Hulne Park

This is the entrance to Hulne Park, which is the Duke of Northumberland's back garden really. It was designed by Capability Brown but has been around for longer than that. Unlike Alnwick Garden ,which has been totally redesigned and is a major tourist attraction, this park isn't advertised and has no visitor things and is really only known to the people of the town. When I was at school we did our sponsored walks here and now my sons do the same. The gamekeeper that I met on the road the other day has shown Boy 1's class round here and he loved learning about the wildlife and spotting otter tracks by the river.
This place is soaked in history. I was alone walking around its vastness this morning. There is a farm, a sawmill and ruins of an abbey as well as a folly tower which the Duke has restored.
I've been researching the Duke's family tree and found out that the eigth Earl of Northumberland (as the title was known in the middle ages ) was called the Wizard Earl. He finished a map of the moon a couple of months before Galileo,was friendly with the poet John Donne (a favourite of mine) and spent 17 years in the Tower of London with Walter Raleigh for his implied part in a Catholic rebellion. Whilst in the Tower he built a covered bowling alley for him and Walter!
He had a daughter called Lucy who was considered a great beauty and about whom several poets wrote. He wanted her to go and live with him in the Tower but she wanted to marry the Duke of Carlisle and through treachery and intrigue she had her way. Im going to try and write a poem about her.