THE WOLLATON HALL HERD. 269 



markings have been cultivated, fewer black calves have 

 been born than in some herds where these variations 

 have been systematically suppressed. 



The "Wollaton Hall herd of wild cattle has become 

 extinct during the last fifty years. It belonged to the 

 family of Willoughby, Barons Middleton, so created on 

 the last day of December, 1711, in the tenth year of 

 Queen Anne. They are paternally descended from the 

 Willoughbys — Barons Willoughby d'Eresby and Barons 

 Willoughby of Parham — a cadet of which house married 

 Bridget, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Francis 

 Willoughby,' 55 ' the owner of Wollaton (and of Middleton, 

 Warwickshire) in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and the 

 builder of its famous mansion. Wollaton Hall is 

 scarcely three miles west from Nottingham, and the 

 entrance to its beautiful park much less. It is on the 

 summit of a bold hill, and commands extensive views 

 over the rich and picturesque Yale of Trent on one side, 

 and over the fine country which was once the royal 

 Forest of Sherwood, on the outskirts of which it is 

 situated, on the other. It is the chef d'ceuvre of the 

 Elizabethan architect, Thorpe, who built Burleigh, 

 Longleat, and other celebrated houses, some of them 

 larger, none so striking and commanding as this. The 

 stone with which it is faced was brought from Ancaster, 

 in Lincolnshire, on the backs of dray-horses, coal being 

 taken back to Lincolnshire in the same manner in 

 return — the state of the roads in the Yale of Belvoir, 

 through which it was necessary to pass, then and long 



* Sir Francis Willoughby was descended from Ralph Bugge, of Not- 

 tingham, who purchased lands at Willoughby-on-the- Wolds, in the time of 

 Henry III., from which the Wollaton Willoughbys derived their name. 

 See Thoroton's " Nottinghamshire : " under heading of " Wollaton." 



