Part 1

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THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

CONTENTS

WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SEPARATE PLATES ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII

INDEX

WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER

=The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.

=The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

=The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.

=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.

=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

=The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland Highway.

=The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and History on an East Anglian Turnpike.

=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols.

=The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.

=The Hastings Road= and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.” Cycle Rides Round London.

=A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.=

=Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols.

=The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.”

=The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

=The Dorset Coast.=

=The South Devon Coast.=

=The Old Inns of Old England.= Two Vols.

=Love in the Harbour=: a Longshore Comedy.

=Rural Nooks Round London= (Middlesex and Surrey).

=Haunted Houses=: Tales of the Supernatural.

=The North Devon Coast.=

[_In the Press._

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

_THIS WAY TO GRETNA GREEN_

By CHARLES G. HARPER

_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR, AND FROM OLD-TIME PRINTS AND PICTURES_

Vol. II.—MANCHESTER TO GLASGOW

LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD. 1907

PRINTED AND BOUND BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW

Manchester— (Cross River Irwell.)

MILES

Salford 185-3/4

Pendleton 186-3/4

Irlam-o’-th’-Height 187-3/4

Pendlebury 188-1/2

Clifton 190

Kearsley Moor Church 192-1/4

Farnworth 193-1/4

Moses Gate 194

Bourndon 195

Bolton (Deansgate) 196-1/4

Dorfcocker 198-1/4

Boot Lane 198-3/4

Heaton 199-1/2

Horwich 201-1/2

Smithy Bridge 202-1/2 (Cross Lancaster Canal.)

Chorley 207-1/4

Clayton Green 211-1/4

Bamber Bridge 213-1/4

Walton-le-Dale 215 (Cross River Ribble.)

Preston 217

Cadley Moor 219-3/4

Broughton 221-1/4

Barton 222-3/4

Bilsborough 223-1/4

Brock’s Bridge 225-1/2 (Cross River Wyre.)

Claughton 226-1/2

Catterall 227-1/4 (Cross River Wyre.)

Garstang 228-3/4

Scorton 231

Bay Horse Station 233-1/2

Galgate 235-3/4

Scotforth 238-1/2

Lancaster 239-1/2 (Cross River Lune.)

Slyne 242-1/2

Bolton-le-Sands 243-1/2

Carnforth 245

Burton-in-Kendal 249-3/4

End Moor 255-1/4 (Cross River Kent.)

Kendal 261

Watchgate 265-3/4

Boroughbridge 271

Shap 276-3/4

Thrimby 280

Clifton 284-1/2

Lowther Bridge 285-1/2 (Cross River Lowther.)

Eamont Bridge 286 (Cross Eamont River.)

Penrith 287

Salkeld Gate 291-1/2

High Hesket 296-1/4

Low Hesket 297-3/4

Carleton 302-1/2 (Cross Petterill Brook.)

Carlisle (Clock Tower) 305-1/4 (Cross River Eden.)

Stanwix 306

Kingstown 308

Blackford 309-1/4

West Linton 311-1/4 (Cross River Line.)

Arthuret 313-1/4

Longtown 313-3/4 (Cross River Esk.)

The Border 317-1/4 (Cross River Sark)

Springfield 317-1/2

Gretna Green 318-1/2

Graham’s Hill 321

Kirkpatrick 322

Ecclefechan 328

Lockerbie 333-3/4

Dinwoodie Green 338-3/4

Johnstone Bridge 340-1/4 (Cross River Annan.)

Beattock 347-3/4

Moffat 349-3/4

Elvanfoot Bridge 362-1/2 (Cross River Clyde.)

Crawford 365 (Cross River Clyde.)

Abington 368

Denighton Bridge 370 (Cross a Branch of the Clyde.)

Douglas Mill 377-1/4

Lesmahagow 383-1/4

Larkhall 391-1/2

Hamilton 395-1/4

Bothwell Bridge 396-3/4 (Cross River Clyde.)

Bothwell 397-1/2

Uddingston 399-3/4

Tolcross 403

Glasgow (Glasgow Cross) 405-3/4

CARLISLE TO GLASGOW (EXCHANGE) DIRECT, BY TELFORD’S NEW ROAD, AVOIDING LONGTOWN, SPRINGFIELD, AND MOFFAT.

Carlisle 305-1/4

Glasgow Cross 399-1/4

Glasgow Exchange 400-1/4

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SEPARATE PLATES

WAITING TO CHANGE (_After J. F. Herring_) _Frontispiece_

PAGE

THE BUILDING OF MANCUNIUM (_From the fresco by Ford Madox Brown_) 7

MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL, FROM DEANSGATE 17

MANCHESTER TOWN HALL 61

HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD 79

PRESTON: TOWN HALL, HARRIS PUBLIC LIBRARY, AND SESSIONS HOUSE 99

LANCASTER 109

LANCASTER SANDS (_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._) 127

EAMONT BRIDGE 177

CARLISLE 207

SOLWAY MOSS (_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._) 215

“A FALSE ALARM ON THE ROAD: ’TIS ONLY THE MAIL!” (_After C. B. Newhouse_) 223

“ONE MILE FROM GRETNA: THE GOVERNOR IN SIGHT, WITH A SCREW LOOSE” (_After C. B. Newhouse_) 231

THE DUMFRIES COACH (_After C. B. Newhouse_) 255

THE GLASGOW MAIL (_After James Pollard_) 275

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

The Hall, Chetham’s School 13

Miserere Seat, Manchester Cathedral: The Pedlar and the Monkeys 19

The “Bull’s Head,” Salford 25

The “Sun” Inn, Poet’s Corner 65

The “Old Man and Scythe” 71

Town Hall, Bolton 74

Firwood: Birthplace of Crompton 76

Rivington Pike 85

Rivington Pike from the Road 87

Darwen Bridge and Walton-le-Dale 89

“Teetotal” 102

Garstang 105

“A fair mark, my Lord” 113

Javelin-Man 114

Lancaster Castle 115

Map of the “Over-Sands” Route 121

Carnforth 133

The Buckstone 135

The Market Cross and Pillory, Burton-in-Kendal 136

The “Duke of Cumberland” Inn, and Farleton Knott 137

Kendal Castle, and the Road into Kendal 138

Castle Dairy 145

Boroughbridge, Shap Fell 153

Sign of the “Greyhound,” Shap 155

Shap Abbey 156

Clifton 161

Sepulchral Slab of Udard de Broham 166

Brougham Castle 168

Countess Pillar 169

Yanwath Hall 170

Askham Hall 172

King Arthur’s Drinking Cup 174

The Giant’s Grave 184

Old Doorway, Penrith 186

Thiefside 188

East End, Carlisle Cathedral 195

St. Alban’s Row 203

Map of Old and New Roads from Carlisle to Gretna Green 211

Arthuret Church 213

The Road past Solway Moss 217

Filial Affection (_After Rowlandson_) 221

Sark Bar 227

The Deaf Post-Boy (_After Cruikshank_) 233

Gretna Hall in the Old Days 241

The Old Smithy, Gretna Green 247

Gretna Green 251

Ecclefechan: Showing Birthplace of Thomas Carlyle 265

Old Tablet at Ecclefechan 267

Broken Bridge 285

“Brig o’ Clyde” 289

Hamilton Palace 292

Bothwell Bridge 295

Trongate 305

The Arms of Glasgow 309

Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis 311

The Oldest House in Glasgow 317

“Dixon’s Blazes” 321

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

I

London Road Railway Station nowadays marks the beginning of central Manchester. Hitherto the long, long approach, although busy and crowded, has been, if not a thought suburban, at least busy chiefly on the retail scale. Here, however, where the railway brings travellers in from London, you see Manchester as the great city of immense warehouses: the place that no longer manufactures but deals in bulk and by wholesale with the goods produced in a dependent circle of towns.

From London Road you come immediately into Piccadilly, which is not in the least like the Piccadilly in London; and there you find yourself at the very hub of Manchester’s hurly-burly. There is perhaps not much significance in all this to the commercial man who travels down by express from London, and merely rouses himself from his newspaper to alight and then to take a cab from this railway terminus to one of the others, or to his business appointments; but to trace the road down from London on a bicycle and thus enter Manchester is to understand the great metropolis of cotton as it really is in relation to the rest of the country. To such a traveller the noise, the crowds, the furious energy, and the great sooty piles of buildings are not a little terrible. There is much good modern architecture in Manchester’s streets, but a black cloak covers it all. And yet the sky, though generally overcast, for the climate of Manchester is tearful, is not scored with smoke-wreaths, and factory-chimneys are not a feature of Manchester itself. The sooty deposit comes insensibly in the air from the outer ring of towns, and although it is not evident in the sky, it very soon tones down brick and stone and terra-cotta to one dull monotone. For all the rain that washes the city, it does not suffice to cleanse away its coating of soot. The blackness of Manchester is the first characteristic that impresses itself upon the stranger. It greatly impressed the first Shah of Persia who visited England: Nasr-ed-din, who came in 1873, and afterwards wrote an account of his travels. “The City of Manchester,” he wrote, “by reason of its exceeding number of manufactures, has its houses, doors, and walls black as coal, and the complexions, visages, and the dress of people are all black. The whole of the ladies of that place at most times wear black clothing, because no sooner do they put on white or coloured garments, than they are suddenly black!”

[Sidenote: _BLACK MANCHESTER_]

This not without its picturesque exaggerations, and the citizens of Manchester will hardly recognise themselves in that inky complexion, but it will serve as a traveller’s tale, and puts a keener edge on the unsharpened blade of truth. The blackest blackness of all, however, is that of the great Infirmary building, in Piccadilly, whose sable hue is own brother to darkest night. Only long years have brought it to this richness of tint. Art could not produce such a black; dull, light-absorbing as it is, the building looks like an etching against the sky, and its Doric architecture in this coating would probably astonish any ancient Greek who might be privileged to revisit the earth and see what modern times had made of ancient models. But the Infirmary, ill-placed in these days amidst the roar of the streets, is presently to be removed, and this, the finest site in the city, is to be the home of an Art Gallery and Public Library.

There are statues on the broad pavement in front of the Infirmary, and very fine ones too. But the latest addition to their number, that of Queen Victoria, is not a success. Manchester people do not—and rightly they do not—like it. The bronze seated figure of the Queen is a poor copy by Onslow Ford of the well-known statue by Alfred Gilbert at Winchester, and is set in a great canopied chair-like throne that forms a ridiculous object, seen along the street, resembling a gigantic grandfather’s-chair. The figure is the very picture of senility. Was Onslow Ford, after all, a bitter satirist of the age and of the Empire? The horrible thing looks as though he had successfully striven to typify the decay that had set in during the last years of the Victorian Era: that glorious, world-moulding era of which the second Jubilee, in 1897, was really the monument and epitaph. Here you see the tired, aged face, the hands nervelessly holding orb and sceptre; and you cannot but think that this is really typical of that time. Given another ten years of Victorian recluse rule, with old-established abuses clustering around a long-occupied throne, cobwebbed methods hugged jealously, outrageous Prime Ministers, whether of the Old Man Eloquent type or the equally harmful man of the Blazing Indiscretions, and the slowly built Empire would swiftly have sped down the road to disintegration. A more fitting monument than this for modern Manchester, which lives in the present and for the future, would be a statue of the patriot King, under whose rule in the new century the nation and the Empire shall, please God, have a new birth.

[Sidenote: _THE PROGRESS OF A PEOPLE_]

Piccadilly gives place to Market Street, and then to Victoria Street, and Deansgate, which, although it forms one of the approaches to the Cathedral, is not named after any decanal dignitary but from a dene or dean—_i.e._ a hollow—once sloping to the confluence here of the rivers Irwell and Irk. Here, by those affronted rivers, once troutful streams but now of Stygian blackness, and running in tunnels and under innumerable bridges, is the very core of Manchester, whose long story contains little of the doings of kings and queens, or of the romantic ways of feudal lords; but is compact of a much more romantic and human interest: the story of the striving upwards of a people, through the disheartening chances of the centuries. It is not given to the casual wayfarer to perceive this romance, envisaged as it is in the grim and grimy outskirts, or in the everyday crowding and turmoiling of the central traffic; but it is there, nevertheless, and I, for one, refuse to treat of Manchester in particular, or of the road in general, in mere terms of topography; for the road, and the places to which it conducts, take in their compass the entire interests and sympathies of mankind: the blood and tears, the joys and sorrows of the ages.

II

Ancient Manchester centred about the parish church, afterwards collegiate, now the Cathedral, and about the manor-house that is now Chetham’s Hospital. It is still, although its pavements are crowded, and although it is neighboured by the great Exchange and Victoria railway stations, a place of narrow streets whose singular names would themselves be sufficient evidence of antiquity, even though every house in them were rebuilt. No modern authority would entitle a thoroughfare “Hanging Ditch” or “Smithy Door,” but such are the names here, together with Long Millgate, Hunt’s Bank, and Withy Grove. Rural names, most of them, and you would quest in vain for the olden watermill in Millgate, and withies grow no more in Withy Grove than hazels in the Hazel Grove of which you already know.

This spot where Cathedral and Hospital stand, and where the narrow streets with odd names plunge up and down and twist round unexpected corners, is indeed of a very high antiquity. One thousand eight hundred and thirty years ago, according to generally received opinion—that is to say, in A.D. 78—the Romans, in the reign of Agricola, came to this site, where now the tide of modern Manchester flows most strongly. They found a red, rocky bluff where is now Hunt’s Bank, overlooking the confluent rivers, and all around were forests and swamps, and doubtless the hoary ancestors of those withies after which Withy Grove was in later mediæval times named. The sole representative nowadays near Manchester of those ancient abounding swamps is Chat Moss, now a very negligible bog indeed, but even so recently as early railway days a formidable phenomenon to be reckoned with. But the rocky ledge overlooking Irk and Irwell was not unoccupied. A tribe of Britons had established themselves there; very securely, no doubt, against foes of their own calibre, but when the Romans came and found the situation desirable, their day was done.

[Sidenote: _MANCUNIUM_]

No account survives of the taking of that palisaded camp of the Britons. We know nothing of what happened to the aborigines, and it is so remote a speculation that I am quite sure no one in modern Manchester has ever given the matter a moment’s thought. Nor did any Roman historian narrate how many of the Empire’s tall soldiers sank under the weight of their armour and perished in the morasses at the taking of what is said to have been styled by the British _Maencenion_. The Romans, in their usual way, Latinised the native name for the place, and thus, from what they called _Mancunium_, springs, after many intermediate changes, “Manchester.”

We know nothing of all these doings, but the building of _Mancunium_ is strikingly pictured in the first of the series of beautiful and interesting frescoes by Ford Madox Brown in the Manchester Town Hall, and with as certain and matter-of-fact a touch as though it had been drawn from personal observation. It was the Pre-Raphaelite way. In the picture you see the toiling slaves, working on the massive walls enclosing the Roman city; a helmeted centurion on the topmost windy height directing their operations. I do not know which impress me most, the cast-iron folds of his wind-blown cloak or the gigantic muscles of his bare legs, standing out like penny rolls. They were a great people, the Romans, and their muscular calf-development was apparently astounding.

The early “historians” of Manchester were, however, not content with such history as this, and loved to tell a tale of the marvellous: how their city originated with a giant, Sir Tarquin, among whose peculiarities was that of having a little child every morning for breakfast, just as a modern might take anchovy, on toast. At last he was slain by Sir Lancelot de Lake, one of King Arthur’s knights, whereupon the population, relieved of this check upon it, began to increase, and here we have now, after the passing of sixteen or seventeen centuries, an assemblage, including Salford, of about three quarters of a million souls. An ancient carved wooden boss in the ceiling of the committee-room of Chetham’s Hospital alludes to this legend, and displays a giant head devouring an infant.

[Sidenote: _THE MANOR_]

And so we pass on to the Norman period, and to the time when the family of Greslet, or Gresley, acquired the manor of Manchester from that great personage, Roger of Poictou, to whom a manor more or less, in all the great tract of the country that was his between the Ribble and the Mersey, was a small matter. For centuries the Gresleys retained their holding, which passed from them at last by the marriage of Joan Gresley to one of the West family. Thenceforward, the Wests, ennobled as Barons de la Warre, owned the manorial rights of Manchester, until 1579, when they sold them for £3,000 to one John Lacy, who in his turn, in 1596, sold to Nicholas Mosley, alderman of London, at a mere £500 profit. After holding the manor for two hundred and forty-five years, the Mosley family, in the person of Sir Oswald Mosley, sold it to the newly created Corporation of Manchester for £200,000. It was a huge sum, but Sir Oswald was scarcely wise in his generation.

Strange though it may seem in a place to outward appearance so modern as Manchester, the old manor-house of the Gresleys and the De la Warres still survives in the very centre of the great city. It is, indeed, identical with none other than the range of buildings long past occupied as Chetham’s Hospital and Library adjoining the Cathedral, and here is the later story of it.