Near the little, clean, kindly country town, where as I said before I was brought up, there was an old house with moat within a park called Old Tabley, formerly the dwelling pace of Sir Peter Leycester, the historian of Cheshire, and accounted a fine specimen of the Elizabethan style…Here, on summer evenings did we often come, a merry young party, on donkey, pony or even in a cart with sacks swung across - each with our favourite book, some with sketch books, and one or twp baskets filled with eatables. Here we rambled, lounged and meditated; some stretched on the grass in indolent repose, half reading, half musing, with a posy of musk roses from the old fashioned trim garden behind the house, lulled by the ripple of the waters against the grassy lawn, some in the old crazy boats, that would do nothing but float on the glassy water, singing, for one or two were of a most musical family and warbled like birds, "Through the Greenwood" or "A Boat, A Boat unto the Ferry" or some such old catch or glee.
 
And when the meal was spread beneath a beech tree of no ordinary size (did you ever notice the peculiar turf under beech shade?), one of us would mount up a ladder to the belfry of the old chapel and toll the bell to call the wanderers home. Then, if it rained, what merrymaking in the old hall! It was galleried, with oak settles and old armours hung up, and a painted window from ceiling to floor. The strange sound our voices had in that unfrequented stone hall!