Part 19

Leaving Ashbourne, the traveller has still a choice of routes to 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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

[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!

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.

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.

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_]