The Wirral Horn.—The Hundred of Wirral was mainly divided between the Church and the Palatinate barons. The latter not being resident, the natives were lawless and turbulent; added to which the district was specially liable to incursions from sea-rovers. To reduce the natives to obedience, and as a matter of precaution, Ranulph de Meschines, the third Earl of Chester, about 1121, destroyed such boundaries of property as existed and planted the whole as a forest, so that “From Blacon Point to Hilbre a squirrel might jump from tree to tree”; as the old Cheshire rhyme has it.
The office of chief forester he bestowed upon Alan Sylvester, together with the manors of Storeton and Puddington, to be held by the tenure of blowing a horn, or causing it to be blown, at the “Gloverstone,” Chester, on the morning of every fair-day, to indicate that the tolls payable on all goods bought or sold in the city, or within sound of that horn, during the fair, belonged to the Earl and his tenants there.
After 250 years the citizens of Chester found the forest and its freebooters such a nuisance (for, so far from checking marauders, the forest, as a hiding-place, encouraged them), that they complained to the Black Prince, and begged that he would get his father to abolish it.
In 1376-7, the last year of Edward III.’s reign, the district was disafforested. The horn and its rights had passed, by marriages of female heirs, to the Bamvilles, and then to the Stanleys of Hooton Hall. They continued as titular foresters as late as of 7 Henry VI.
The horn is thus described:—16¾ in. convex, 13¾ in. concave, 9½ in. wide at the mouth, 7 in. in the middle, tapering to 2½ in. at the mouthpiece. The colour is yellow to light brown, with blue or black spots or flakes. It was in the possession of Sir John Stanley-Errington until his death in 1896.
The Delamere Horn.—What we now call the Forest of Delamere was originally the two forests of Mara and Mondrem, extending, roughly speaking, over all the lands between the rivers Weaver and Gowy. Mara was on the Mersey side, and Mondrem on the Nantwich side.
The land was afforested immediately after the Conquest, though the Saxon owner was, for a time, allowed to keep his estate in it. About 1123 Ranulph de Meschines, third Earl of Chester, added to the forest some waste lands and the villa or township of Kingsley, and conferred on Ranulph de Kingsley the forestry rights to be held in grand serjeantry, and gave him a horn in token of his rights as master forester. It is worth noting that the horns of Wirral and Delamere were both given, and at the same period, by this third Earl of Chester. But it is important to note that the office of master forester was not altogether paramount. Certain other rights belonged to the families of Grosvenors, Weavers, and Mertons; and the rights in the two forests were often kept separate and distinct. Finally, however, the whole of the forest rights were vested in the family of Done of Utkinton, and in 1617 James I. came “a-hunting” in the forest of Delamere and knighted John Done, who attended him as chief forester and bow bearer. Sir John died in 1629, and the male line of Dones came to an end. Through the female line the horn and forest rights descended to the Crewes and Ardernes, and then to the present Earl of Haddington, who married Miss Arderne in 1854.
The horn is a beautiful black colour and strongly curved. It is 14 in. on outside curve, but it is only 5 in. across from mouthpiece to mouth. Its greatest width is 1¾ in. at the mouth, and ¾ in. at the other end. The mouthpiece seems of silver gilt, but there is no sign of the other two “golden” bands with which pictures and old documents show it was embellished.
Forest of Macclesfield.—The third great forest of Cheshire was that of Macclesfield, which was in existence before Domesday survey.
The office of hereditary master forester of the forests of Leek and Macclesfield was held by the Davenports of Davenport by a grant from Hugh Cyvelioc, Earl of Chester (1160).