Capesthorne Hall, Cheshire

Capesthorne is in eastern Cheshire, close to Macclesfield, in a rich farming district where many grand old mansions are still occupied by grand old families. Approaching the house today, there is a piquant contrast between the old England and the new. Ahead is Capesthorne Hall, a splendidly over- the-top Victorian pile in mock Jacobean red brick with towers, pinnacles and balustrades, set in a smiling park. Away to the left beyond the trees rises the businesslike disk of the huge Jodrell Bank telescope, a Space Age symbol of the challenge that confronts the owners of yesterday's England.

The Davenports have been at Capesthorne since the 1720s as vigorously idiosyncratic squires, county magnates and members of parliament, but they were a power in this part of Cheshire long before that. From the twelfth century they were Chief Foresters of Leek and Macclesfield, and they enforced the savage forest laws with the power of life and death, without trial or appeal. Their brisk approach to their duties was summed up in the family badge of a felon's bead with a halter round his neck, a device still to be seen in the Davenport heraldry at Capesthorne.