Tatton Park wedding map print

Sir Thomas Egerton, later Lord Chancellor, bought the estate in 1598, and the Egertons held it for three and a half centuries. Samuel Wyatt drew up a new neoclassical house in the 1770s, and when he died before it was done, his nephew Lewis William Wyatt finished it, on a smaller scale, between 1807 and 1816.

The park is older still: deer were enclosed here by royal charter in 1290, and red and fallow herds roam it today. Tatton Mere is natural, while Melchett Mere appeared through subsidence in the 1920s. During the Second World War around 60,000 trainee parachutists made their first jumps over the park, flying from nearby RAF Ringway.

Maurice Egerton, the last Lord Egerton, died in 1958 and left the house to the National Trust; Cheshire East Council runs the estate today. On the map Melchett Mere lies south-east of the hall, a broad sheet of water in open parkland, while the larger Tatton Mere stretches away beyond the edge. Picture your guests crossing that grass on the way in, with the deer looking on.