towards Nottingham and Derby; Emmett Carr, Barlborough Common, and Marsden Moor; the splendid cliff and keep of Bolsover, famous for the Earl of Newcastle’s prodigal entertainment to King Charles; Scarcliffe and Palterton, once with Eckington a part of the _Domesday_ Barony of Ralph Fitz-Hubert; the old and new halls of Hardwick, where the Earls of Devonshire had their seat, standing out like twin towers above the trees which surrounded them; and beyond the horizon, the spire of Tibshelf Church on the Nottinghamshire border. Nearer, between Renishaw and Hardwick, stood the little hall of Netherthorpe, in which Robert Sytwell had lived in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, and the grammar school hard by he had helped to found; Lord Deincourt’s woods at Sutton Scarsdale; and Owlcotes, another of Bess of Hardwick’s houses; and to the right, the Chesterfield road mounting up a green spur two miles away towards Lord Frecheville’s ancient house and park and the iron furnaces of Staveley. Beyond Staveley, which, like Bolsover, Sutton, and Renishaw, had been garrisoned for the King in the Civil War, the spire of Brimington could be seen; and above the hollow in which Chesterfield lies, the distant hills which lead up to Clay Cross, Ogston, Ashover, and the Derbyshire moors. To the west of the garden house, a close walk between hedges led down the hill to the low meadows and the river, and from this side also was a footpath across the demesne to Foxton Wood, some two miles away, where the bluebells were a sight to see in spring, and the bracken in autumn, and good fishing and shooting were to be had. The hedgerows in the demesne contained many oaks and ashes, but there was no ornamental planting of any kind; in the woods, swine were still turned out in autumn, and another relic of mediæval agriculture was the continued use of oxen for ploughing. [84] All these courts and gardens are shown in a map of 1756, which gives also a small sketch of the house. [85] The practice of archery was still considered a useful physical exercise for boys. In July, 1665, Starkye paid a shilling for a bow and arrows for Timothy Treeton, the orphan son of a substantial Eckington yeoman and then fourteen years of age.