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Parks were home to deer herds
Jun 3, 2008
SOMETIMES, in an antique shop, you can come across one of those antiquarian county maps. They were mostly surveyed and drawn in the 17th and 18th centuries by map-makers such as Christopher Saxton, John Speed, Robert Morden or John Ogilby and very attractive items they are too.
If you look closely at their maps of Durham and North Yorkshire, you might notice that there are a number of green circles or ovals on the maps, bounded by what appears to be a wall. Inside these circles, the cartographer has drawn tiny trees. And if your eyesight is particularly good you might be able to read the word ‘park' alongside these circles.
In the Teesdale area, there are parks marked at Marwood - there are actually two parks there - then at Langleydale, west of Staindrop, where three parks are marked.
There is one park marked at Evenwood and three or four around Hamsterley. All these parks are in County Durham. On Morden's map of the North Riding, there aren't any parks marked in Teesdale. There are lots further south in Swaledale and Wensleydale and there are a couple nearer the mouth of the Tees just east of Yarm and one not far from Guisborough - but none actually in Teesdale.
So what were these parks, why were they there and what did they look like? Maybe they were a bit like the area of land surrounding Raby Castle today or that fronting Lartington Hall. However, the parks shown on the maps are much bigger than those at Raby and Lartington.
At the time the maps were drawn, the parks would be very visible because they were clearly defined and were enclosed. Most of the countryside in the early 17th century was open and without boundaries. The parks were especially designed to keep some animals inside and other animals outside. These parks were in fact essentially deer farms.
By the beginning of the 17th century, the parks had been part of the landscape for about 400 years although their exact function changed over that time. Originally they were developed in conjunction with the wild and open forest-lands that occupied much of the upper dales in Durham and Yorkshire. These were the vast hunting lands that were the preserve of royalty and the highest lords in the land - in Durham that meant the Bishop.
In those days, deer were reserved for the rich and powerful and for an ordinary dalesman to take a deer from the forest was sometimes even a capital offence. Maybe it was for this reason that out of the forest areas, deer were kept apart from farms and settlements. Instead, deer parks were set up to provide safe places for young deer to be reared and fattened up. They could then be released onto the highlands whenever hunting parties were expected.
Park keepers were employed to look after the deer and to maintain the park boundary. This usually consisted of a mound and a ditch with either a fence or stone-wall on the top of the mound. Keepers also had to maintain the woodland within the park - not an easy task as deer are rather partial to young saplings and branches.
In Medieval times, there seem to have been many more parks around than appear on the 17th century maps. The number of farms today that have ‘park' in their name in Lunedale, Baldersdale and elsewhere in Teesdale, give an indication of the extent of this emparkment. And as late as the 16th century, John Leland, in his travels on behalf of King Henry VIII, mentioned the park at Brignall as being walled with stone. There are no parks in Lunedale, Baldersdale or at Brignall on Speed's and Morden's maps.
With the Tudor dynasty, and the basing of Parliament at Westminster, came the Reformation and the gradual diminution of the power of the Bishop of Durham. So the people weren't there who formally hunted in the forests. Added to this was the acceptance that leasing the forest for ranching cattle and sheep was more profitable than hunting for deer. Cattle and sheep don't mix with deer and so there was gradual shrinkage in forest-land and in forest law. However, the gentry still enjoyed hunting even when the wide-open spaces weren't available to them in the same way.
So the larger deer parks took over from the hill-tops and instead of being solely places where deer were reared, they became the place they were hunted as well. It must have been a bit tame compared to the old days. However, there was another reason. The 16th and 17th centuries were years when huge amounts of meat were consumed by the upper classes. There was a constant demand for venison. It may be that the deer parks were primarily deer farms and that hunting was of only secondary importance.
The parks also became important sources of top quality timber. The park keepers had, over the years, become expert at preserving shelterbelts and spinneys and generally managing the woodland by pollarding the trees.
Is anything left of the parks do you suppose? There must be some old park boundaries still to be found - and the odd pollard oak tree. However, their main legacy is the deer, no longer confined within the park, they can now roam freely up and down the dale happily feeding on saplings and crops and maybe even garden flowers and vegetables. They may cause some damage but it's still good to see them - or do you think differently?
First published in the Mercury May 28, 2008