THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. I
During the latter part of the seventeenth century the people of Cheshire
began to repair the damage done to the churches, mansions, and public
buildings during the Civil Wars. It was hardly to be expected that the
art of the builder could flourish during that stormy period. Gothic
architecture had reached its greatest glory under the Plantagenet and
Tudor kings, and when the builders of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries took up their work again they cast aside the aims and ideals
of the Gothic craftsmen and turned to new models and new sources for
their inspiration.
The changes which were now made were one of the results of the
Renaissance or Great Awakening of the sixteenth century. The men who
visited Italy and brought back with them copies of the works of the old
Greek and Roman writers, which they printed and gave to the world,
brought also the ideas of Italian architects and plans of Italian
buildings, which had been copied from those of ancient Athens and Rome.
Englishmen of the eighteenth century took these as their models. Like
the Roman workmen, they found it easier to _copy_ than to _invent_.
If you turn back to Chapter VI you will find that the chief feature of
the Roman, which we will now call the Italian or Classic style, are the
rows of pillars ranged along the front and sides of a building. The Town
Hall of Macclesfield, and the group of buildings which now form the
Castle of Chester, are good examples of the style of architecture which
prevailed during the eighteenth century. The windows are sometimes
round-headed, but more often they are rectangular, with low triangles
above them.
Unfortunately many ancient buildings, which we would gladly have with us
now, disappeared at this time. Some of them, no doubt, were in such a
ruinous state that it was impossible to repair them, but, generally
speaking, little or no pains were taken to restore them to their former
appearance. The people preferred to pull down and destroy and rebuild in
the new Classic style, which rapidly became a craze.
The greatest loss was that of the mediaeval castle of Chester, which,
with the exception of 'Caesar's Tower', was pulled down in 1788. The
front entrance to the new castle is in the Doric style. Round the
courtyard are barracks and an armoury, the county gaol and the shire
hall with colonnades of Ionic pillars.
Many fine Elizabethan halls were destroyed to make way for mansions in
the Classic style. Hooton Hall was built on the site of an old 'black
and white' timber house. Poynton, Tabley, Tatton, Ince, and Doddington
Halls were built about the same time. Other houses were altered or
enlarged. The beauty of Adlington Hall was spoilt by the stone front
with its Corinthian columns, which Charles and Hester Legh built. The
appearance of Lyme Hall was completely changed by an Italian architect
named Giacomo Leoni. His work is adorned with figures of the gods of
heathen Rome, Neptune and Venus and Pan. The Leghs of Lyme brought many
treasures from Italy. The stained glass in the east window of Disley
Church was brought by them.
The roundheaded 'Italian' windows in the tower of Rostherne Church tell
us that they are the work of eighteenth-century builders and
'restorers'. The ugly tower cuts a sorry figure when compared with the
beautiful perpendicular towers of Mobberley, Cheadle, Budworth, Witton,
Alderley, Middlewich, and others in the neighbourhood. The tower of
Great Barrow Church, with urns in the place of pinnacles, and the porch
of Frodsham, are out of keeping with the Gothic character of the rest of
the buildings.
The eighteenth-century restorers had little taste or sense of beauty.
Within the churches ugly wooden galleries were placed over the aisles,
and the walls, pillars, and pews coated with layers of paint or
whitewash. Even the carved woodwork of the choir stalls of Chester
Cathedral was painted. The open timber roof of Alderley Old Church was
hidden by a flat ceiling of lath and plaster. A portion of the old
timber church at Warburton was repaired with common bricks, and
sometimes whole churches were rebuilt with the same material.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO CHESTER CASTLE]
In place of the handsome Decorated altar tombs, with their effigies of
knights and dames, great tablets of marble brought from Italy were fixed
on the walls. On them were carved skulls and cross-bones, sometimes an
entire skeleton, with funeral urns like those in which the Romans placed
the ashes of their dead. Scrolls with long rambling inscriptions told of
the virtues of the dead. These were often written in Latin, as if the
homely English of the mother tongue was not good enough for the
purpose.
[Illustration: ROSTHERNE. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TOWER]
The poets of the eighteenth century imitated the style of the poets of
ancient Rome. Their poems are full of the wit and satire found in Horace
and Juvenal. Man, not Nature, was nearly always the subject of their
poems. Two lines of Alexander Pope, the greatest of the
eighteenth-century poets, are carved on the tombstone of Sir John
Chesshyre in Runcorn Church:--
A wit's a feather and a chief's a rod:
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
[Illustration: CHANCEL: FRODSHAM (Eighteenth Century)]
Sir John Chesshyre was a lawyer, and built the little library near
Halton Castle in 1733 for the books which he left for the use of
Cheshire scholars and students.
Clubs were formed by the poets and wits and 'men of fashion' of the
eighteenth century. They met in the taverns and coffee-houses of the
towns, and scratched their smart sayings on the window-panes with their
diamond rings. They rather prided themselves on their eccentric habits
and their superiority over other men, who had neither the time nor the
money to waste on frivolous amusements.
In a little wood near Gawsworth is a lonely grave with a plain flat
stone, beneath which,
Undisturbed, and hid from Vulgar Eyes,
A Wit, Musician, Poet, Player, lies.
The grave is that of Samuel Johnson, a dancing master, 'afterwards
ennobled with the grander title of Lord Flame,' as the inscription tells
us, who was buried here at his own desire.
Neston and Parkgate, twin towns on the southern shore of Wirral, were
visited by many fashionable people in the eighteenth century. They spent
the summer here for the bathing and the fresh breezes that blow from the
Irish Sea and the hills of Wales. It is to be feared that Parkgate was
also the resort of less respectable folk, for in some of the old houses
you may still see the huge holes in which smugglers stored their
unlawful cargoes. It was dangerous work, for the 'King's Yacht', as the
revenue cutter was called, patrolled the waters of the Dee, and the
officers had orders to shoot down all whom they caught in this illegal
traffic. It is from this boat that the 'Yacht Inn' at Chester takes its
name.
Neston and Parkgate were the starting-points for the Irish mails. The
coaches from London and Liverpool put down their passengers here for
Dublin. One of the most beautiful poems in the English language, the
'Lycidas' of John Milton, was written in memory of Edward King, a friend
of the poet, who was shipwrecked on his way from Ireland to Parkgate.
The London coaches that brought travellers to Chester and Parkgate
frequently got into difficulties in the low-lying parts near the River
Dee. The roads were very bad, and the coach often had to be hauled out
of the mud by a team of horses borrowed from some neighbouring farm.
The passengers sometimes found themselves without their purses and their
jewels at the end of their journey. The roads were frequented by
highwaymen--'gentlemen of the road', they called themselves--who held up
the coach and demanded money. With pistols levelled at their heads, the
travellers were generally glad to escape with their lives.
One of the most famous of these highwaymen was Dick Turpin, whose
escapades, I imagine, are known to most Cheshire boys, though I hope
they have no wish to follow the career of this rascally thief.
Once it happened in Cheshire, near Dunham I popped
On a horseman alone, whom I speedily stopped;
That I lightened his pockets you'll readily guess--
Quick work makes Dick Turpin when mounted on Bess.
The robbery spoken of in these lines was committed on the high-road
between Altrincham and Knutsford, and Turpin rode so fast to the inn at
Hoo Green, where he showed his watch to some Cheshire squires, that he
was never suspected of the crime. This and many other stories of Turpin
are told by Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist, whose father lived at
Rostherne.
Knutsford claimed a highwayman of its own, one Higgins, who lived on
Knutsford Heath as an ordinary gentleman of means, and was very friendly
with the sporting squires of the neighbourhood. His favourite amusement
was to waylay the ladies who went to the county balls and 'assemblies'
at the George Hotel, and rob them of their diamonds. But he, like most
others of his profession, was found out at last, and paid with his life
the penalty of his crimes.