The first comprehensive book about Chillingham in Northumberland-its unique wild cattle, its historic castle and church, and the family associated with them since the twelfth century. Julius Caesar admired the cattle's ancestors for their brute strength, Sir Walter Scott immortalised them. They were painted by Sir Edwin Landseer and Archibald Thorburn, and depicted at their best by Thomas Bewick, the master engraver. Darwin studied them and wrote about them in the 'Descent of Man'. The historian Simon Schama described the Chillingham cattle as "the great, perhaps the greatest icon of British natural history". The Castle's history is chequered and the nobles who lived there even more so. Incest, adultery, witchcraft, torture, kingmakers and traitors, a cricketer and a cowboy are all part of its history, resulting in its modern reputation for cruel and benign ghosts still regularly seen in the castle. Founded around 1184, the country church, in its simplicity hides a fifteenth-century tomb described as "one of the finest such monuments in the country outside a cathedral". Edited by Dr Paul G. Bahn and Vera Mutimer, with a foreword by HRH Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales.
Foreword; HRH Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales. Acknowledgements. I: Chillingham-Geology, Archaeology & Settlement; Dr Stan Beckensall. II: The Synergy of Cattle, Castle & Church; Sir Humphry Wakefield Bt. III: Ghosts of Chillingham Castle: Part 1: The Ghosts of Chillingham Castle; Extracts based on a radio talk given by the Countess (1925); Leonora, Countess of Tankerville; Part 2: The Ghosts Help Chillingham Castle: Sir Humphry Wakefield Bt; Part 3: Extracts from The Diary of an Amateur Ghost Hunter (2012): Mark Fisher: Part 4: A Ghost of a Chance; Mary Wakefield. IV: The Mystery of the Missing Chillingham Purdey Rifles; Graham Priest. V: Tea Time Curfew; Charles Bain Smith; Appendix 1: A Maiden Bowled Over? Appendix 2: Chillingham Stamp-ede. VI: The Church of St Peter; Philip Deakin MBE. VII: Chillingham as a Deer Park; Dr John Fletcher. VIII: The Chillingham Cattle in Art; Professor Christiana Payne; Appendix 1: John Stanton Ward. IX: Wild, White and Unique-The Science; Dr Stephen G Hall; Appendix 1: Darwin & The Chillingham Cattle; Appendix 2: An Account of the Killing of the Wild Bull (1884); James Howard Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury; Appendix 3: Mainly About Wolves (1937); Ernest Thompson Seton; Appendix 4: Killing 'em At Chillingham (1872); Appendix 5: Punchy-very rare beef. X: Fairy Cows; Dr Stephen G. Hall; Appendix 1: Language of The Bulls; Dr Stephen G Hall. XI: Extract from the Warden's Diary; Austen Widdows; Appendix 1: How to Stop a Charging Herd. XII: Reunited; The Park Manager.
