" There is a large
print of it by Vivares, after a painting by T. Smith, representing
Lyme Park during the performance of the annual ceremony, with the
great Vale of Cheshire and Lancashire, as far as the Rivington Hills
in the distance, and in the foreground the great body of the deer
passing through the pool, the last just entering it, and the old stags
emerging on the opposite bank, two of which are contending with their
fore-feet, the horns at that season being too tender to combat with.
This "art of driving the deer" like a herd of ordinary cattle, is
stated on a monument, at Disley, to have been first perfected by
Joseph Watson, who died in 1753, at the age of 104, "having been
park-keeper at Lyme more than sixty-four years." The custom, however,
appears not to have been peculiar to Lyme, as Dr. Whitaker describes,
in his _Account of Townley_, (the seat of a collateral line of Legh,)
"near the summit of the park, and where it declines to the south, the
remains of a large pool, through which tradition reports that the deer
were driven by their keepers in the manner still practised in the park
at Lyme."[8]
Lyme Park is situated near the road from Manchester to London, through
Buxton, adjacent to the picturesque village of Disley.
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