Part 5

The foremost coaching inn at Manchester was the “Bridgewater Arms,” near the corner of High Street and Market Street. To it came the Royal Mail. In later years H. C. Lacy removed to grander premises, at the corner of Mosley Street and Market Street: a house that had in its day been a fine private mansion, and then still had the advantage of possessing a very large, well-stocked garden in the rear. He styled this house the “Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms,” and to it came as well as the Mail, the “Defiance” and other smart coaches. It has long since disappeared, and the present “Royal Hotel” stands on the site; but the old original “Bridgewater Arms” still exists, although now, and for many a year past, occupied as warehouses. The initials B. I. M. and date 1736 are on a spout-head that looks down upon Bridgewater Place, the narrow alley upon which the warehouse fronts. It is a fustian warehouse in these days, but a poetic tribute by a former guest of the house, torn from the arms of his lady-love, remains, scratched on the glass of an upper window. He had his own ideas of where capital letters and punctuation should occur:

Adieu, ye streams that smoothly flow; Ye vernal airs that gently blow; Ye fields, by flowing spring arraid; Ye birds, that warble in the shade.

Unhurt From you my soul could fly, Nor drop one tear, nor heave one sigh; But forced, from C(elia)’s charms, to part, All joy, forsakes my drooping heart.

1797

This enriched pane is very carefully preserved from injury by being covered with wire, and thus the lover’s lament will probably remain so long as the house stands.

The “Peacock,” resorted to by the “Peveril of the Peak”; the “Swan,” where the “Independent” pulled up; the “Star,” rendezvous of the “Manchester Telegraph,” are now merely names; and the times they belonged to are perhaps more thoroughly forgotten at Manchester than in any other city. Looking upon the maze of branching tramlines and the hundreds of swiftly running electric cars that begin at five o’clock in the morning and do not cease until after midnight, and are driven more recklessly and at a greater speed than elsewhere, you clearly perceive that Manchester has no time for the past and not much leisure to expend upon the present.

X

[Sidenote: _THE HUNDRED OF SALFORD_]

Crossing the Irwell by Blackfriars Bridge, Salford is reached; a distinction, so far as the pilgrim is concerned, without a difference. Just as, to outward appearance, London and Southwark, and Brighton and Hove are one, so are Manchester and Salford. But in local politics they are all separate and independent, and if an observant eye is turned upon the very tramway cars here, it will be seen that there is not only a Corporation of Manchester but a Corporation also of Salford; and, if the comparative gorgeousness of the Salford tramcars were any criterion, Salford should be the more important place of the two. Their comparative rank is, however, to be judged by the fact that a Lord Mayor heads the Town Council of Manchester and a Mayor that of Salford; but the curious anomaly still exists that Manchester stands in the Hundred of Salford, and thus the larger is, in that respect at least, included within the smaller. This singular anachronism is a relic of those very ancient times when the Hundreds were formed. In that era Manchester itself was a place largely lying in ruin, the result of Norse fire and sword, and Salford, sprung up on the other side of the river, away from the scene of desolation, bid fair to be its successor in all the ages.

The thunder of railway trains overhead, and the crash and rumble of heavy-laden lorries along the road, accompany the explorer along his way through Salford. But there is an oasis in all this at the Crescent, where the Irwell, in one of its far-flung loops, approaches and the extensive Peel Park appears. Beyond this again comes unlovely Pendleton, and then the Bolton Road and Irlam-o’-th’-Height—that is to say, Irwellham-on-the-Hill—not so romantic in appearance as in name. Here the road rises to those always grim uplands extending to Bolton and giving that place its old name of Bolton-le-Moors: more grim now than ever, for here is the great coal-field that has made Manchester possible.

Passing through Pendlebury, with the old Duke of Bridgewater’s collieries of Worsley away to the left, we plunge into the district of coal-pits at Clifton, where the hoisting-gear of the Clifton Hall Colliery, the marshalled coal-waggons, the rails across the road, and the spoil-banks where starved vegetation takes a precarious hold, make a desolation beside the way. On the left are the sullen moors, with perhaps a solitary cow grazing in one of the few remaining fields, just to emphasise the change that has come over the scene; while on the right, far down, flows the Irwell, amid a curious medley of beautiful country, ancient halls and manor-houses, and innumerable collieries and mills whose chimney-stacks spout smoke and steam over all the valley. When a steady rain comes down, on windless days, and diffuses the mingled steam and smoke over the landscape in a grey, woolly mass of vapour, the scene is weird in the extreme; while a wet day at Kearsley or Farnworth, places of grey houses and drab shops, is a desolation in which even the public-houses that have superseded the inns fail to radiate a meretricious cheerfulness.

[Sidenote: _MOSES GATE_]

Moses Gate, now a kind of succursal to Bolton, and with a railway station of its own, was once a toll-gate on the turnpike road. Who was Moses, except perhaps the pikeman, I do not know, nor does any one locally evince the least curiosity. The name is accepted as a matter of course, together with the unlovely circumstances; but railway passengers passing to more favoured places are as a rule extremely amused by it.

Bolton was formerly surrounded by “dreary and inhospitable” moors, but the stranger may doubt their ever being as dreary as the present surroundings of the great black, squalid, and unbeautiful town. In the very far-off days when those surrounding moors first saw this settlement, it was “Bothelton,” from the word “Botl,” which means a homestead. There are several “botl,” “bothal” and “bottle” prefixes or terminations of place-names in these northern counties: notably Walbottle, near Newcastle, situated on the Roman wall; and “Bothel” occurs near Morpeth and in the neighbourhood of Keswick. “Bootle” has a similar origin.

At last the name became worn down to Bolton: “Bolton-le-Moors,” to distinguish it from Bolton-le-Sands, on Morecambe Bay; but it is many a long year since this distinguishing mark was last used.

[Sidenote: _END OF THE EARL OF DERBY_]

There was once a time when Bolton was a cleanly little town that manufactured woollen cloths, fustian, and dimities, under idyllic conditions. Those industries were in full progress when the quarrels of King and Parliament broke rudely in upon the scene, in 1644: the Parliamentary party having garrisoned the place, which, unfortunately for itself, was a walled town. On came Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, from Wigan, with a force to take it by assault, but he was repulsed with heavy loss, and withdrew; the garrison being afterwards reinforced from Manchester, and its strength brought up to 3,000. Again the assault was pressed, and this time the Lord Strange was aided by Prince Rupert with 10,000 men. Two hundred devoted Cavaliers crept up under the walls, while treachery, it was said, admitted the cavalry. The storming of Bolton that ensued was one of the bloodiest affairs of the war, and few were spared from the fury of the Royalists. More than seven years later, the then Earl of Derby suffered for the excesses he, with Prince Rupert, permitted on this occasion; for, having been captured at the Battle of Worcester, he was brought to Bolton and beheaded on October 15th, 1651, at the Market Cross in Church Gate, opposite the “Old Man and Scythe” inn: with a grim fitness on the scene of the bloodshed himself had approved. An inscription on the front of the house narrates how “In this ancient hostelry James Stanley, seventh Earl of Derby, spent the last few hours of his life previous to his execution.” The house, built in 1636, was indeed a portion of his extensive Bolton property. Whatever the original sign of the house, the present is doubtless an allusion to the famous exploit of William Trafford of Swithamley, whose pretence of being an idiot saved his property from being plundered by the Puritan soldiery. They discovered him wielding a flail in his barn, and monotonously repeating “Now thus,” and so, unable to make him comprehend anything, they left. Beneath the threshing-floor where this supposed “natural” was gibbering lay his chief valuables. His trick is alluded to in the sign of the “Old Rock House” inn at Barton, near Manchester, where he is represented in a counter-charged suit, alternately red and white, and with his flail, inscribed “Now thus.” Here at Bolton, while the chequered red and white dress, somewhat resembling that of a jester, or fool, is retained, and while he wears a similar fool’s cap, his flail has in the course of years become a scythe.

The “original” heading-axe that decapitated the bloody Earl, who richly deserved his fate, is shown in the inn, which is merely a public-house, together with the chair he sat upon. But a chair also purporting to be the identical one is among the relics at the Earl of Derby’s seat at Knowsley, where there is probably another heading-axe. The only way out of this awkward _impasse_, to please every one, is to suggest that, being an important personage, he was given two chairs to sit upon and was executed twice, by two executioners! One can say no fairer than that.

[Sidenote: _BOLTON_]

The “Old Man and Scythe,” it should be added, looks in the illustration a highly picturesque half-timbered building: but it is really commonplace brick, and the “timbering” is but a product of the house-painter’s brush.

At “Bowton,” more than anywhere else along the road, you hear the Lancashire talk, and the people of the town are as rough-and-ready as any in the county, both in manners and in appearance. Even in Lancashire they talk of a “rough Bolton chap,” and as less refined than the people of Wigan, St. Helens, or Widnes; which is very like Walworth reflecting upon the lack of culture in Whitechapel. A good deal of this apparent brusqueness and rudeness is, however, more apparent than real. The Londoner, come from a place where a great deal of insincerity, and even callousness, is hidden by the veneer of conventional behaviour, is startled and shocked by the forthright manners and the very frank speech of Bolton and other manufacturing towns, but there is a heartiness about the people there is no mistaking. That typical character, “John Blunt,” has certainly peopled Lancashire with his kin.

The clogs still clatter on the pavements of Bolton, and shawled girls are yet to be seen going to and from the mills, but even in the last fifteen years Bolton has grown enormously, not only in population but towards a higher standard of life. Yet, to this writer at least, the thought of Bolton will ever recall the odour of fried fish; for it was on a winter’s evening, long ago, that he first came into the grim town. Fried-fish shops filled the air with a revolting reek, and everywhere along the pavements walked those who without ceremony ate their suppers out of newspapers. High above, yellow in the dark sky, like bilious eyes, glowered the illuminated dials of the Town Hall clock, while ever and again the quarters chimed and the hours growled out.

Bolton is especially proud of its Town Hall, which was opened in 1873, and was the first of those immense buildings, of a monumental character, that of late years have been built in hundreds of towns, less to fill a need than to please the vanity of mayors and aldermen. No wonder, when municipalities build palaces for themselves, and house every department royally and regardless of cost, the rates go mounting ever higher.

[Sidenote: _BOLTON TOWN HALL_]

The Town Hall of Bolton, designed in a composite classic style, is, in most of its circumstances, a good deal more imposing than useful. A weary flight of steps leads lengthily up to the colonnaded portico, and although it looks magnificent, is, practically, a sorrow to all who have often to scale it.

A clock-tower, 220 feet in height, surmounts this elephantine building, which cost £170,000, and has so imposing an appearance that it has been the parent of many others; the design having been so admired that it was closely copied in every detail by Leeds, Portsmouth, and other towns; Paddington also proposing to build itself one upon the same model. But the Bolton parent of them all has become very grim; being, by reason of the smoke from the two hundred or so lofty factory chimneys of the town, “as black as your hat.”

XI

The most interesting places in Bolton are—to speak in paradox—just outside it. On the Bury road, where the electric tramcars race, you may with some difficulty find the little turning at Firwood, where the humble birthplace of Samuel Crompton still stands. Along the main road the modern houses march prosaically on to Bury, but down this little turning, which descends steeply and has the most extravagantly uneven paving anywhere in the neighbourhood, you find a nook very much in the condition of the whole countryside in Crompton’s day. Always excepting, of course, the big cotton-mill that stands here. Looking down towards Bolton there are still fragments of woods and tangled brakes—fir-woods, or others—but on the skyline, as ever in Lancashire, are factory chimneys, wreathing fantastic smoke-trails. Among the three cottages here, Crompton’s early home is identified by a stone tablet inscribed—

Birthplace of SAMUEL CROMPTON. Born Decr. 3rd, 1753.

I look at that humble, stone-built cot with something of reverence. It did not, however, witness his bringing-up, for when he was but five years of age, his parents removed to Hall-i’-th’-Wood, an ancient mansion from which the owners had migrated to a more modern residence. Here the Cromptons farmed in a small way, and here Samuel’s father early died.

[Sidenote: _HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD_]

Hall-i’-th’-Wood (the Lancashire pronunciation may be written down “Hauleythwood”) stands in a situation still romantic, in the parish of Tonge, one mile from Bolton, on the Blackburn road. The great and ancient woods of oak that once surrounded the old house are gone since then, but the Eagley Brook yet comes foaming down in little cascades amid the rocks of the picturesque gorge above whose crest the Hall is situated; and there are patches of woodland remaining to inform the scene with sylvan beauty. It is, frankly, a surprise, set as it is at the very edge of the roaring traffic of a high road with shops where housewives are bidden by leather-lunged butchers “Buy, buy, buy”: and as delightful as surprising.

The Hall in the Wood is not only interesting as the place where Samuel Crompton invented the Spinning Mule: it is one of the finest examples among the many ancient Halls of Lancashire, and is singularly varied in its architecture; having been built in two separate and distinct periods, and in each period of entirely different materials. It was one Lawrence Brownelow who built the original half-timbered portion, in 1591, as appears by the initials of himself and his wife Bridget, and the date,

B L B 1591

carved on a stone mantel. In 1637 the property was sold to Christopher Norres, woollen-draper, of Bolton, who was succeeded by his son, Alexander, a partisan of King Charles in the Civil War. Norres escaped lightly from the victorious Parliament, with a fine of £15 and the taking of the Covenant and other oaths; and then settled down here, building the stone wing that bears the date 1648. With him, however, ended the Norres reign, for his daughter Alice married a John Starkie, whose descendants resided here until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Their punning heraldic cognisance, six storks for Starkie, may still be seen, done in plaster.

[Sidenote: _SAMUEL CROMPTON_]

It was a neglected and dilapidated old house to which the Cromptons came in 1758. For economical reasons—the window-tax then prevailed—all the unnecessary windows, and some that really were necessary, had been bricked up, rain came through the roof, and rats ran unchecked from room to room. There, in a house a world too large for them, the widowed Mrs. Crompton and her little lad lived upon the proceeds of a small farm and the insignificant gains she made from spinning yarn, by hand, as all yarn then was spun. Samuel helped in the spinning, much, it may be supposed, against his will; and in the drudgery of it his inventive powers were wakened, in the direction of labour-saving. Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny of 1768 and Arkwright’s invention were new when he began to plan, and his machine took the form of an improvement combining the principles of both. He was twenty-one years of age before he began the work, and not until five years were gone had he completed it. The times were not propitious for inventors, bands of infuriated weavers roaming the districts round about, destroying everywhere the spinning-jennies that they imagined were depriving them of work; and Crompton was obliged constantly to take his model to pieces and hide it in the garret roofs of his wind-swept, rat-haunted home. But at length the weavers’ fury spent itself, and then he could experiment without fear of house and model being wrecked. Then, however, arose a newer danger. Crompton, it became gradually known, had a wonderful new machine in the old place, and many were those who sought in some way to surprise the secret of it, among them the crafty Arkwright, inventor and man of business too: an unusual combination of talents that Crompton, unfortunately for himself, did not possess. In the result, the secret was given away for a miserable pittance, and not even patented. Factories were equipped with his invention, and manufacturers combined to subscribe, as an act of grace, a hundred guineas that should, multiplied a thousandfold, have been his by right. In 1812, Crompton found that the number of spindles worked on his principle totalled five millions. In that year a reward seemed almost within his grasp, for a vote of £20,000, in recognition of his services was proposed, and was to have been submitted to Parliament by Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister; but that very day, in the act of carrying a memorandum to that effect in his hand, Perceval was assassinated by Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, and the proposal was not renewed. But by the intervention of some friends a memorial to Parliament was prepared, which was signed by the principal manufacturers of the kingdom, with the result that the sum of £5,000 was granted to him. Let us here observe the exquisite humour of the thing. The “principal manufacturers” had become such, and had amassed great wealth by aid of Crompton’s mule, but they meanly went to Government, and thus taxed the whole nation for a sum themselves should have raised.

With this sum Crompton established his sons in the bleaching business; but the establishment failed, and the inventor was again in straitened circumstances. A second subscription was raised, and a life annuity purchased for Crompton, producing about £63 per annum. He enjoyed it only two years, for he died in 1827, aged seventy-three, and was buried in Bolton parish churchyard.

The last stroke of cynic fortune was not dealt until 1862, when the hapless inventor had been thirty-five years in his grave. Then the town of Bolton, whose manufacturers had, living, denied him a livelihood, set up a statue to the man who had made their town, and twenty other towns, great and prosperous. Among those present at the unveiling, and shrinking in his poverty from the robed and finely apparelled magnates, was Crompton’s surviving son, then aged seventy-two, and in the poorest circumstances. Palmerston eventually sent him a dole from the Royal Bounty Fund.

[Sidenote: _RELICS OF CROMPTON_]

If the spirits of the departed can know what goes forward in the world they have left, there must be bitter ironic laughter in the Beyond. Plundered and neglected in life, Crompton is tardily honoured in death. The darkling, mouldering old Hall has, through the munificence of Mr. W. H. Lever, been purchased from the representatives of the Starkie family, finely restored, stored with personal relics of Crompton, and presented, as a lasting memorial, to the town of Bolton. It is open, freely, every day. There you see Crompton’s old violin, his Bible, and chair, and a model of his Spinning Mule. But there is much else besides. Old portraits and old prints decorate the panelled walls, and ancient furniture fills the room. Panelling has been brought from an ancient house at Hare Street, near Buntingford, and a finely moulded plaster ceiling copied from the “Old Woolpack” inn, Deansgate, Bolton, pulled down in 1880. From the stone-flagged terrace of the garden you look across to Bolton itself and the clustered chimneys whose murk affronts the sky.

XII

There are two ways out of Bolton, to Chorley and Preston; known severally as the Chorley Old and New Roads. The old road ascends windy heights, and although still a practicable highway, is of such a character that any traveller—not being a professional explorer of old roads—who finds himself on it, and perceives the new road going flat, below, is deeply sorry for himself. The way into this old road is by the group of houses called Dorfcocker—where the “Tempest Arms” displays the Tempest cognisance and their motto, “Loywf as thow Fynds”—and along Boot Lane. Thence comes a steep steady ascent past the “Bob’s Smithy” inn and the cottages of Scant Row—well-named in its meagre, hungry look—to the “Horwich Moorgate” inn with the subsidiary title of the “Blundell Arms.” Did any authority compensate these unfortunate inns when the traffic was diverted into the “New” road? Let us hope so, for the doing of it deprived them—not of a livelihood, else how could they have continued to live?—but certainly of all save the merest means of existence. There remains yet a look about the “Moorgate” inn which tells you that not always did it rub meanly along on selling beer to rustics or mill-hands. Alas!

[Sidenote: _THE RESERVOIRS_]

Henceforward, having reached the summit, and not wishing to remain on this wind-swept height, it is necessary to descend: that is obvious enough. But not easily is that descent made. To Avernus the transition is reputed to be easy and comfortable: to Horwich, where the old and new roads join, it is martyrdom, especially if it be undertaken on a cycle. And so descending, cautiously and with alternate prayers and curses, over the agonising pits and gullies in the neglected setts of the Chorley Old Road, to the only less fearful surface of the Chorley New Road at Horwich, we come at the two hundredth mile from London to the great lake-like reservoirs of the Liverpool Waterworks, formed in 1848, stretching for a long way alongside the road, and occupying the site of Anglezarke Moor. To a height of 1,545 feet rises the sullen mass of Rivington Pike, in the background, crowned with its masonry beacon. There are at least two dozen other reservoirs of different sizes up there, in the vast gloomy moors where the Pike presides: reservoirs in solitudes looking down upon the circle of busy towns comprising Bolton, Bury, Wigan, Blackburn, and Preston, and supplying their needs.