Rostherne Mere
Rostherne Mere which sits to the north of Tatton Park has a Mermaid story attached to it. In ‘The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6 (1900)’, Augustus J. C. Hare gives the following description. ‘Rostherne Church stands on a terrace above the mere, into which one of its bells is said to have slipped down, and a mermaid is supposed to come up and ring it whenever one of the family at Tatton is going to die. It is the most poetical legend in Cheshire. Old Mrs. Egerton told it one day at dinner. A short time after, the butler rushed into the drawing-room, and begged the gentlemen of the house to come and interfere, for two of the under-servants were murdering one another.
Mrs. Egerton’s special footman had told the story of the mermaid in the servants’ hall, and another servant denied it. The footman declared that it was impossible it should not be true, for his mistress had said it, and a desperate fight ensued.’
The Church at Rostherne is St Mary’s, and there is a possible further embellishment on the above story of the bell. Whilst the bell was being delivered to the church, it was cursed by one of the workmen. He subsequently fell into the Mere and drowned. The bell which he cursed followed him in. The bell was never recovered.
Reaching a depth on 30 meters, Rostherne Mere is a natural lake covering 48 hectares. ‘All kinds of legends are current about Rostherne, as is the case with most lakes which are reported to be deep. One is, that a mermaid comes up on Easter Day and rings a bell ; another, that it communicates with the Irish Channel by a subterranean passage; another, that it once formed, with Tabley, Tatton, Mere, and other lakes, a vast sheet of water that covered the country between Alderley Edge and High Leigh.’ [The Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England by Robert Charles Hope (1893)]