Adlington, the ancestral home of one of the older branches of this widespread family, is a pleasant old mansion, possessing, besides its own particular attractions as a good specimen of the half-timbered manor house of bygone days, much that is interesting in its memories and associations. It lies, too, in the midst of a spacious park, prettily feathered with woodlands, and environed with much rural beauty, so that it is altogether a pleasant place to spend a summer day in—a spot where you may find enough to occupy your thoughts without satiety or weariness.
The railway carries you within a hundred yards or so of the park-gates. A roadside inn—the Unicorn’s Head—(the crest of the Leghs), and a few picturesque cottages, with cunningly devised porches of open rustic work, and little plots of garden in front, gay with flowers of every hue—tall lilies and roses that sway their heads in the passing breeze, and sweet-scented creepers that trail around and half hide the little old-fashioned windows—constitute what there is of village. Close by the station, and abutting upon the high-road, is the old smithy. As we go by, the smith is hard at work, the sparks fly merrily, and under the ponderous strokes of his hammer the anvil rings as melodiously as it did a hundred years ago, when, on a bright morning, Handel, while taking a constitutional with his host, Charles Legh, of Adlington, listened to it and first conceived the idea of the “Harmonious Blacksmith,” the score of which he wrote down immediately on his return to the hall, where it was long preserved. The park, which is well stocked with deer, is of considerable extent, varied and picturesque, and marked by much unrestrained beauty; for Art and Nature seem both to have stopped short of “improvement,” and to have given Time the opportunity of softening the harsh outline of man’s labours. It is not too tamely kept, however, nor yet too rigidly subjected to rule, the open lawns and broad sunny glades being chequered with clumps of wood and sturdy trees—
Whose boughs are moss’d with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity,
whilst through the grassy meads and beneath the woodland shade, pranked with a thousand silvery shapes of beauty, the freakish Deane—
A gentle stream,
Adown the vale its serpent courses winds,
Seen here and there through breaks of trees to gleam,
Gilding their dancing boughs with noon’s reflected beam,
as it hastens on to mingle its waters with the Bollin, and unite with it in helping the Mersey to do honour to the British Tyre. It is a lovely summer day, with just sufficient breeze to cool the overheated atmosphere, and give a pleasant and invigorating freshness to it; the sunbeams are dappling the rich sward with their playful and ever-changing patches of light, and the air is balmy with the odours of the new-mown hay. The lark carols joyously in the bright blue sky, the insects are busy in the tall grass, and the lowing of the kine in the distant meadows, the merry song of the haymakers spreading out the fresh-cut swaths, and the creaking of the waggon as it bears its fragrant load to the stackyard, blending together, make a rustic music delighting to the heart of him who loves the sounds of country life.