Manchester. He may go by the bleak and lofty road across the Derbyshire
moorlands, with scarce a house for many miles to keep him company, by
Newhaven Inn, and in the solemn companionship of the Roman road and the
prehistoric tumuli, on to Buxton and by Whaley Bridge to Stockport;
or he may choose the way by Leek and Macclesfield to Stockport,
which is the old mail-coach route, and therefore pre-eminently _the_
Manchester Road. The Buxton route was, however, the earlier of the
two, and only fell out of use after 1762, when the road by Leek and
Macclesfield was improved and turnpiked. A better surface than that of
this route could not be denied, but the stark loneliness of it, its
aloofness from most human interests—it runs as it were along the roof
of the world—are rather ghastly. How the isolated inns—the “Jug and
Glass,” the “Newhaven Inn,” the “Bull-i’-Thorn,” and the “Old Duke of
Cumberland”—pick a living it is difficult to tell.
To go back to still earlier times, neither of these routes formed part
of the way between London and Manchester, and a writer of historic
novels who sought to give us a true romance of this road in, say, the
seventeenth century, would need to set his horsemen, who were then
your only travellers, jogging along from Manchester to London by way
of the roundabout route of Warrington, Great Budworth, Cranage Heath,
Holmes Chapel, Brereton, Church Lawton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, whence
they would generally proceed by Stone, Lichfield, and Coleshill. That
was, with minor divagations suggested by taste and fancy, or by such
circumstances as floods or highwaymen, the old original post-road.
[Sidenote: _FEROCITIES_]
The river Dove is crossed at Hanging Bridge, or Mayfield Bridge, where
rival inns, one on either side of the water, glower at one another
and divide the custom of the contemplative angler and the strenuous
pilgrims of the road. It is “Hanging Bridge” because of the legendary
execution of rebels here.
The annals of Hanging Bridge are varied by an incident of the
’Forty-five, not yet entirely forgotten, when the innkeeper, in defence
of his cellar, was wounded by one of the Highlanders.
It is not so long since the countryfolk ceased talking familiarly of
that time; of the farmer who was shot dead by two rebels, to whom he
had refused to give up his horse; and of the dreadful fate that befel
those stragglers who from one cause or another fell from the ranks
of Prince Charlie’s retreating army. I picture the gaunt, ragged
Highlander, fallen by the wayside, a stranger in a strange land,
understanding nothing of English; and I see the murderous peasantry,
revenging themselves upon him for their late terrors, by stringing
him up to the nearest tree. Legends tell how these derelicts of the
invading army were hanged from signposts, but we may easily disprove
that much, for there were not any signposts in 1745. The simple
villagers used the trees instead. A horrid story is indeed told of one
of the pottery towns, by which it appears that the body of one of these
unfortunate clansmen was flayed, and a drum made of his skin.
[Illustration: HANGING BRIDGE.]
The last incident that is at all worth recording here is that of 1819,
when Manchester was thirsty for political reform, and thousands of its
people incidentally hungering for bread. A march on London was proposed
by the “Blanketeers” after the broken-up meeting of “Peterloo,” but
extremely hot weather and other discouragements were in their way.
Despite opposition, however, five hundred reached Macclesfield, but
there they were dispersed by the military, and only one reached
Ashbourne. As a threatening demonstration he was not a success.
[Sidenote: _THE MOORS_]
At Mayfield lived none other than Tommy Moore, nearly four years,
between 1813 and 1817, and here, inspired by the sweet-toned chimes of
Ashbourne, he wrote the familiar verses, _Those Evening Bells_:
Those evening bells! Those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!
Those joyous hours are passed away,
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.
And so ’twill be when I am gone;
That tuneful peal will still ring on;
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.
[Illustration: THE MANCHESTER MAILS PASSING ONE ANOTHER NEAR ASHBOURNE.
[_After J. Pollard._
]
At Mayfield Cottage, in midst of typical English scenery, and with the
meadows and the cows coming up to his very door, he wrote that work of
supercharged Orientalism, _Lalla Rookh_; and here he first tasted the
delights of literary success. Byron had set the fashion in literature
and made Eastern subjects pay, and Moore accordingly proposed to take
advantage of the prevailing taste and write a poem of giaours, houris,
peris, and bul-buls. He knew nothing of Oriental subjects, but that
mattered little. Purchasing every available book on the East, he
retired to this spot, and, after three years’ studying the library thus
acquired, produced that highly successful work. There were great men
in those days, but perhaps Longmans were the greatest among them. They
agreed to give Moore £3,000 for _Lalla Rookh_ before ever a line of it
was written. O! my Anointed Aunt, three thousand of the best, three
thousand golden minted quid for so problematical a result.
[Illustration: SWINSCOE.]
[Sidenote: _THE HAMPS AND THE MANIFOLD_]
Here, across Hanging Bridge, the road has left Derbyshire and entered
Staffordshire. It goes up a long, long, staggering hill out of the
valley of the Dove and comes to some very grim uplands, where the
fields have stone walls instead of hedges, and moors presently take
the place of fields. The situation is extremely exposed; hence perhaps
the name of the neighbouring village of Blore, _i.e._ a blowy, windy
place. Swinscoe, or Swinecote, as it is more properly styled, _i.e._
“Swine’s house,” is a lonely hamlet with a background of dense
plantations crowning two forbidding hills. Calton Moor succeeds to it,
with a farmhouse at the cross-roads, once the Calton Moor Inn, and
the scenery now grows wildly beautiful; the road at last descending
with alarming steepness to Waterhouses, with a dangerous level
crossing of quarry, or other, works at the bottom. Here the river
Hamps sings along the valley, on its way to join the river Manifold,
disappearing underground, among the limestone rocks, for some miles:
the neighbouring village of Waterfall taking its name from this
phenomenon. Waterhouses was in the coaching days nothing more than its
name implies: a few scattered houses, chiefly inns, where the coaches
changed horses, built in modern times beside the river Hamps, bordering
the road. Nowadays it has grown considerably, and since the recent
opening of the Leek and Manifold Valley Railway, with a Waterhouses
station, it has grown very popular with trippers to the wonderful
scenery of the neighbourhood. There are limestone rocks, picturesque
cliffs, and ancient bridges along the valley of the Manifold, and a
cavern dedicated by the superstitious Saxons to their deity, Thor.
At Winkhill Bridge, down the road, we had bid good-bye to the Hamps,
and then came on a hill-top to what used to be known, perversely
enough, as “Bottom” inn, now called the “Green Man.” The green man
himself, in the guise of an archer, appears on the sign. Cross-roads
go off, left to Cheadle, famed in Limerick-lore for a young lady, a
needle, and a beadle, and right to Hartington, passing on the way the
hamlet of Onecote, whose name gives a fine opening for cheap wits.
[Illustration: WATERHOUSES.]
It is now chiefly downhill to the town of Leek, the “metropolis of the
moorlands,” as it has been called, but a metropolis only in a very
restricted sense, for its inhabitants number only about 15,000. The
sombre, rocky moors of this wildest corner of Staffordshire surround
it, and indeed have given the place its name, which comes from the
Cymric “llech”: a rock. A tall, mouldering cross in the churchyard
of the old parish church, covered with ancient Celtic devices, bears
witness to the immemorial antiquity of the settlement.
[Illustration: BOTTOM INN: THE “GREEN MAN.”]
[Sidenote: _THE LABEL-LICKING LIFE_]
Leek, however, is a surprise to most travellers from the south; being
a forerunner, a preliminary specimen in Staffordshire, of the typical
Lancashire manufacturing town. Cobbles and setts and clogs, with
factories and tall chimney-stacks, are its chiefest features, and the
spinning of silk thread its principal business. The public in general
know nothing of Leek, but it was discovered not many months ago by a
Radical newspaper on the look-out for a sensation. It may be taken as
a certain, sure thing that when a newspaper in these times wants a
sensation, it is bound to have it, and this is how it was served up:
THE LABEL-LICKERS
How the Child Workers in
Factories Earn a
Pittance
MACHINES TOO SLOW
But why not use the thing for all it was alliteratively worth, “The
Little Label Lickers of Leek.”
It was not much of a sensation, after all: resolving itself simply into
the facts that among the hundreds of girls employed in the silk-thread
factories there are many whose business is to pack and label the reels.
They are paid a wage that is, it is true, almost incredibly small: one
“full-timer” earning, by this account, only 2_s._ 9_d._ in five days,
but others up to 10_s._ Among them there are many who refuse to use
the mechanical dampers ready to hand, preferring, for sake of extra
speed, to lick the labels. This is done with a speed bewildering to
any one who has not himself licked and stuck labels for a living. One
girl boxed-up twenty-five gross of reels and licked and stuck a like
number of labels in a working day of nine hours and a half. It will be
observed that no one was obliged to deal with the labels in this way,
and that in some factories the use of a damper was even compulsory; but
look at the “scare” headlines to be got!
[Illustration: LEEK.]
In common with all other towns that witnessed the march of the
Highlanders, and their subsequent retreat, in 1715, Leek long cherished
memories of that time. It was an era from which everything else was
dated. It was also an era in which the keeping of diaries was the
resort of contemplative people, whose observations, entertaining in
themselves, are additionally amusing by reason of the diarists’ quaint
notions of grammar and spelling. Thus, Squire Mountford, of “the
Grange,” is found remarking upon Prince Charlie’s forces as composed
of “some very fine men and good horses, but the greater part was such
poor, shabby, lowsy, deminutive creatures as never seen in England—one
half of ’em without breches; some rid without sadles and halters ...
they were expecting the duck’s army would be with them.” By “the duck”
we are to understand the Duke of Cumberland, who, sure enough, _was_
with them, later on.
Mountford’s remark as to the Highlanders being without breeches is
especially amusing. He had obviously never before seen, or heard of,
kilts, and appears to think they went without breeches because they
were too poor to afford them. He was not alone in this view of the
“petticoat men,” as the people styled them.
[Sidenote: “_NOW THUS_”]
In the church of St. Edward is the singular memorial of William
Trafford of Swithamley, who died in 1697, aged ninety-three, and is the
hero of a legend pictured on the sign of the “Old Rock House” Inn at
Barton, near Manchester. Rudely sculptured on the tomb is the figure of
a man threshing corn, with the words “Now thus,” alluding to the only
words he would utter when, many years earlier, during the Civil War,
the Roundhead soldiery burst into his house and found the place empty
except for himself, whom they discovered in the barn, monotonously
repeating those meaningless words. They thought him a “poor natural,”
and so departed, but he was not quite the fool he seemed, for beneath
the threshing-floor he had hidden most of his valuables.
XXXII
The road loaves Leek again downhill, descending to the river Churnet,
with the long expanse of Rudyard Lake stretching for two miles on
the left hand. This was cut as a reservoir for feeding the Trent and
Mersey, and Leek and Cauldon Canals; but has long been, in addition,
a holiday-resort and picnic-place, where boating and yachting are
to be had, with plenty of elbow-room for any likely number of the
excursionists brought to Rudyard station by the North Staffordshire
Railway. Rudyard is, in consequence of all these things, a village
where every cottage provides teas and refreshments. The most notable
of them is the house called Spite Hall, at the north end of the lake.
The legendary lore of the place tells how this was originally built by
some malevolent person, to “spite” the owner of Rudyard Villa, standing
immediately behind it, with the object of obliterating the view; which
it certainly very effectively does, the only view that Rudyard Villa
now enjoys being the back wall of Spite Hall, at the distance of a few
feet. But this is a picturesque way of putting the simple fact that the
owner of the land, by exercising his right of building, incidentally
disestablished a cherished view. There was not, necessarily, any spite
in it. But this is the stuff that legends are made of.
[Sidenote: _RUSHTON SPENCER_]
Rushton Marsh stands where Rudyard Lake ends, on a rivulet falling
presently into the river Dane. On the hill above, coyly hiding behind
some farmyards and cowsheds, and up along muddy tracks that it is a
sorrow to trace, stands the little church of Rushton Spencer, with
a turret which suggests its having been designed by an architect of
packing-cases. A closely ranked number of very grim tombstones fill
the ill-kept churchyard, among them one with this inscription:
“Thomas, son of Thomas and Mary Meaykin, interred July 16, 1781, aged
21 years. As a man falleth before wicked men, so fell I. Βια θανατος”
(= put to death by force).
The tragedy referred to was that of a youth who presumed to love the
daughter of his master, who caused him to be drugged and then buried.
This happened at Stone, some twenty miles away. The unfortunate young
man’s relatives disinterred the body, which they found in a position
clearly indicating that he had been buried alive, and conveyed it
hither.
Staffordshire is exchanged for Cheshire at the passage of the river
Dane, in another mile and a half. The not remarkable village of Bosley
follows, with Bosley Reservoir on the right, and on the left the bold
hills of Raven’s Clough. And then the fine, broad road goes down in a
magnificent, steady way, by a succession of little wooded hills, into
Macclesfield.
There are elements of beauty in and around the old town of
Macclesfield, but they are sorely mingled with the results of a hundred
and fifty years of factory life. It was in 1756 that silk spinning
and weaving were introduced here, speedily overshadowing by their
importance the old button-making trade of the town; and although silk
has had its ups and downs, and has of late years been severely stricken
by foreign competition, there is a look of prosperity in the enormous
mills that meet the eye at every turn, and are not infrequently
extending their operations.
The old original Macclesfield stands high above the sites of these
many factories, and centres about the ancient parish church of St.
Michael, upon its rock, the successor of a very early church of the
same dedication, which indeed furnished Macclesfield with its original
name of “Michael’s Field,” whence, by way of “Maxfield” we obtain the
present style. The dedication seems, however, to have been changed
at some period unknown, to All Hallows, and was so in the sixteenth
century: reverting later to the present style.
Steep streets lead up to that hub and core of the town where the church
stands, and more steeply still climbs the footway up the one hundred
and eight stairs of Brunswick Steps. The view, looking aloft to the
church, must once have been particularly fine, but it was long since
spoiled by the squalid houses built on the hillside; the very last note
of the commonplace being touched in the recently rebuilt “Nag’s Head”
public-house, full in the view, where not merely the photographer, but
even the artist, must deal with it.
[Sidenote: _ST. MICHAEL’s, MACCLESFIELD_]
St. Michael’s Church, a grand building beautifully restored, has had
varied fortunes. It was damaged when the Parliamentary army besieged
and took the town, and was later very largely rebuilt on a semi-pagan
“classic” model. The great ornamental iron gates enclosing the
stone-flagged churchyard are relics of this period, and incidentally
disclose the ironworkers’ ideas of what angels are like: a gilded
figure over the principal gate representing a very saucy-looking
young woman ecstatically pirouetting on one foot, a kind of celestial
can-can, and flourishing a big trumpet.
Time has not yet obliterated the epitaph in the churchyard upon one
Mary Broomfield, who died in 1755, aged eighty; and it is still
possible to read how “The chief concern of her life for the last 20
years was to order and provide for her funeral. Her greatest pleasure
was to think and talk about it. She lived many years on a pension of
9_d._ a week, and yet saved £5, which at her own request was laid
out at her burial.” A day with Mary Broomfield when in her most
characteristic mood must have been a real treat: the conversation
doubtless resolving itself into a discussion of the suitability or
otherwise of fringes on shrouds and the respective merits of copper or
brass coffin-plates.
The work of bringing back the old church to something of its ancient
state was costly, but the result is striking. There is a very wealth
of monuments, many of the Savages, a Cheshire family of great note in
their day, lying in effigy in the Savage Chapel and in the Chantry also
associated with them: most notable among them all the loving figures of
Sir John Savage, 1495, and his wife, Katharine Stanley. These lie side
by side; the knight’s right hand clasping her left. It would have been
better had the alabaster figures not been blackleaded by some old-time
caretaker!
The Leghs, of Lyme and Adlington, vie in the interest of their
monuments with the Savages. Of foremost interest is the inscription to
“Perkin a Legh”:
Here lyeth the bodie of Perkin a Legh
That for King Richard the death did die,
Betrayed for Righteovsnes 1399,
And the bones of Sir Peers his sonne,
That with King Henrie the Fift did wonne
In Paris.
This Perkin served King Edward the Third and the Black Prince his
sonne in all their warres in France, and was at the Battell of
Cressie and hadd Lyme given him for that service. And after their
deaths served King Richard the Second, and left him not in his
troubles, but was taken with him and beheaded at Chester by King
Henrie the Fourth. And the sayd Sir Peers his sonne served King
Henrie the Fift and was slain at the Battell of Agincourt 1415.
Here, then, lie the Leghs of that old time, with a lying epitaph over
them; for it was not Perkin a Legh, but his father-in-law, Sir Thomas
D’Angers, whose monument is at Grappenhall, who was given Lyme for his
loyal devoirs at Crecy. Whether the misstatement was on the original
inscription, or was inserted by Sir Peter Legh, who in 1620 “restored”
it, does not appear.
[Sidenote: “_THE BARNABY_”]
There is something of everything in Macclesfield, and while much of
the old order of things prevails, and while barbaric granite setts
pave almost every street, above or below, there are modern evidences,
in the shape of Public Libraries, Technical Institutes, and drinking
fountains. Time was when your only drinking fountain was a tankard
in one of the inns, and when the silk-mills themselves were the sole
technical schools: and yet in those times Macclesfield still contrived
to become great. That period of growing greatness, when the factory
system first brought wealth to the Roes, the Brocklehursts, and other
foremost silk-weavers, is reflected in the long rows of very urban,
rather grim, houses as you enter the town from the direction of Leek,
and in the great box-like brick front of the old “Macclesfield Hotel”
of pre-railway days; and the present period of full-blown prosperity is
marked by the public parks and museums. The town is always bustling,
but to see it at its busiest—when it is strenuously engaged in the
business of making holiday—you must come here either on the 22nd of
June, or at Michaelmas. On the first occasion is held “the Barnaby,”
_i.e._ the St. Barnabas Fair, and on the second, “the Wakes”; both
crowded pleasure fairs. Still, as in old testimony, the genuine
townsfolk reckon time and events, past or future, as so long “since
last, or come next Barnaby,” or Wakes, as the case may be. The former
is the favourite, and thus becomes associated with the circumstances of
life, whether of joy or sorrow, prosperity or adversity, in a family.
The aged couple count the length of their wedded life by “the Barnaby”;
the mother tells you the age of her children by “the Barnaby”: the
simple annals of operative existence measure the periods of working
prosperity, or the privations of short time, by “the Barnaby.”
Macclesfield presents a very striking view from the road on to
Manchester. No sooner are the last houses of the town left behind than
the highway plunges into a beautiful avenue. From it you look out upon
that “field,” folded in between the great hills, in which the town is
situated. There the church of St. Michael, on its eyrie, seems in the
distance to be set about with woods; while down below is the church at
Park Green, neighboured by chimney-stacks and gasometers: manufactories
set in the lap of scenic beauty.
[Illustration: MACCLESFIELD, FROM THE ROAD TO STOCKPORT.]
A little distance onward there stood in coaching days the tollhouse
of Flash; not to be confused with that of Flash Bar at Axe Edge, near
Buxton. The inns of this neighbourhood were notorious in the late years
of the eighteenth century and the opening days of the nineteenth as
haunts of the unlicensed pedlars who obtained their stock in the town
of Macclesfield and tramped the country, selling buttons, laces, and
other trifles, and committing robberies when opportunity offered. They
were gregarious folk, fond of the company of their kind, and held at
their favoured houses of call veritable rogues’ saturnalia. From this
spot and from Flash Bar, up in the hills, greatly frequented by them,
are said to have arisen the expressions of “flash talk” and “flashy”
articles: in allusion to their vagabonds’ slang and the cheap but showy
goods they offered. But however that may be, the old place-name
“Flash” merely describes the natural surroundings of the spot, and
is but a phonetic variant of “plash”; whence with the addition of an
initial “s” we get “splash.” We have an early authority for this; the
_Promptorium Parculorum_ of 1440 giving “Plasche or flasche, where
reyne water stondyth.” Flash stands in just such a situation, below the
hills, by the river Bollin.
[Illustration: PRESTBURY.]
Bollington, on the right hand, a new town of cotton-mills and
silk-factories, with very bold scenery around it, dyes the waters of
the stream, which run red or yellow, blue or green, according to the
colours at the moment in use.
[Sidenote: _PRESTBURY_]