Past the old “Butley Ash” inn we come to Milne House, an ancient stone and half-timbered farmhouse of considerable distinction, standing by the roadside. It was once the “dower-house” of the Leghs of Adlington Hall: the place of banishment to which the ancient widowed ladies of the Hall were retired when their sons married and their rule was done. The provision of a “dower-house” was an old English recognition of the hoary provision of nature, that mothers-in-law and children-in-law cannot agree: hence the dowager was provided always with a home of her own, to which she was relegated when she was superseded as mistress of the Hall. I could easily find a tear and a sigh for the dowager, but it must be remembered that she had once been a young bride and had in her own time disestablished the ancient lady of the Hall. “With whatsoever measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again.” So away with sentiment!
Presently, at a turning to the left, past the “Adlington Arms,” a post-office, three or four cottages, and another inn, the gates of Adlington Park are seen, very carefully locked, and hiding from unauthorised wayfarers the approach to the Hall.
There have been Leghs at Adlington for six centuries and Leghs remain there yet. The Cheshire families of Legh are numerous enough to form a clan, and historic enough for a very long antiquarian discussion, if this were the place for it. They were renowned in the field of battle and in the bower of love, and indeed one of the Leghs of Adlington is the hero of the ancient ballad, The Spanish Lady’s Love. This was Sir Urian Legh, who shared the tented field in company with the Earl of Essex at the siege of Cadiz, and captured a young, beautiful, and wealthy Spanish lady, who fell violently in love with him, as the passionate old ballad declares. But Sir Urian, unfortunately, was a married man, and the song woefully concludes with the lady’s determination to enter a convent.
“HARMONIOUS BLACKSMITH”
It was Sir Thomas, father of this captivating knight, who built the most striking portion of the timbered Hall. He was proud of his work, it seems, for it is duly set forth on a tablet over the entrance how in 1581 he, “Thomas Legghe and Sibbell, daughter of Sir Urian Brereton of hondforde,” were responsible for it. Equally proud of their own doings were Charles and Hester Legh, who in 1757 added the great brick wing with classic pillared front, in the taste of that age: very fine, but utterly out of keeping with the Elizabethan work. The Leghs honoured themselves by entertaining Handel, who stayed at Milne House and played upon the organ still in the Hall. The legend of the “Harmonious Blacksmith” being composed by him at Whitchurch, near London, is familiar to most people, and circumstantial accounts are given, connecting the incident with that place: clinched by the sculptured tombstone in the churchyard to the original blacksmith, William Powell, who died in 1721. The association with Whitchurch is so generally accepted that Powell’s anvil, which rang out the suggestive notes, was in recent times sold at auction for a considerable sum. But Adlington also stoutly claims to be the place where the famous melody was written, and Hollingworth smithy the spot that suggested it. The verdict of the court is, however, with Whitchurch. A variant upon these stories is the assertion that the melody of the “Harmonious Blacksmith” is really an arrangement of an old French air. Musicians characterise the ringing anvil origin of the air as absurd.
Passing Hope Green, the road becomes paved as to half of its width with granite setts, and then approaches Poynton, a cheerful village of modern red-brick country cottages with pleasant gardens and the “Vernon Arms” inn, displaying a heraldic sign boldly declaring Vernon semper viret—“Vernon always flourishes.” A railway bridge, spanning the road at the end of the village, brings us to Hazel Grove, situated where the highway to Chapel-en-le-Frith and Buxton goes off.
HAZEL GROVE
Here the country ends suddenly, as though it were shorn off in a clean cut. Looking backwards, through the railway bridge, there is the sunny road; in front, in the direction of Manchester, is the greyer atmosphere of town. One might easily imagine that bridge to be the veritable doorway into Manchester and its congeries of satellite towns; or, coming from Manchester, the entrance into the region of rural things. There, through the archway, is Poynton, as yet rustic, with birds singing on the hedgerow spray: here the costermonger is crying his wares, and you encounter the terminus of a series of electric tramways that lead with little intermission as far as Bolton. And in between there is an ever-deepening gloom, a continuously increasing racket of traffic on the terrible granite setts that Manchester affects; a growing throng of anxiously hurrying people, units in that wonderful, and to some minds no less terrible than wonderful, assemblage of four millions of human beings who inhabit these next few miles.
The name of Hazel Grove is as poetic as that of the village of “Falling Water” Rip Van Winkle knew before he went off in his long twenty years’ sleep. When he awoke, you will remember, he found it become a very different place, and renamed “Washington.” But the reverse process has taken place here. In the old days this was merely “Bullock Smithy,” into which you cannot read poetry, epic or pastoral. Bullock Smithy was just a wayside forge which is said to have taken its name from the cattle-drovers bringing their steers to be shod here, on the long journey down the road. They may have done, and probably did so; but the name really originated in 1560, when the smithy, even then existing, was bequeathed to the smith, Richard Bullock, of Torkington, by “John de Torkinton.”
