The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cheshire, by Charles E. Kelsey This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Cheshire Author: Charles E. Kelsey Release Date: June 6, 2013 [EBook #42887] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHESHIRE *** Produced by floofles, sp1nd and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) CHESHIRE. ROADS OXFORD COUNTY HISTORIES CHESHIRE 3 BY CHARLES E. KELSEY, M.A. WITH TEN MAPS AND FORTY-NINE ILLUSTRATIONS OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1911 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK TORONTO AND MELBOURNE PREFACE The aim of the present volume in the Oxford Series of County Histories for Schools is to assist the study of the progress of the English people by an examination of local antiquities, visits to ancient sites and buildings, and suggestions of big national movements from local incident. An attempt is made to foster the powers of observation in children by showing them how to connect various styles of architecture, for instance, with successive stages in the story of their county, and to construct from familiar objects the broad outlines of national history. Thus it is hoped that sooner or later the teaching of history may become, to some extent, an out-of-school subject and take its place side by side with outdoor Nature- study and Practical Geography in the curriculum of our schools. In rural districts this end is obviously more easily attainable than in large industrial centres. In the latter the expense of moving classes of children from their schools to visit a site some miles distant would be no doubt considerable; but is it too visionary to hope that before long a motor-bus, capable of carrying a class of thirty or forty boys and girls, will be deemed by Educational Committees a necessary part of their 'apparatus'? Apart from the educative value of such work there would, as the children grow up, arise a body of public opinion which could give valuable help in saving historic sites and buildings from loss or destruction, and preventing the removal of antiquities from their natural home. Cheshire has suffered perhaps more than her share of both these evils, and looks with sorrowful eyes at many of her treasures housed in the museums of towns beyond her borders. All students of Cheshire history owe much to Ormerod's great work. But his history is largely genealogical, and personally I wish to acknowledge a greater debt to the labours and transactions of local societies, particularly the Chester Archaeological Society and the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society. Many learned members of these two bodies have made most important contributions to our knowledge of ancient and mediaeval Cheshire within the most recent years. Among other works consulted I may mention the Palatine Note Book, Cheshire Notes and Queries, and Morris's Diocesan History of Chester. I have received kindly assistance from several Cheshire clergymen, and to all who have given me permission to take photographs within their churches I express my thanks. The maps, drawings, and photographs are original, with few exceptions. I am indebted to the Council of the Chester Archaeological Society, and the Grosvenor Museum for the loan of the block of a Roman tombstone from a photograph by Mr. R. Newstead, and to Mr. Alfred Newstead, Curator of the Museum, for photographs of the Runic stone and Roman altar. The Rev. J. F. Tristram, of the Hulme Grammar School, read the two geological chapters and made valuable suggestions. To the Clarendon Press I am grateful for much kind help and criticism. The Hulme Grammar School, Manchester, July, 1911. CONTENTS 5 6 7 CHAP. PAGE I. Position and Natural Features of Cheshire 9 II. The Making of Cheshire (1) 16 III. The Making of Cheshire (continued) (2) 21 IV. Early Inhabitants of Cheshire 25 V. The Romans in Cheshire (1) 29 VI. The Romans in Cheshire (2) 36 VII. Saxons and Angles come to Cheshire 43 VIII. The Cross in Cheshire 47 IX. The Coming of the Northmen 51 X. The Normans come to Cheshire 58 XI. The Norman Abbeys and Churches of Cheshire 64 XII. The Earls of the County Palatine 74 XIII. The Churches of the Thirteenth Century 81 XIV. Growth of Towns in Cheshire 87 XV. Edward the First and Cheshire 92 XVI. The Coming of the Friars 99 XVII. A Deposed King 107 XVIII. The Rival Roses 114 XIX. Churches of the Middle Ages 118 XX. The Reformation and the Great Awakening 128 XXI. Elizabethan Cheshire (1) 134 XXII. Elizabethan Cheshire (2) 143 XXIII. The Rule of the Stuarts 150 XXIV. Civil War: (1) The Battles of Middlewich and Nantwich 153 XXV. Civil War: (2) A Memorable Siege 158 XXVI. Civil War: (3) The Protectorate and the Restoration 163 XXVII. The Fall of the Stuarts 167 XXVIII. The Eighteenth Century (1) 173 XXIX. The Eighteenth Century (1) 180 XXX. The Industrial Revolution (1) 183 XXXI. The Industrial Revolution (2) 188 XXXII. The Railways of Cheshire 192 XXXIII. Progress and Reform in the Nineteenth Century 198 XXXIV. The Reign of a Great Queen 204 XXXV. Famous Men and Women of Cheshire 211 XXXVI. Conclusion 216 8 CHAPTER I POSITION AND NATURAL FEATURES OF CHESHIRE Few English counties owe more of their history to their geographical position and surroundings, and to the character of their natural features, than Cheshire. Not only in the past have the rocks and rivers of Cheshire helped to make history, but even to-day they have a very direct bearing upon the fortunes of Cheshire men and women. How many of us reflect, as our eyes travel over the plain to the distant hills, that on the wise and orderly arrangement of mountain and valley, forest and winding stream, our very existence and means of livelihood depend? Truly Nature has other work to do than merely create picturesque landscapes. Cheshire is situated in the north-west of England, washed partly by the Irish Sea, and guarded as it were on its eastern and western sides by two great ramparts of hill country, that on the east formed by the southern spurs of the Pennine Chain, while the Welsh hills of Flint and Denbigh are the natural frontier on the west. The western boundary, however, which has been frequently changed, now follows roughly the Valley of the Dee. A semicircle of hills of lesser height fringes the county on the south, and the river Mersey divides it from its northern neighbour, Lancashire. In the north-west of the county a rectangular stretch of country known as Wirral is washed by two great estuaries and by the Irish Sea, and a wedge of moorland in the north-east penetrates into the heart of the Pennines. Here the hills reach their greatest height, Black Hill the highest point in Cheshire being just under 2,000 feet above sea-level. The low- lying lands enclosed by this amphitheatre of hills form the Cheshire Plain, broken only by ridges or terraces of low sandstone hills running north and south. A glance at a map of the British Isles will show you that Cheshire lies in the very heart of the three kingdoms. Its geographical position has thus made it a meeting-place of nations, and you will see in later chapters that all the peoples that have helped to make our national history have in turn realized the importance of its position, and have fought desperately for its possession. Briton and Roman, Angle and Saxon and Dane, Welsh and Norman have all left some mark of their presence in the county, and from these many elements is derived the blood that flows in the veins of nearly all Cheshire boys and girls of to-day. Now look at the map opposite. The shaded portions represent land over 300, 600, or 1,000 feet above sea-level. In the south, the eastern and western uplands slope gradually down towards the bit of white which touches the centre of the bottom of the map and forms what is known as the Cheshire Gap. Through this gap the Midlands lie open to the north-west and to the Cheshire Plain, and over these lower heights naturally passed the great highway from London to the Irish Sea. Chester, built on a rocky plateau at the head of the tidal waters of the Dee and protected on its western side by a natural bend of the same river, was clearly a position of great importance for guarding alike the coast road into North Wales and the roads to the north of England; and there is no doubt that it was held as a fortified post long before the Romans built the Roman city of Deva. For many centuries this stronghold was one of the chief military outposts and frontier towns of England, not often free from war's alarms, and the sentinels on her walls and watch-towers ever on the look-out for the approach of some new enemy. Chester became the 'base' or head-quarters from which all military campaigns in the north-west, in Wales or in Ireland were carried out, united with the metropolis by the great road that passed through the heart of England, along which armies could march without any difficult hills to cross and hardly a river of any great size to bridge. In later and more peaceful times, for the same geographical reasons, the London and North-Western Railway, the lineal descendant of the ancient 'Watling Street', laid its lines on nearly the same ground as the old highway, and is thus the easiest as well as the most direct of all routes from London to the north-west. CHESHIRE 9 10 12 Contour Map With the exception of the Dee, which rises near Lake Bala in Wales, the rivers of Cheshire have their sources in the eastern or southern uplands. For eight months of the year moisture-laden winds blow from the sea across the Cheshire Plain and deposit their rains upon the hills. In the hilly country of the north-east, where the rainfall is greatest, the water is gathered and stored in a number of reservoirs in Longdendale; and the moist climate is the chief reason why this district is the seat of the cotton industry, for cotton threads become brittle in a dry atmosphere. In the valleys of the Tame and Goyt the abundance of fresh running water from the hills formerly caused many mills for the bleaching, dyeing and printing of calicoes to be erected on or near the streams. Nowadays, however, owing to the greater supply of water brought by pipes from a distance, mills are erected principally on the outskirts of the great towns and nearer the centres of population. Hence in the villages of the Goyt it is no uncommon sight to see the tottering walls of mills that have been abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin and decay. The combined waters of the Etherow, Tame, and Goyt form the Mersey at Stockport. Only the left bank of this river is in Cheshire. Moreover, for a large part of its course it has been 'canalized', so that it no longer flows between its natural banks, but down the artificial channel of the Manchester Ship Canal. The estuary of the Mersey, which is three to four miles across at its widest point, narrows at Birkenhead to a width of barely three-quarters of a mile. At this point the river is kept open to the largest vessels afloat by constant dredging. Here in the docks you may see ships of all nations, and generally one or more of our huge ocean greyhounds riding at anchor in mid-river or awaiting but the turn of the tide to take out their cargoes of human lives to distant lands. SOURCES OF RIVERS IN E. CHESHIRE 14 The Weaver, on the other hand, is wholly a Cheshire river, rising in the Peckforton Hills in the south-west of the county. The Mersey and the Weaver receive a number of tributaries, of which the Bollin and the Dane are the most important, from the eastern highlands, the high-crowned Shutlingslawe ... with those proud hills whence rove The lovely sister brooks the silvery Dane and Dove, Clear Dove that makes to Trent, the other to the West. At Northwich the Weaver becomes navigable as far as the Mersey. The rivers flow mainly in a westerly or north-westerly direction. Spreading evenly over the plain in almost parallel lines, they serve to drain and fertilize the land, which thus affords the finest pasturage for cattle. Dairy-farming and stock- raising have therefore become the principal occupation of the inhabitants of the Cheshire midlands; and on market days the piles of the famous Cheshire cheese are generally the first thing we notice in the open market-places of our country towns. The most noticeable feature of the county are the two estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey. The tract enclosed between them is for the most part flat, Heswall Hill, the highest point, being little more than 300 feet in height, and the lowest parts have to be protected from the inroads of the sea by long embankments. Several portions were in fact, at one time separated from the mainland, like Hilbre Isle at the present day, as is shown by the names Wallasey, 'isle of the Welsh or strangers,' and Ince 'an island'. In the Middle Ages, owing to the importance of Chester, the Dee was the principal outlet for the trade of the north-west, as Bristol was for the south-west of England. In those days Liverpool was but an insignificant town, and the Mersey was known as the 'Creek of Chester'. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the shipping trade of the Dee declined owing to the great accumulation of sand and silt in the channel. When vessels could no longer unload or ship their merchandise under the walls of Chester a quay was formed at Shotwick, some six miles along the northern shore of the estuary. In this neighbourhood over two thousand acres of land have been recovered from the sea that once flowed over them. Navigation was partially restored as far as Chester for small vessels by a new artificial channel, but since the rise of the cotton and other great industries in South Lancashire Liverpool and Birkenhead have replaced Chester and become the second port in the kingdom. Cheshire also possesses a miniature 'Lake District'. Between the Bollin and the Weaver are scattered many lakelets or 'meres'. They are particularly numerous in the salt districts, where they are due to the pumping of brine which has been going on for ages, and caused the sinking down of the overlying rocks. In the neighbourhood of Northwich the sheets of 15 water thus formed are called 'flashes'. The county still contains much 'forest', that is, uncultivated land. The hilly country of the east consists mostly of bleak and barren moorland, affording but poor pasturage for sheep and used mainly for the preservation of game. Such names as Wildboarclough, Wolf's Edge, Cat's Tor, Eagle's Crag, and many others, show clearly the wild and desolate character of this district. Extensive woods are found in the valleys and 'cloughs' of the Etherow and Goyt. Delamere was once a deer forest extending as far as Nantwich, but in the last hundred years the greater part of it has been cultivated. Many towns and villages still retain their 'common' land, often bright with patches of broom and gorse, while the numerous and extensive parks of the great landowners are justly noted for their fine forest trees. To many of you the natural features described in this chapter must be a familiar sight. Some of you have perhaps stood by the beacon on Alderley Edge or by the sham ruins on the summit of Mow Cop, and viewed wide stretches of the Cheshire Plain. Others have looked down from the Frodsham Hills upon the estuary of the Mersey mapped out at their feet, or from the walls of Chester have gazed upon the purple hills of Wales. But the surface of the county suffered many changes before it assumed its present aspect, and we must now see what story the stones have to tell us of bygone ages when Cheshire was yet in the making. CHAPTER II THE MAKING OF CHESHIRE. I The Newer Rocks There rolls the deep where grew the tree: O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There, where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. Nearly every Cheshire boy has visited at some time or another a quarry in the neighbourhood of the town or village where he dwells. He will probably have noticed that beneath the two or three feet of soil at the top of the quarry the rocks are arranged in beds or 'strata' piled one upon another in horizontal rows, or sometimes sloping in parallel lines towards the bottom of the quarry. When and how were these beds of rock formed and laid down? If our quarry is in the central or western parts of Cheshire we shall find that the rocks are of a reddish colour, generally hard and gritty, but sometimes so soft that pieces may be crushed into fragments with the fingers. These rocks are known as the New Red sandstones, and are largely used for building purposes. Chester Cathedral and a great number of Cheshire churches have been built of this material; and the hillsides where the rocks crop out above the soil often glow with a rich warm red in the evening sunlight. You may see them best perhaps in the railway cuttings in the neighbourhood of Frodsham and Chester, or in the great quarries at Storeton-in-Wirral and Runcorn. Geological Map 16 18 Geological Map These beds of sandstone are really wide stretches of the sandy shores of an ancient sea, which have been pressed into a solid substance by the weight of other layers of rock deposited over them in later ages. Thus they belong to a group of what are called 'water-laid' rocks. We know that seas once flowed over them because some of the beds show the ripple-marks that we see so often in the sands when walking by the sea-shore. A fearful looking monster, with the equally terrible name of labyrinthodont, in appearance rather like a gigantic frog, has left his 'footprints in the sands' in the rocks near Lymm and Weston. You will probably not be able to find these footprints, but in the museums at Manchester and Warrington you may see them on large slabs of sandstone rock. How would you like to meet one of these reptiles to-day, wallowing in the mud on the shores of some Cheshire mere? On the same slabs you will see suncracks which tell us of the baking of sand and mud in the sun's rays when the tide has gone down. The lower layers of the New Red Sandstone are of a paler colour, light brown or almost white. To these the name of 'Bunter' has been given to distinguish them from the upper and therefore later deposits known as 'Keuper' sandstone. The Bunter beds are found chiefly in the west of the county, and in Wirral, where you may see the Keuper rocks of Storeton Hill sticking up above the layers of Bunter stone that surround and underlie them. The greater part of the surface of Cheshire consists of these rocks. Alderley Edge and Helsby Hill, the hills of Delamere and Peckforton are composed of it, and it crops out often in our village streets. The steps of the village cross at Lymm are cut out of a piece of rock which sticks out in the middle of the road. In the sandstone beds at Northwich, Winsford, and Middlewich are layers of rock salt from which we obtain our salt for food and other domestic uses. The salt was formed at a time when the sea was gradually disappearing from the surface of Cheshire leaving inland salt lakes, which, becoming dried up, deposited beds of salt crystals. These, like the sandstone, became pressed into a solid condition by the weight of other layers. Where the salt has been taken out of the earth the upper layers have sunk from time to time. At Northwich the land is continually sinking, and you may see houses and chimneys cracked and twisted out of their proper shape as if they had been visited by an earthquake. Often the hollows where the land has sunk have become filled with water and produced the numerous meres or small lakes dotted about the county. In the valley of the Weaver they are locally known as 'flashes'. Striated Boulder (Erratic): High Legh When, in the course of time, the red sandstone formed the dry land of Cheshire, it became covered by a great ice-sheet which extended over Britain even as far south as the Thames valley. Beneath this covering of ice the rocks were crushed and ground to atoms by the movement of the ice-sheet over them. This formed beds of a substance called boulder-clay, containing lumps of rock which must have been brought by the ice great distances, for they are of a kind found only in the north of England or in Scotland. Some of these 'boulders' are of great size. Several have been placed in Vernon Park, Stockport, and in the West Park, Macclesfield, you may see one that was dug up in the neighbourhood of the town. It weighs about thirty tons. On Eddisbury Hill is a mass of rock, ten feet long, of a kind found only on Skiddaw in the Lake District, and in the narrow lane behind the 'Wizard' Inn on Alderley Edge is a lump of granite from Eskdale, so that these rocks have been brought by the ice a distance of a hundred miles. Such blocks and boulders are called 'erratics', because they have wandered so far from their original home. Another proof of the existence of the ice- sheet may be seen in the scratchings and marks (called 'striae') on pebbles and rocks found in these beds. In the lane outside the church at High Legh are a number of large boulders which still show the lines of furrows and scratchings made on their surface by the movement of the ice over them. The boulder-clay has been worn away by the action of water and weather from a great part of Cheshire, but in the west 19 20 of the county large patches may be seen in the low-lying districts. You may observe the beds most clearly in the cliffs of boulder-clay on the estuary of the Dee between Heswall and West Kirby. In the neighbourhood of Chester, many of the villages—Tarvin, Christleton, Aldford, Saighton, and Barrow, for instance—are built on sandstone knolls and ridges which stick up through the boulder-clay, for the sandstone is drier and healthier than the clay to live upon, and the wells, especially those in the Bunter beds, provide the purest water. As the ice-sheet melted and the glaciers or ice-rivers retreated northwards when the climate became warmer, beds of sand, gravel, and stones were spread over the Cheshire plain. These are called drift beds. The stones and pebbles are rounded by the streams of melted ice and snow which flowed from the mouths of the ice-rivers. Upon the beds of drift lies the surface soil in which grow the crops and grass, the herbage and the woods of to-day; and it is in the drift, as you will see in a later chapter, that traces of the earliest inhabitants of Cheshire are to be found. CHAPTER III THE MAKING OF CHESHIRE (cont.). II The Older Rocks Let us now visit some quarries in East Cheshire. We shall find considerable difficulty in reaching some of them. It will be necessary to get permission from the owners of the quarries, put on a special suit of clothes, enter an iron cage, and descend many hundred feet perhaps into the depths of the earth's surface until we find ourselves—in a coal-mine! Section of Rocks from Knutsford to Buxton Unlike the New Red Sandstones, which are found for the most part in flat horizontal beds, the coal beds slope downwards from east to west. This is due to the uplifting of the East Cheshire hills, which we shall presently explain. When this uplift took place, the coal beds, which were originally flat, became raised in the east and equally lowered in the west. When the sea flowed over them they became covered by sandy deposits of such a thickness that in the greater part of Cheshire the coal cannot be reached. The earliest sands laid down formed what are called the Permian rocks, and the later layers the New Red Sandstone series mentioned in the last chapter. The Permian rocks may be well seen at Stockport, in the river beds of the Tame and the Goyt which have cut their way through them. In the strip of country between Stockport and Macclesfield, and again on the south-eastern borders of Cheshire, the upturned edges of the coal beds have been left exposed so that the coal is near the surface and can be easily extracted. Coal consists of the vegetable remains of forest trees and their undergrowth. If you look at a lump of coal you will see that it has been pressed down into thin layers like the leaves of a book. When these layers are split apart there are often found the fossil remains of leaves and roots of trees, fronds of ferns, seed-cones and stems of plants which grew in the forests. Some of these, particularly the ferns, are often of great beauty. You may see a number of these 'coal pictures' in the Vernon Park Museum at Stockport. Here too you will find portions of the actual trunks of trees that have been dug up just where they stood when the seas flowed over them. You may learn even to distinguish different varieties of these forest trees, just as you are able to distinguish the oak and the beech and the elm of to-day. Latin names such as Sigillaria, Lepidodendron, and Salisburia have been given to them. The most beautiful of all is a Maidenhair Tree-fern. The Calamites was a huge 'Horse-tail' plant of which you may find small varieties to-day on banks and in hedgerows. On the coast of Wirral, between Meols and New Brighton, are the remains of a forest which has only in very recent years been covered by the sea. Boys who live in this neighbourhood may have heard their parents tell of the stumps of tree-trunks sticking out through the sands when the tide was low. This shows that the land is continually undergoing 21 22 23 changes, at one time being raised above the seas, at another time sinking beneath the waves. The beds or 'seams' of coal vary in thickness from a thin film to several yards, and are separated from one another by layers of hard clays and flagstones. From the flagstone beds are obtained the square slabs with which the pavements of our towns and cities are laid. In many of the quarries near the Cheshire coal-field you may watch the workmen cutting and shaping these stones. The beds of clays and seams of coal make up what are called the 'Coal Measures'. These in their turn rest upon a foundation of hard rock, harder than any we have yet examined, called Millstone Grit or Gritstone. Boys who live in the hilly parts of East Cheshire are very familiar with it, for very probably the houses in which they live and the churches and chapels where they worship have been built of this stone. It is composed of coarse sand and grit, and, like the red sandstone, is a waterlaid deposit several thousand feet in thickness. The Pennine Hills, on the borderland of Cheshire and Derbyshire, are covered with Millstone Grit, which has been thrust upwards by the crumpling and arching of the rocks beneath it. Below the Gritstone are still older rocks of a different character called the Limestone series. The uppermost beds contain layers of a sandy substance called Yoredale sandstones. Mixed with them are layers of shale, a dark bluish grey clay that crumbles into thin fragments when crushed with the hand, and thin seams of limestone and, occasionally, of coal. These are the oldest rocks that are found anywhere in Cheshire. You may see them in the hills east of Macclesfield and Congleton and the higher parts of Longdendale. Below these beds is a mass of Mountain Limestone which has been forced upwards into an arch by tremendous pressure of rocks from either side, and has lifted up the Gritstone above to a height of nearly two thousand feet. In this way the highlands of East Cheshire, and indeed the whole of the Pennine Chain, have been formed. The Mountain Limestone, which consists almost entirely of animal remains, especially shells and corals, extends right under the highest hills of Cheshire, and comes to light in the cliffs of the beautiful dales of Derbyshire. Only at one spot, a quarry near Astbury, does it appear at the surface in Cheshire. The Coal Measures, Millstone Grit, Yoredale sandstones, and Mountain Limestone make up what geologists call the Carboniferous or Coal-bearing series, so called because in England our chief supplies of coal are obtained from this group of rocks. But we should have to dig deeper even than the Mountain Limestone before we could reach the original surface of the earth in Cheshire. Long ages ago, ages so distant that not even the most learned men of science can reckon them, our earth was a globe of fiery molten rock. As the surface gradually cooled it became wrinkled, as a baked apple will when taken from an oven. Water collected in the hollows into which fragments of rock were washed down from the ridges, and thus the waters were raised and formed into seas and lakes. But we shall not find any of these rocks in Cheshire, though you may see them in great masses in the mountains of Cumberland and Wales, where they have been forced upwards by the violent movements always at work in the interior of the earth. It is of these molten rocks that the mass of stone which was brought by the ice from Cumberland and left on Eddisbury Hill is composed. CHAPTER IV EARLY INHABITANTS OF CHESHIRE A few years ago some workmen digging on the high ground of Alderley Edge came across a number of flint stones, which from their shape and the marks of chipping upon them had clearly been fashioned by the hand of man. Some of the flints were shaped like a knife blade with a sharp edge on their entire length, and others of a more or less oval shape had a keen edge on one of their curves. The former were the knives with which the earliest men of Cheshire cut the flesh of animals for food; the latter were the scrapers with which they removed the flesh from the bones or from the hides that provided them with clothing. Flints, however, are not naturally found in any of the Cheshire rocks; they must be sought for in the districts where chalk hills abound. Clearly therefore these men must have brought their tools and weapons with them when they first came into Cheshire from the east or from the south. Afterwards, no doubt, they bargained for them, giving skins and furs in exchange. Men first made their homes in Cheshire when the glaciers of the Great Ice Age retreated northwards and the climate became more suitable for human habitation. A flint arrow-head found during some excavations at Clulow Cross near Wincle, tells us that men lived then by hunting, depending for their food on the flesh of wild beasts. They lived in caves or in holes dug in the ground. The roughly-chipped stone axe in the Grosvenor Museum was made by these men. The Flint men, or men of the Old Stone Age, probably came originally from the mainland of Europe to which Britain at that time was joined, the North Sea and English Channel being then dry land. The reindeer, the mammoth, the wild ox, and packs of hungry wolves and hyenas roamed over Cheshire in those days. 24 25 26 These Flint men were succeeded by other races of New Stone men who found that they could manufacture their necessary tools out of the boulders embedded in the drift and boulder-clay. The men who dug up the knives and scrapers of Alderley found near Mottram Common a heap of small boulders carefully placed in a pit dug in the ground and clearly selected for some useful purpose. For out of these stones were to be cut and shaped stone hammer-heads with which they learned to crush copper ore and axe-heads to cut down trees. Some of the hammer-heads themselves have been found in this locality, and they are made of a stone similar to that of the unbroken boulders. The stone 'celt' or axe-head in Vernon Park Museum shows that they were improving in their skill and workmanship, for their tools were no longer chipped into their required shape but ground with hard mill-stones and afterwards smoothed and polished. Afterwards, as you may see from the specimen in the Grosvenor Museum, which has a hole cut through it, the New Stone men learned how to fit handles to their axe-heads. In the course of time these primitive dwellers learned to tame and train animals for their service and use. They were protected from attack by wild beasts by circles of piled stones or raised earth covered with turf. Traces of these circles have in recent years been found at Alderley Edge, but they have been mostly levelled for agricultural purposes. They also taught themselves the art of pottery, making rough jars and urns of sun-dried clay and sand, jars wherein to store their water, and urns in which to place the remains of their dead. One of these urns, dug up at Stretton, may be seen in the Warrington Museum. The Stone men were succeeded by tribes of an entirely different race called Celts. The Celts drove out the earlier inhabitants from their Cheshire homes, compelling them to seek refuge in Wales and Ireland. They came not all at once but in successive waves, the earliest arrivals being the Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who in their turn were ousted by the Brythonic Celts, from whom the name of Briton is derived. These are the ancestors of the Welsh nation. The Brythons, or Britons as we may now call them, were a more intelligent and civilized race than any that had hitherto dwelt in the land. They were a pastoral people, and brought with them great herds of cattle, as well as horses and dogs. They could spin and sew, making their spindles and needles of bone or horn, and grew corn, which they ground with hand-mills. But the Britons must have been continually fighting against fresh incoming tribes, for on some of the hill-tops of Cheshire you may see the camps and earthworks which they made for their defence and refuge in time of war. Suitable positions were chosen, with one side guarded by precipitous cliffs if possible, the whole being enclosed except on the steep side by a raised rampart of earth and a ditch. These earthworks are circular or oval with gaps on either side for entrances. At Bucton Castle, high above Mossley and the Tame Valley, at Kelsborrow Castle in Delamere Forest, and Maiden Castle in the Broxton Hills, British encampments may still be seen. The Britons were very particular about the burial of their dead. Over the graves of their chiefs they erected great round 'barrows'. Many of these barrows, or, to give them their Latin name, 'tumuli,' may be seen to-day, and several of them have been opened and examined. In a field near Oakmere, not far from the high-road that passes through Delamere Forest, is a cluster of barrows called the 'Seven Lows' which clearly mark an early settlement of considerable importance. They vary in size from fifteen to thirty yards in diameter. One of them, when opened, was found to contain an urn with charred human remains within it. The urn was inverted, the better to support the weight of soil above it, and was set in the middle of a floored space over which was a thin layer of charcoal. This seems to show that a funeral pyre was erected on which the body was first burnt, the remains being then gathered and placed in the urn. The barrow was erected over the urn by piling stones and covering them with soil and turf. Burial urns have been found at Castle Hill Cob and Glead Hill Cob in Delamere Forest, and at Twemlow where there is a group of five tumuli. In the hilly district of East Cheshire, where rocks are plentiful, the burial grounds were marked by circles of upright stones. There are some remains of such circles on the moorland near Clulow Cross. Among the burnt bones in a barrow at this spot were found a flint[1] knife and arrow-head, for it was believed that the dead man would require his tools and weapons after death just as in his lifetime. For the same reason often the wives and slaves of a chief were sacrificed or cremated at his death to serve and wait upon him in another world. The barrows were also used by the tribes as a place of assembly for their religious rites, when prayers and human victims were offered to their gods and to the spirits of their dead leaders, who, as they believed, would continue to watch over them and help them in battle. The Brythonic Celts came to Britain between 1,000 B.C. and 500 B.C., and were acquainted with the use and manufacture of bronze implements. Hence the period during which they arrived and lived in Britain is called the Bronze Age. The bronze 'celt' in the Grosvenor Museum was found in the camp at Kelsborrow, and when the railway was cut at Wilmslow an urn containing bones and a bronze dagger was dug up. The urn and dagger are now in the museum at Peel Park, Salford. The river valleys and the lowlands of Cheshire were in those days swampy and unhealthy, so the Britons lived as much as possible in the higher parts, which were also more suitable for agricultural pursuits. On the crests or slopes of hills were tracks or ridgeways for pack-horses, leading from one settlement to another. On Werneth Low, Eddisbury Hill, and Alderley Edge, these ancient ridgeways may still be traced. When men went down to the rivers to fish they carried on their backs light coracles of plaited reeds covered with skin, such as the fishermen still use on the Dee between Farndon and Bangor where the water is too rapid or shallow for boats. Roman writers have left us descriptions of the Britons who lived in the centuries immediately preceding the birth of 27 28 29 Christ; from them we learn that, although the British tribes were mainly occupied in fighting against one another, a certain amount of trade was carried on with travellers and merchants from other lands, and that they dwelt in 'towns' or collections of wattled huts surrounded by a stockade and ditch. From the numerous fragments of British pottery that have been unearthed in the neighbourhood of Chester, we gather that there was a British town of considerable importance on the site of the later city, and traders from the Mediterranean, who visited this country, may well have moored their vessels in the tidal waters of the Dee. CHAPTER V THE ROMANS IN CHESHIRE. I In the previous chapters all that we know of Cheshire and its people has been learned from unwritten records, 'stories in stones', and from such scanty remains as have been brought to light by excavation and careful examination of the soil. From this time onwards our knowledge will be much more extensive and sure, for we shall have written records left by men who lived in the times of which they wrote. Fifty-four years before the birth of Christ the British inhabitants of Cheshire must have heard of the landing on the southern shores of Britain of the drilled and disciplined soldiers of one of the greatest generals that ever lived. Julius Caesar, who first led the Roman eagles into Britain, has given us in his 'Commentaries' a description of the Britain of his day and of its inhabitants. Some of the fierce hill-men of East Cheshire may possibly have fought against him, for he tells us that the British tribes ceased making war on one another, and united themselves under a single leader called Cassivellaunus to resist the invaders. After a decisive victory—at least, according to his own account—Caesar returned with his legions to the Continent, and ninety years passed by before the Romans came again, this time to make a long stay of nearly four hundred years. About the year A.D. 50 the Roman axe might be heard hewing a road through the dense forests which in those days almost surrounded the city of Chester. A Roman governor, Ostorius Scapula, was busy in the neighbouring county of Shropshire making war on the sturdy Welsh-Britons of the borderland of Wales, and fortifying the city which he built under the shadow of the Wrekin. From this point, slowly but surely, the Roman soldiers made their way through forest and foe to Chester, or Deva as it was then called. This was the chief town of a tribe called the Cornavii, a pastoral people occupying the present county of Cheshire, except the hilly districts of the north-east, where the Brigantes, a more warlike tribe than the Cornavii, had their homes. The Romans did not, however, capture Chester without a struggle. The city was well protected on its western and southern sides by the river Dee, whose waters spread over the Roodee right up to where the walls of the city now stand. Only from the east could the place be attacked, and the highest points of Delamere Forest and the Peckforton Hills are still marked by the British encampments and earthworks where the Britons made their last stand, and by green earth-mounds or 'tumuli' where the dead bodies of their leaders were buried. If you take up an Ordnance Map you will often find a length of road running quite straight for some miles. Such roads will nearly always prove to have been the work of the Romans, for the Romans made their roads direct from point to point, like modern railways, their chief object being to enable troops to march rapidly from one military station to another. Two straight pieces of Roman road enter the city of Chester, one on the south and the other on the east. ROMAN ROADS IN CHESHIRE 30 31 The Romans were skilful engineers and did their work very thoroughly, clearing the forest land as they advanced, and draining marshes or laying stone causeways across them. Bridges were built, though not every bridge now called Roman was the work of the Romans. The 'Roman bridge' near Marple was not built until many centuries after the last Romans had left Cheshire, but it may well mark the spot where, according to tradition, a Roman bridge had once stood. More often, where the roads crossed rivers, fords were marked by stakes, and the bed of the river carefully laid with stones. In the Museum at Vernon Park is a paving-stone taken from the Mersey at Stockport where probably the Roman road crossed the river. The Roman roads were paved throughout, except where they were hewn out of the solid rock. The road through Delamere Forest was part of the 'Watling Street' which went in an almost straight line from Deva to Manchester, called by the Romans Mancunium. Stretford is the place where the Roman 'street' crossed the Mersey. The modern high-road from Chester to Manchester for nearly its entire length keeps very close to the line of the ancient Watling Street, only departing from the older road to avoid hills. At such points the straight track of the Roman road can still be traced in the fields and woodland. Often in the neighbourhood of Tarvin and Kelsall has the pickaxe or the spade of the labourer struck against the Roman paving-stones. When an excavation was made at Organsdale, midway between the villages of Kelsall and Delamere, a portion of the Roman Watling Street, cut in the solid sandstone, was discovered, still showing the wheel-ruts worn on the surface by Roman and British carts. In other parts of the forest, when the crops are in, you may see lines of raised earth and gravel where the ancient road was laid along an embankment. At Northwich, which the Romans called Salinae or the 'saltworks', a second road, which entered Cheshire at Wilderspool near Warrington, crossed Watling Street at right angles and ran in a perfectly straight line to Middlewich or 'Condate'. This road was called by the Saxons Kind or King Street, and was continued southwards to Nantwich. 32 34 Tombstone to Caecilius Avitus (Grosvenor Museum) The Grosvenor Museum at Chester contains a large collection of stones with figures and inscriptions carved upon them, and other objects from which we may learn a great deal about the Roman conquerors. The inscriptions, which are of course in Latin, the language of the Romans, show that Chester was an important garrison town, and the head-quarters of the Twentieth Legion. A legion, or division, of the Roman army contained about five thousand men. A number of these relics are tombstones of the legionary soldiers who were stationed here. You may distinguish them by the opening words DIS MANIBUS, or shortly D.M., which practically means in English, 'To the memory of.' The inscriptions then give the name of the soldier and his native place, his age, and the name of the 'century' or company to which he belonged. Women accompanied the legion, as you may see from a tombstone of a centurion and his wife. Another stone of which a picture is given, shows the ordinary dress, the tunic and belt of a Roman soldier. In most of the inscriptions on these stones are the letters VV, which are the initials of the words 'Valeria Victrix', the victorious Valerian, by which name the Twentieth Legion was known. The badge of the legion was a boar, and this also appears on many of the stones and tiles of the buildings put up by the soldiers of this legion. These tombstones were discovered in the year 1883 inside the base of the north wall of the city of Chester while the wall was being repaired. It is probable therefore that there had been a cemetery outside the city wall at this point, from which the stones were taken during its construction. The bodies of the Romans were burnt after death, and the ashes placed in urns of earthenware not unlike those of the Britons. Roman burial urns have been discovered on Winnington Hill near Northwich and at Boughton. You may see them in the Chester Museum. Here also are a number of Roman altars dedicated, as their inscriptions show, to the Roman gods Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, &c. On one of them you can easily make out the words DEO MARTI CONSERV, which mean 'To the god Mars the Preserver'. The lower portion, which has been broken off, contained the name of the soldier who dedicated it. Another altar is dedicated to the 'Genius', or guardian spirit, of the century. On the sides of the altars are rough carvings of the axe and the knife, the jug and the dish, used in sacrificial ceremonies. 35 Altar: Genio (Grosvenor Museum) A third group of stones are called centurial stones. These, like our modern foundation or memorial stones, were built into a portion of wall or building and gave the name of the 'century' of soldiers by whom the work was constructed. At first the Romans were hard taskmasters. Heavy tribute was demanded from the conquered Britons, who complained loudly of the miseries of bondage, and of the insults and injuries put upon them. Gangs of British slaves were forced to work in cornfield and quarry under the whips of their Roman rulers, or compelled to fight with one another or with wild beasts 'to make a Roman holiday'. Rebellions were frequent, and were put down by the Roman officers with great cruelty; and for many years it was only the superior arms and military science of the Roman legions that made it possible to keep in subjection a discontented people. CHAPTER VI THE ROMANS IN CHESHIRE. II A piece of leaden water-piping discovered in Eastgate Street, Chester, bears the name of Julius Agricola. Agricola was made Governor of Britain in A.D. 78. Tacitus, a Roman historian, who married Agricola's daughter, wrote a life of his father-in-law and a narrative of his work in Britain. From his writings we learn that Agricola first turned his attention to the fierce tribe of the Brigantes who inhabited the hilly districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and North-East Cheshire. Agricola made the preparations for his expedition at Chester, which became his head-quarters, and built the fortified outposts of Mancunium on the Irwell and Melandra on the Derbyshire bank of the River Etherow, connecting them with one another with new roads. Both Mancunium and Melandra have been excavated in recent years, and at the latter you may see the foundations of portions of the wall laid bare, and the base of one of the principal gateways leading into the fort. A Roman camp was usually square, with the corners slightly rounded, as has been proved by the excavations at Melandra and by the piece of Roman wall lately discovered at Chester, which shows a distinct curve towards the Pepper Gate. Roads crossed the camp at right angles. The wall or 'vallum' was protected when necessary by a fosse or ditch, but Agricola chose his positions with such care that one side at least was usually already guarded by the waters of some stream. Watch-towers were placed at the corners and on either side of the gateways. Chester still preserves the shape and plan of the Roman fortress. Its four main streets, which are hewn out of the sandstone on which the city is built, cross each other at right angles. The Welsh called it Caer Lleon or Lleon Vawr— the 'Camp of the Legion'. The present walls are not, however, the work of the Romans, though here and there they 36 37