Lyme Mastiff

The legendary Lyme Mastiff was developed by the Legh family at Lyme Hall in Cheshire. How the breed came about is uncertain and the standard was never written up. Now extinct, this powerful guard dog was seen as one of the best and purest working British breeds of its time, even though the Legh family did receive some criticism from certain authorities concerning the generations of inbreeding. The reasons for the extinction of the Lyme Mastiff are unclear, but some modern English Mastiff fanciers believe that the Cheshire strain found its way into the bloodline of old English Mastiffs and Bullmastiffs.