Deer park (England)

In medieval and Early Modern England, Wales and Ireland, a deer park (Latin: novale cervorum, campus cervorum) was an enclosed area containing deer. It was bounded by a ditch and bank with a wooden park pale on top of the bank, or by a stone or brick wall.^[1] The ditch was on the inside^[2] increasing the effective height. Some parks had deer "leaps", where there was an external ramp and the inner ditch was constructed on a grander scale, thus allowing deer to enter the park but preventing them from leaving.^[3]

Deer parks could vary in size from a circumference of many miles down to what amounted to little more than a deer paddock.^[4] The landscape within a deer park was manipulated to produce a habitat that was both suitable for the deer and also provided space for hunting. "Tree dotted lawns, tree clumps and compact woods"^[5] provided "launds" (pasture)^[6] over which the deer were hunted and wooded cover for the deer to avoid human contact. The landscape was intended to be visually attractive as well as functional.