These twenty-three gentlemen own collectively 203,533 acres, or a little over one-third of the whole county; but, according to the same authority, 2840 persons own lands varying from 10 to 1000 acres, also 3166 persons have holdings between one acre and ten acres, while 17,691 persons possess lands less than one acre in extent. The Crown lands amount to 3581 acres, and the commons or waste lands to 6704 acres, so that the total number of owners in Cheshire is 23,720, the total area of the county being 608,922 acres, or rather less than 1000 square miles. Some houses of the gentry have from ancient times stood on the margin of a natural mere, as at Tatton, Tabley, Mere, Rostherne, Arley, Combermere, and Marbury; or beside an artificial pool, as at Crewe and Doddington. But Bagmere, which once reflected the stately mansion of the Breretons, has been drained, and Ridley Pool has long been “sown and mown,” in fulfilment, as credulous people have believed, of Nixon’s prophecy. Barmere is one of the few meres that have not been honoured by a gentleman’s seat. Of modern mansions, both the magnificent palace at Eaton and the castle at Cholmondeley stand near ornamental sheets of water; while Peckforton Castle, perhaps the most remarkable house in all England, being built in close imitation of a Norman castle, is perched on a rocky eminence like an eyrie. In no part of Cheshire are so many gentlemen’s seats clustered together as within a radius of a few miles around the old-fashioned town of Knutsford. They are as follows:-- _Dunham Hall_, or Dunham Massey, as it was named in ancient times, when it was held as a feudal barony by the Massey family until the death of Hamon, about the year 1340, stands in what is known as the Old Park, which is walled round for the protection of about a hundred head of deer. The so-called New Park, nearly three miles in circumference, also contains aged oaks and beeches, and is divided from the other park merely by the road leading from Bowdon to Dunham village. From the Masseys the estate descended to the notable family of Booth. At the old mansion lived Sir John Booth, who was slain at Flodden Field; Sir George Booth, created Baron Delamere in 1661 in honour of his staunch royalist services to Charles I.; and his son Henry, second lord, who, after having been three times unjustly imprisoned in the Tower, was in 1686 tried for high treason by his peers and acquitted. _High Leigh._--Here two important mansions stood in close proximity, namely, East Hall and West Hall. The latter, or what remains of it, was changed into a farmhouse nearly a century ago. The former, rebuilt towards the end of the eighteenth century as a brick mansion, is still the residence of the Legh family, which has been seated there since the time of Edward I. In the reign of Henry VII. there was much litigation between the Leghs of the two halls.