CHAPTER XV. 



The Gunton Park Herd originally from Middleton — Progress towards Domes- 

 tication in Norfolk — Portrait of the original Lancashire Bull — Lord 

 Suffield's Description — Mr. Coleman's — Resemblance to the Polled Cattle of 

 Somerford Park — The Herd extinct, save in Off-sets from it — Influence in 

 the District — Blickling Hall Herd descended from the Gunton Park Cattle 

 — Rev G. Gilbert's Report in 1875 — Severe Injury to the Herd from Cattle 

 Plague — Characteristics of the Cattle — Quite Domesticated — The Wood- 

 bastwick Herd — Also from the Gunton Cattle — Not now Pure — Calves 

 Exchanged with Blickling — Crossed with Shorthorns in 1864 — Eev. G. 

 Gilbert's Eeport in 1875 — These White Polled Cattle quite distinct from 

 those of Scotland or the Eastern Counties — White Cattle of Brooke 

 House — Proofs of the Influence of the Wild Breed upon English Domestic 

 Cattle. 



The Gunton Park Herd, the property of the Lords 

 Suffield, was immediately descended from that of the 

 Asshetons of Middleton Hall, described just before ; it 

 was, in fact, a continuation of it. When Sir Harbord 

 Harbord, second baronet (created Lord Suffield in 1786), 

 succeeded in right of his wife to Middleton Hall, on 

 the death of his father-in-law, Sir Ealph Assheton, in 

 1765, he brought a part at least of the white wild cattle 

 of the Asshetons to Gunton, his place in Norfolk. There 

 they nourished; and though the Gunton herd is now 

 extinct, several off- sets sprang from it, some of which 

 have continued this ancient Lancashire race of wild 

 cattle down to the present time. All these are now, 

 however, thoroughly domesticated ; most likely, indeed, 

 the Middleton cattle, like the Gisburne, had, in their 

 later years, to a considerable extent, become so; and 



