Some time between 1777 (when Peter Burdett’s map failed
to show a park) and 1819 (when Greenwood’s map did),
William Leche converted the area around Carden Hall to parkland.
The Farndon-Nantwich road had been turnpiked (William was one of
the trustees of the project) and the road now ran some distance
to the north of the Hall, rather than beside it. A lodge was
built facing the new road, consisting of two small squarish
structures with pepper-pot roofs, joined to cast iron railings
and gates. Another lodge was created to the south, where the old
road from Carden Hall to Lower Carden crossed the Stretton to
Higher Carden road.
Deer were installed in the park,
and a ha-ha was built to shut them in the northern part. By the
end of the century, the herd was nationally famous. Deer are
still to be seen at Carden in considerable numbers. The park
became one of a number of places in the neighbourhood where
William Leche could invite his friends (including Lord
Cholmondeley and Earl Grosvenor, the Marquess of Westminster) out
hunting.
This was not the first or the greatest alteration William made to his estate. We have already seen how he created a four-acre Pleasure Garden, but other changes to the family fortunes were the result of careful (not to mention unscrupulous) land deals. Because he was not married at the time his father died, he inherited all the family property, which had usually passed down in trust for the heir’s children. This meant that for the first time in many generations, the lord of the manor was able to sell off land and buy new properties. William busied himself consolidating the estate into one of the largest in western Cheshire, rivalling only the Grosvenor lands around Eaton, southwest of Chester. In the meantime, he created a pleasure garden in a Romantic landscape, after the fashion of the day.
We have a paper available from CAPRA, a web-based journal of cave archaeology, on the transition from the hermit's occupation to the creation of a Romantic pleasure garden to a landed gentry’s game park. Follow the link below to find the paper.