"As to the situation of Lathom House it stands upon a flat, upon a moorish springy and spumous ground, and was encompassed with a strong wall of two yards thick; upon the walls were nine towers flanking each other and in every tower were six pieces of ordnance that played three one way and three the other; without the wall was a moat eight yards wide and two yards deep; upon the back of the moat between the wall and the graff was a strong row of palisades around. Besides all these, there was a high strong tower, called the Eagle Tower, in the midst of the house surmounting all the rest; and the gate house had also two high and strong buildings with a strong tower on each side of it.... Besides all that has hitherto been said of the walls, towers, moat, etc., there is something so particular and romantic in the general situation of this house as if nature herself had formed it for a stronghold or place of security; for before the house to the south and south-west is a rising ground so near it as to overlook the top of it, from which it falls so quick that nothing planted against it on those sides can touch it further than the front wall; and on the north and east sides there is another rising ground, even to the edge of the moat, and then falls away so quick, that you can scarce, at the distance of a carbine shot, see the house over that height; so that all the batteries placed there are so far below it as to be of little service against it: and let us observe by the way that the uncommon situation of it may be compared to the palm of a man's hand, flat in the middle, and covered with a rising round about it, and so near to it that the enemy, during the siege, were never able to raise a battery against it, so as to make a breach in the wall practicable to enter the house by way of storm." ("House of Stanley," p. 90.) Either Seacome invented all the above, or the present Lathom House is not only not on the old site, but it is not anywhere near to it. For it is impossible to suppose that the nature of the ground can have changed so entirely. The soil round the present Lathom House is not marshy but sandy, and it is not hilly but flat. There is a very slight slope away from the front of the house to the south, and also to the north, but on no side is there any place which can possibly be supposed to answer to Seacome's description. Moreover the so-called moat is by no means convincing. It is conceivable that a moat may have been considerably filled in since the seventeenth century, but the wall which now supports the bank is not high and the stone looks new; Seacome's eight yards wide and two yards deep could hardly have so shrunk.