Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere with the rank of captain. The young baron inherited a sizeable estate in the North of England, including land that had been in the Cholmondeley family since 1615 – and the ancestral seat at Vale Royal in the county of Cheshire. The young Lord Delamere made his first trip to Africa in 1891 to hunt lion in British Somaliland, and returned yearly to resume the hunt. In 1894 he was severely mauled by an attacking lion, and was only saved when his Somali gunbearer, Abdullah Ashur, leaped on the lion, giving Delamere time to retrieve his rifle. As a result
Delamere Forest amounts of sand and gravel across an extensive outwash fan on the eastern side of the ridge. The soils are very varied, including brown earths, podsols, peats and gleys. One valley adjacent to the railway line has eight different soil types within a small area, and hosts a soil trail. This part of Delamere Forest is undulating in character, with elevations predominantly in the range 60–90 metres. It is composed of numerous hummocks and peatland basins, some of which are glacial in origin while others have been created by sand extraction. The basins form lakes and mosses (bogs) within the