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.