The county of Cheshire has other attractions. But a short distance from
Chester, in the valley of the Dee, is Eaton Hall, the elaborate palace
of the Duke of Westminster and one of the finest seats in England,
situated in a park of eight hundred acres that extends to the walls of
Chester. This palace has recently been almost entirely rebuilt and
modernized, and is now the most spacious and splendid example of Revived
Gothic architecture in England. The house contains many works of
art--statues by Gibson, paintings by Rubens and others--and is full of
the most costly and beautiful decorations and furniture, being
essentially one of the show-houses of Britain. In the extensive gardens
are a Roman altar found in Chester and a Greek altar brought from
Delphi. At Hawarden Castle, seven miles from Chester, is the home of
William E. Gladstone, and in its picturesque park are the ruins of the
ancient castle, dating from the time of the Tudors, and from the keep of
which there is a fine view of the Valley of the Dee. The ruins of Ewloe
Castle, six hundred years old, are not far away, but so buried in
foliage that they are difficult to find. Two miles from Chester is Hoole
House, formerly Lady Broughton's, famous for its rockwork, a lawn of
less than an acre exquisitely planted with clipped yews and other trees
being surrounded by a rockery over forty feet high. In the Wirral or
Western Cheshire are several attractive villages. At Bidston, west of
Birkenhead and on the sea-coast, is the ancient house that was once the
home of the unfortunate Earl of Derby, whose execution is mentioned
above. Congleton, in Eastern Cheshire, stands on the Dane, in a lovely
country, and is a good example of an old English country-town. Its Lion
Inn is a fine specimen of the ancient black-and-white gabled hostelrie
which novelists love so well to describe. At Nantwich is a curious old
house with a heavy octagonal bow-window in the upper story overhanging a
smaller lower one, telescope-fashion. The noble tower of Nantwich church
rises above, and the building is in excellent preservation.
Nearly in the centre of Cheshire is the stately fortress of Beeston
Castle, standing on a sandstone rock rising some three hundred and sixty
feet from the flat country. It was built nearly seven hundred years ago
by an Earl of Cheshire, then just returned from the Crusades. Standing
in an irregular court covering about five acres, its thick walls and
deep ditch made it a place of much strength. It was ruined prior to the
time of Henry VIII., having been long contended for and finally
dismantled in the Wars of the Roses. Being then rebuilt, it became a
famous fortress in the Civil Wars, having been seized by the Roundheads,
then surprised and taken by the Royalists, alternately besieged and
defended afterward, and finally starved into surrender by the
Parliamentary troops in 1645. This was King Charles's final struggle,
though the castle did not succumb till after eighteen weeks' siege, and
its defenders were forced to eat cats and rats to satisfy hunger, and
were reduced to only sixty. Beeston Castle was then finally dismantled,
and its ruins are now an attraction to the tourist. Lea Hall, an ancient
and famous timbered mansion, surrounded by a moat, was situated about
six miles from Chester, but the moat alone remains to show where it
stood. Here lived Sir Hugh Calveley, one of Froissart's heroes, who was
governor of Calais when it was held by the English, and is buried under
a sumptuous tomb in the church of the neighboring college of Bunbury,
which he founded. His armed effigy surmounts the tomb, and the
inscription says he died on St. George's Day, 1394.