118 EARLY ANNALS OF ORNITHOLOGY 
been lost are the Books of the le Straunges.* The le Straunges 
or Lestranges, by whom Hunstanton lordship has been held 
since 1100, were people of no small distinction, living at 
Hunstanton, on the north coast of Norfolk, about a mile 
from the sea. The original mansion of the le Straunges is 
known to have been built at the latter end of the fifteenth 
century, but very little of what must have been a noble 
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edifice exists now. In 1834 it was more perfect, Mr. D. 
Gurney being able to describe it as surrounded by a moat, 
with stew-ponds for fish, and entered by an imposing gateway. 
A picture, drawn by Robert Blake some time prior to 1823, 
shows what it was like. Unfortunately, in 1853 this venerable 
structure was much injured by fire, when the ancient 
banqueting hall and eighteen other rooms were destroved. 
The cut gives the eastern front as it is now, and the bridge 
* The spelling of le Straunge in preference to Lestrange has been 
adopted, by Mr. Hamon le Strange’s advice, as being the form in most general 
use at the time when these sixteenth-century Accounts were penned. 
