Parks vary from a paddock of twenty-one acres to twenty-eight hundred, but the most usual dimensions are from one hundred and fifty to four hundred acres. For a multum in parvo of beautiful park scenery the traveler in search of these charming specimens of the picturesque may be advised to take a tour in Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and if he be a horseman he will do well to ride through the country. "Anyone," says Mr. Shirley, "who ascends the steep crest of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and looks down from the summit of the ridge on the western side of the hills upon the richly wooded and beautifully undulating country which lies stretched beneath as far as the mountains of South Wales, would at once be struck with the 'bosky' nature of the scenery, and its perfect adaptation for the formation of deer-parks and sylvan residences."
Grimsthorpe, Lady Aveland's (inherited from the dukes of Ancaster, extinct); Thoresby, Earl Manvers's, formerly the duke of Kingston's, father of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; and Knowsley, Lord Derby's, are also very large parks.
A writer on Grimsthorpe in 1774 says: "On a former visit I was told that the park was sixteen miles and three quarters in circumference, and esteemed the largest in England: since then it has, nevertheless, been somewhat enlarged, but different spots in it are cultivated."
A few parks have been created and others restocked during the present century. In Norfolk, Lord Kimberley, the present secretary of state for the colonies, has restored the deer which were removed during the present century, saying, it is reported, that "a place is not a place without deer"—a sentiment shared by many of his countrymen regarding an ancient grand-seigneur home. In the same county a new park has been created at Sandringham, the seat of the prince of Wales, the deer having been brought from Windsor. Sandringham Park and Woods were half a century ago a sandy waste, but fell into judicious hands and were admirably planted. The modern history of the place is remarkable. Toward the close of the century it became the property of a French refugee, Mr. Matou. This gentleman having been driven from his native country by the Revolution, conceived somehow the idea of importing from Sicily immense quantities of rabbit skins, which were used for making hats of a cheap kind which passed for beaver. In this way he acquired a large fortune. In England he mixed in the best society, and became very intimate with Earl Cowper, first husband of the well-known Lady Palmerston, and at his death bequeathed Sandringham to the Honorable Spencer Cowper, that nobleman's younger son, who married Lady Blessington's stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her divorce from Count d'Orsay. When the prince of Wales was casting round for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected. Lord Palmerston was then in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the sale of his stepson's place having been a much better thing for Mr. Cowper than for the prince of Wales. Vast sums have since been spent here.
Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes to an Englishman's heart to give it up. An incident in point occurred about twenty years ago. In a secluded part of Devonshire, approached by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic of that part of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion known as Great Fulford Hall. Here for upward of six hundred years have been seated the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals of the Tichbornes in antiquity. The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned by Charles I., and taken by a detachment of Cromwell's army in 1645. The marks they left behind them may be seen to this day. The Fulfords have supporters to their arms, a very rare circumstance in the case of commoners. These supporters are two Saracens, and were granted in consideration of services in the Crusades. "Sir Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat with a Saracen, for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford doth plainly shew), whom yet he vanquished, and rescued a lady." This gentleman's granddaughter was the mother of Henry VIII.'s favorite, Russell, first earl of Bedford, and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other ancient and honorable houses. But for a long time the heads of the house have failed "to marry money;" and when this happens for two or three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity. Thus, when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in 1847, he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated mansion, surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing less until the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little more than a big field.
Like his ancestor in the time of "the troubles," Mr. Baldwin Fulford was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his party. It was intended, therefore, to reward his services when the time came by a county office, which would have placed him at ease pecuniarily. When this office fell vacant the Tories were "in," and all seemed secure for Mr. Fulford's interest. But there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip. A gentleman applied to the prime minister for the place for a friend of his, whose services to the party he duly dilated on. "I understood," said his lordship, "that Mr. Fulford's claims are considered paramount." "Mr. Fulford!" was the rejoinder. "I scarcely thought that such a place as this would be an object to Mr. Fulford—a gentleman of great position, with a deer-park and all that sort of thing." "A deer-park! You surprise me. I understood that Mr. Fulford's circumstances were extremely reduced. This alters the matter." Unfortunately, the, minister committed himself too far to draw back before making inquiries, when he learned that a deer-park having existed at Fulford for some four or five centuries, its owner had kept as a memento of grand old days a little remnant of the herd in a paddock, as before mentioned. He never recovered the blow of this disappointment. The heir to the property is, we believe, a son of the late bishop of Montreal. The family motto is "Bear up"—one eminently suited to its present condition, and we may hope that it will be followed so successfully that this ancient stock, which has held for so long a high place among the worthies of Devon, may once more win the smiles of Fortune.
Many of the most picturesque parks are but little known, lying as they do remote from railway stations. Mr. Nesfield, the great landscape-gardener, considers that Longleat, the marquis of Bath's, near Warminster, has greater natural advantages than any park in England, and that these have been made the most of.
Lord Stamford's park of Bradgate, in Leicestershire, is in the highest degree interesting. It is mostly covered with the common fern or brakes, and the projecting bare and abrupt rocks rising here and there, with a few gnarled and shivered oaks in the last stage of decay, present a scene of wildness and desolation in striking contrast to some of the beautiful adjoining valleys and fertile country.
Another gem of its kind is Ugbrook. This is situated a few miles from the Newton-Abbot station of the South Devon Railway, and lies in a rocky nook on the confines of Dartmoor. Macaulay, whose brother was vicar of the neighboring parish of Bovey-Tracey, knew it well, and tells us in his History that Clifford (a member of the Cabal ministry) retired to the woods of Ugbrook. He was a lucky man to have such paternal acres to retire to, but probably the visitor to-day sees this park in a condition which Charles's minister would indeed have enjoyed. There is no place in England where a man may feel more grateful to those who have gone before him for their taste and forethought in creating a sylvan paradise. Although not very large, this park contains almost every variety of scenery. There is a grove gloomy from the heavy shadows of the magnificent trees which compose it, glorious avenues of lime and beech, and monarch-like trees, which, standing alone amid an expanse of sward, show to the fullest advantage their superb proportions. Entering the park on one side, the road winds beside a river, to which the bank gently slopes on the one hand, whilst on the other it rises precipitately, clad with the greenest foliage. An especial feature of this place is what is known as "the riding park," a stretch of smooth turf extending some miles, from which you may get a view over thirty miles, with the rocky heights of Dartmoor Forest, where the autumn manoeuvres take place this year, on the one hand, and the Haldon Hills on the other. This ancient heritage is still the property of the Cliffords, the present peer being eighth baron in direct descent from the lord treasurer. The Cliffords have always remained constant to the Roman Catholic faith, and a Catholic chapel adjoins the mansion.
A discriminating foreign tourist writes of Lord Hill's park, Hawkstone, in Shropshire, which, also lying rather off the beaten track, is comparatively little known: "I must in some respects give Hawkstone the preference over all I have seen. It is not art nor magnificence nor aristocratic splendor, but Nature alone to which it is indebted for this pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I gifted with the power of adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can I add? Imagine a spot so commandingly placed that from its highest point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. Three sides of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill and dale like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon by the strangely formed, jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty trees, and in the obscure distance, where it blends with the sky, is edged with a white misty line—the Atlantic Ocean."