the Catholic order of service for masses throughout the year. It had been used often. Scribbled in, with handwritten annotations. It had been damaged and repaired. For a while it was lost entirely.
What made it extraordinary is that this book was printed by the famous William Caxton in 1487. It is the only known surviving first edition, from a time when books were valuable and a written order of service was a new thing. A time when printing was relatively new, let alone printing in two colours.
The information card stated that Lyme’s Sarum Missal is considered the most important book in the National Trust’s Collection.
I like to say I’ve seen things, so adding a 500 year old book to my list was an added bonus to my day.
Ordinary Things
The missal’s description as an everyday prayer book got me thinking about the things we throw away as being past their best or no longer needed. We declutter, but I wondered what things we leave behind (or don’t leave) that people in the future would think of as valuable.
I was noticing so much in this house that was unimpressive in a way and yet, as you thought about it, the ordinary was what made the house so interesting.
The bathroom was a very institutional white and green tiled room. It had a large white bath tub, a small white ceramic sink and a basic toilet. Nothing special. Not worthy of a photo even. And yet at the time having an indoor toilet, let alone a full bathroom, was the height of luxury. We weren’t talking en suite rooms in the yellow bedroom and the Knight’s bedroom. As far as I saw this was the one and only bathroom in the entire house.
The nursery had a line of wooden soldiers on the mantle piece. Books and games dotted about. I wonder how modern day parents visiting manage to stop their children playing with these inviting toys.
In fact every room was designed in keeping with some era of the house’s history. The regency chairs and dinner service in the dining room, would have been quite normal once upon a time.
Tapestries were both decorative and protected rooms from cold walls.
Dark wooden beds and moveable fireplaces of the Knight’s bedroom where the fashion in Elizabethan England.
My house is anything but minimalistic. Maybe my things are just the antiques of the future!
Elizabeth I’s Coat of Arms
The drawing room and the long gallery both had Royal coats of arms carved into their fireplaces.
I recognised the motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense” as the motto of the Order of the Garter. Legend has it that a lady lost her garter in front of sniggering courtiers. The King picked it up, saying “Shame on him who thinks ill of it”. And so the motto began for this order of chivalry.
I also knew this appeared on Royal crests, but I’m used to the coat of arms of our current Queen with a lion and a unicorn, on either side, representing England and Scotland.
These images had the usual lion on one side, but a dragon on the other.
Thankfully it was the room’s volunteer to the rescue again.
Apparently this was the coat of arms of Elizabeth I. She was famously Queen of England, but it was her successor James I, or James VI of Scotland, that united the crowns of the two countries.
So of course she would not have a unicorn for Scotland, and instead had the Welsh dragon as her supporter as Queen of Wales.
You learn something new every day!
Clocks
Around the house there were plenty of clocks.
Ornate mantle clocks. I saw one where the ticks of the clock moved the arms of a little man in the decorative scene.
Then there were grandfather clocks of all sorts.
Eventually I came to a room dedicated just to clocks. One of the later occupants of the house was a collector. He bequeathed his collection to the National Trust on the provision that they be displayed at Lyme Park.
Several were in glass cabinets, with their mechanisms presented next to the clock case so you could see how all the bells and innards worked. Presumably like clockwork.
I was a bit confused to read about 8 day clocks. Why you would need a clock to cover 8 days instead of 7.
The answer came when I reached the end of my tour by the workings of a much larger clock.
I couldn’t say I remembered seeing the clock on the front of the building as I walked in. I did go back for a look on my way out.
However the last stop on my tour was at what looked like an open cupboard, inside which was a swinging pendulum and a clinking clock mechanism.
These were the workings of the outside clock on the wall. The volunteer at this station was new, and had just been learning about this 8 day clock.
I pounced with my questions. “What is an 8 day clock?”, “Why did they need one?”.
Apparently winding clocks was a pain and so they were forever working out ways to extend the time needed between windings. Eventually the 8 day clock evolved that only needed winding once every 8 days. You could get away with only winding it once a week, with time to spare.
THE GARDENS
The Orangery
All the way around the house I had been peeking out of the windows to look at views and vistas, some natural, but mostly engineered by gardeners over the centuries. Tree lined avenues and formal gardens. The current gardeners are clearly keeping up the tradition.
When I came outside and followed the entrance courtyard all the way around I came to an exit on the opposite side to the front of the house.
A large lake lay in front of it, but I’ll come back to that one.
Beyond it were wilder areas of the park, but the path along the front of the house was gravel and led to terraces on one side and steps on the other.
I looked up at the front of the house, with its imposing columns looming over me, too close to appreciate, then followed the path to the left.
With a bit of distance the side of the house came into view. Some steps led up to the entrance of the Orangery. This was fronted by some well planted flower beds.
In the doorway a small fountain welcomed you, with a moss covered cherub sat on top. The inside was not much to see in fairness. There were a few interesting looking plants, but I was most impressed by the colourful floor tiles.
It was a quick in and out. I’m sure it would have been a lovely place to sit and have some peace and quiet on a rainy day.
Killtime
Next along were the herbaceous borders. If you are a gardener these would be right up your street.
I recognised a few plants from my own garden. For the most part though I was just impressed by how colourful they were. It may have been a fairly small area, but I really enjoyed walking along it.
The paths then continued in a few directions. I was never going to have time to see everything, but I knew I wanted a better view of the front of the house, so headed vaguely in a suitable direction.
Following this path I went down some steps into a gully, that had apparently been damaged by flooding.
The plants lining this pathway were much bigger, but had a good mix of colours and different types of foliage.
I discovered this area was called “Killtime”. Why? Well, in the days when the family lived in the house they would come out into the gardens and the gardeners would have to make themselves scarce.
So they would head to this gully out of the way and literally kill time, until they could get back to work.
“Pemberley”
In 1995 the BBC produced an adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.
It made a star of Colin Firth who, in his role as Mr Darcy, famously went for the nineteenth century version of a cold shower by diving into a pond. That is located somewhere on the estate, although I didn’t manage to find it.
Lyme Park doubled for Mr Darcy’s stately pile, “Pemberley”.
As viewers we were introduced to Pemberley with a view over the Reflecting Lake. That’s the lake I mentioned seeing from the other direction at the front of the house.
This is the spot for a proper view of Lyme House. It is the iconic view that artists have been painting for years. Quite splendid in my opinion.
The lake wasn’t perfectly still when I was there, but even I managed a decent reflection of the house. An amazing piece of landscape gardening. I sat on the conveniently placed deck chairs for a while and looked with my eyes, as well as the camera.
It’s little wonder that Jennifer Ehle’s Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who up to this point was not so keen on Mr Darcy, suddenly found him all the more attractive given the sight of his house.
I do appreciate that my cultural references are a little bit out of date. So for anyone under thirty who has no idea what I’m talking about, I do recommend the TV version of “Pride and Prejudice”. It is a period drama, and has aged fairly well. Definitely worth it if you get chance to stream the box set. The book is obviously a classic and also worth a read.
The gift shop includes books about the use of National Trust properties as TV and film locations. Of course Lyme Park’s starring role features in these.
THE DEER PARK
The Cage
The tower on the hill that I mentioned spotting as I drove that first mile of the estate is called The Cage.
I never found out the reason for the name, or even what its purpose was. I presumed it was some sort of folly. A focal point on high ground in the estate.
Maybe that was enough. I walked up to see it and was rewarded with a view of the surrounding landscape.
I had managed to pick a less than sunny day for my visit. That meant as I looked towards the North I could see the tower buildings of Manchester, but only through a cloudy haze.
The moorland of Lyme Park was all around, and that of Cheshire, Greater Manchester and probably even Yorkshire, filled the distance in all directions..
Deer Sanctuary
A path ran from the Cage down the side of the hill to what was marked on my map as the red deer sanctuary.
I had spotted a herd on my walk up the hill. Almost certainly a different group to those I saw on the driveway, as these were on the other side of the hill.
The footpath is marked by a line of low wooden poles on the ground, interspersed with no entry signs. An intangible barrier that visitors are trusted not to cross, but is no barrier to the deer, who can roam wherever they choose.
They seemed quite content sitting in the distance. They knew I was there though. Their ears flicked as my camera’s zoom lens made its tiny whir. One or two looked directly at me.
Perhaps they are used to posing for photos after all these years, but I suspect they were just keeping their eye on me.
I was glad to see them. Then carried on quietly away, along another path of the estate.
THE END OF THE DAY
Gift Shop
And so it got to late afternoon. Lyme Park is open until 8pm, although the house closes earlier. I didn’t feel like I would gain more more from staying longer.
I happened to be passing the Timber Yard just as their gift shop was about to close. Its always nice to have a look round the little shops.
The National Trust is a charity, so it sort of feels like you are contributing when you buy something.
This area had a cafe too, which seemed to have plenty of patrons. Not far away was the Crow Wood play area for children.
Time to go home
Finally I circled back to the car park ready for the drive home.
That free pass had provided a full afternoon of history, fresh air and sights I just wouldn’t normally see. And a bit of nostalgia thrown in for good measure.
The house would have been less enjoyable without the fabulous volunteers offering their stories of the rooms as I went round. I felt like I had learned things, which is always a good feeling.
I didn’t see half of the grounds, so its nice to have an excuse to go back another day.
If anything Lyme Park has made me curious to find out what else the National Trust has to offer.
Lyme Park, Disley, Stockport, England SK12 2NX, United Kingdom
