Qualla: Tatton Park

Tatton Park: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RuthAS, CC BY 3.0. Stand on the lawn in front of Tatton Hall and look north-west toward open parkland, and you are looking at an empty field with a 60,000-person history. Between July 1940 and early 1946, this stretch of grass was the dropping zone for No. 1 Parachute Training School at neighbouring RAF Ringway. Every paratrooper trained in Europe during the Second World War, British and free Polish, French, Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, all of them came here for their first descent. A free-standing stone memorial marks the far edge of the field today. The neoclassical mansion behind you is one of the great Wyatt houses of England, the parkland holds 2,000 acres of red and fallow deer, and 0.6 miles to the south-east a Shinto shrine stands among Japanese maples. Tatton holds an unusual number of stories at once.

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Image: RuthAS | CC BY 3.0

Tatton Park: The Deserted Village

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Norman Caesar, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is evidence of human habitation in Tatton's grounds going back to the Iron Age. The medieval village of Tatton stood here too, until depopulation in the late medieval period reduced it to imprints on the turf. Buildings and roadways can still be traced as low earthworks in ...

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Image: Norman Caesar | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tatton Park: Wyatts and Egertons

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Bevis, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Egerton, Sir Thomas's grandson, built a new house in the late 17th century, about three-quarters of a mile west of the Old Hall, completed around 1716. Improvements began in 1758. Between the 1770s and 1816, most of that house was replaced by the present neoclassical mansion...

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Image: Dave Bevis | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tatton Park: Gardens and a Japanese Mountain

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Whatlep, CC BY-SA 2.0. The gardens lie to the south of the hall and range from the rigidly formal to the wandering and naturalistic. The Italian Garden, immediately south-east of the hall, was designed by Joseph Paxton and laid out by Edward Milner in 1847 on two terraces around a statue of Neptune; it...

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Image: Whatlep | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tatton Park: Paratroopers Over the Park

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Polishname at English Wikipedia, Public domain. On 6 July 1940, Squadron Leader Louis Strange came to Maurice Egerton with a wartime request. Strange and Egerton had been fellow aviators before the First World War, and they trusted one another. The RAF needed the parkland to train paratroopers, jumping from cages suspended ben...

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Image: Polishname at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Tatton Park: Deer, Meres, and the RHS

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Benjamin Shaw, CC BY-SA 4.0. The deer park itself dates from a royal charter of 1290, and deer have grazed here for over 700 years. Red and fallow deer share the parkland today, around 400 breeding stock between them, alongside rare-breed Hebridean and Soay sheep. Tatton Mere is natural; Melchett Mere is you...

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Image: Benjamin Shaw | CC BY-SA 4.0