ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

THOUGH a man of great wealth and influence, Peter Legh the Younger was virtually a 'nobody' as far the pages of history were concerned.

Which has provided just the sort of challenge that local historian Geoff Simm relishes!

Geoff, a former Parkside Colliery worker from Newton-le-Willows, is the author of a series of splendidly-researched books, including one about the Evans family, a famous mining dynasty from Haydock's past.

And now his latest effort 'The Life and Times of Peter Legh the Younger (1707-1792)' is hot off the press. Written in Geoff's usual pithy, easy-to-read style, it at last brings this remarkable 18th-century personality out from the shadows.

It seems incredible that a man who held the title of Lord of Lyme for almost half-a-century and who had his gout-ridden foot (he suffered chronically from the affliction) planted into major industrial advances, should have remained so little known until Geoff started burrowing deep into dusty documentation.

The Leghs, major landowners in Lancashire and Cheshire, had a profound influence on this part of the world, and upon Newton-le-Willows and Haydock in particular. Lord Newton is among titles dotted into the family tree.

"This Peter has been ignored by his family during this century," says Geoff of Park Road North, Newton, "but he was the man who expanded the Haydock coalfield and supported the Sankey Navigation. There are local connections in the names of Legh Road,Legh Vale, Legh Street, and the Rams Head and Legh Arms pubs."

The Legh lineage goes back more than 600 years into English history with their classically-designed Cheshire family seat, Lyme Hall, at Disley, nestling in the foothills of the Pennines. A tour of the lofty, magnificent rooms reveals many family portraits - knights, politicians, men of power, builders and manipulators of history.

Almost every family member is represented, be it in portrait or sketch. But the intriguing omission is Peter Legh the Younger, despite the fact that he lived for 85 years. "He's seemingly forgotten," says Geoff, "amidst this impressive cavalcade of lordly Leghs."

This fired Geoff's curiosity to know more about the landowning former politician. He scuttled into records offices thumbing through the dust of the centuries and located a collection of letters upon which his book has been based.

Among the sketchy details which initially emerged was a rather cruel summing-up by Lady Newton, in chronicling the family's history early this century. Peter and his wife Martha were, she said, unattractive and a "dull and uninteresting couple." Peter's physical appearance is something of a mystery because no portrait of him is thought to survive, although correspondence of the time indicates that he sat for at least one.

Not much of a peg to hang an 80-page book upon. But Geoff stuck to the task and the result is an absorbing account, broken up by short snippets covering many aspects of the upstairs-downstairs existence.

These range from casual sex with the servants to the button-straining dinner menu with its multi courses offering such delicacies as snipe pie, rabbits with onions, loin of venison, boiled mutton, rague of venison, woodcock and turkey.

The table groaned under the weight of all this, and a 19th-century diarist's jottings contains the following little gem: "In old Mr Peter Legh's days, the consumption of veal only for five months at a time during his residence at Lyme cost £150 a month (an astronomical amount at that time). Three thousand fowls were used in the year - 12 packs of flour in a month and 500lbs of butter per month."

Hardly any wonder, living so high on the hog, that Peter Legh the Younger should have been an acute gout sufferer.

He was virtually crippled by this affliction (much featured in cartoon humour but no laughing matter for the victim) when he died in old age on May 20, 1792, having been Lord of Lyme for more than 48 years.

"His old enemy, gout, had ravaged him throughout his life," writes Geoff Simm, "and poor Peter was reduced to being wheeled around the gallery at Lyme. Peter's problems caused him to use rather extreme methods to alleviate the pain."

These included a gout chair with foot cistern - sounding more like an instrument of torture than a pain reliever.

It proved a sad and lonely end to a long and varied life during which Peter (who in later life suffered a series of mental as well as physical setbacks) outlived the majority of his family, friends and associates.

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