Thanks for this, yes I think my problem was to put too much filling in! But I seem to dimly remember some sort of device (steel or ceramic) that looks a bit like a napkin ring with holes in it, stops the pastry sinking to the level of the filling in the middle of the pie. It supports the lid in...
I recently made a game pie with hot water pastry. I used a 20" cake tin. Everything went fine, apart from the fact that when I took the pie out of the oven and wanted to pour in the stock I had made, the pastry was sitting on the filling and there was no room to insert the stock before putting...