This map was drawn in around 1605 by a surveyor called Edmund Moore who was employed by the Duchy of Lancaster. The map is kept in Lancashire Archives and it was apparently drawn up because of a dispute between the Duchy (ie the monarch, who owned and controlled the Royal Forest of Bowland) and the Shireburne family who owned Leagram Park.

The map is beautifully coloured and detailed, although not entirely accurate in its size and shape. It clearly shows a number of tenants of the park and where they lived. It also shows the boundary of the park, called the pale, and subdivisions within the park – the park green, park, lodge, moss and woods. At that time the pale may have looked like this.

The map also shows a number of gates – six on the outside boundary, and one within the pale between the laund (where the deer would gather to be fed) and the ‘parke’. The gates were used to move cattle in and out of the park as they would have been kept there as well as fallow deer.

Using this map, plus local knowledge, we have been able to identify the boundary of the park in our modern day landscape.

This panorama view of the park, as it may have looked in 1595, was drawn by archaeological illustrator Jennie Anderson