LANCASTER.
Between Preston and this place we had the vast hills that part Yorkshire and Lancashire, all the way on our right. This is all sandy country to within three miles of Lancaster; then rock begins: the other has rock under it, but red and sandy; this is white. Where the castle and church stand is a high and steep hill, length east and west: this was the Roman castrum. I found a great piece of the wall at the north-east, in the garden of Clement Townsend; and so to Mr. Harrison’s summer-house, which stands upon it: it is made of the white stone of the country, and very hard mortar, and still very thick, though the facing on both sides is peeled off for the sake of the squared stone, which they used in building. A year or two ago a great parcel of it was destroyed with much labour. This reached quite to the bridge-lane, and hung over the street at the head of the precipice in a dreadful manner: from the summer-house it went round the verge of the close north of the church, and took in the whole circuit of the hill. The ditch on the outside of it is now to be seen. I suppose it originally inclosed the whole top of the hill where the church and castle stand, which is steep on all sides, and half inclosed by the river Lune; so that it was an excellent guard to this part of the sea-coast, and commands a very great prospect both by sea and land. Here was this great convenience too in the situation, that on the south side of the castle walls, under the tower, is a spring. All the space of ground north of the church is full of foundations of stone buildings, Roman, I believe; and much stone has been taken up there. To the west of the church is part of a partition wall left, of that time. This is a navigable river. The castle built since on this spot has been very strong; it suffered in the civil wars. The prospect hence takes in all the western sea, and sometimes reaches the isle of Man. The Cumberland and Westmorland hills are of such a nature as I never saw before: I took them for clouds at first, not only from their height, but figure; consisting not of long ridges, but pens, or sugar-loaves, suddenly breaking off. Eastward is Ingleborough, a very strange hill, having a flat place at top, like a table: they say there are some works upon it, and some stones placed like a bower: Camden takes notice of it as rising gradually eastward. Upon some of these hills it was that George Fox ascended to converse with the Holy Ghost, as he pretended; which he revealed to Nailor, and so began the sect of the Quakers, about sixty years ago.
There is a friery in the town, and the church of it was standing within memory. When they pulled down the Roman wall, they found many great toads alive in the thickness of it, and where in all appearance there could be no passage for them from without. The town of Lancaster lies upon the eastern declivity, before the castle.