If any reader wishes to obtain a brief respite from the busy life of the “unclean city,” to get away from the noise of looms and spindles, the smoke of factories and the smell of dyes, and to find within easy distance of the great manufacturing metropolis a place of perfect quiet and repose where he may feel that for all practical purposes he is “at the world’s end,” let him by all means spend a summer afternoon in that quaint little out-of-the-way nook, Gawsworth, and he will return to the crowded mart with little inclination to cry out with the Roman Emperor, “Perdidi diem.” Yet how few there are who have made acquaintance with this beau-ideal of a quiet rural retreat. The places which it is the proper thing to visit, or “do,” as the phrase is, are all carefully mapped out for our convenience; but the literary finger-posts afford but little guidance to the true rambler, who knows that the fairest spots are those which are oftenest overlooked. Gawsworth may be easily reached from Alderley or Chelford; but perhaps the most convenient starting point is Macclesfield, from which it is distant a short four miles.
Macclesfield does not present a particularly prepossessing appearance, though it possesses much that is historically interesting, and you may here and there see relics of mediæval times; but the long centuries have wrought many changes in its condition, and those changes can hardly be said to be from grave to gay. Its forest was once the hunting-ground of kings. A royal palace occupied a site very near to the present Park Lane, and in the Fourth Edward’s reign Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, had a princely residence there. The town itself was walled, and though there is not now a single stone remaining, the recollection of its fortifications is preserved in the streets—Chestergate, Church Wallgate, and Jordangate—which form the principal outlets from it. Notwithstanding that it once boasted a royal owner, it now presents but a dingy and uninviting aspect, so that we are little loth to leave its steep and tortuous streets, and what Nathaniel Hawthorne would call its ugliness of brick, and betake ourselves to the open country.
On getting clear of the town, we enter upon a pleasant rural highway that rises and falls in gentle undulations. Tall trees border the wayside, which, as we advance, grow thicker, until we reach a double line of spreading beeches that meet in an entanglement overhead, and form a long shady avenue, through which a pleasant vista is obtained. Now and then we meet a chance wayfarer and occasionally a sleepy-looking carter with his team, but the road is comparatively little frequented, and we almost wonder that with the limited traffic it does not become grass-grown. Though it is quiet now-a-days, it was lively enough in the old coaching times, when the “Red Rover” and the “Defiance” were in the zenith of their popularity, and the tootling of the guard’s bugle daily awoke the echoes to the inspiring notes of the “British Grenadiers,” for it was then the great highway between Manchester and the metropolis. But those days are changed, and our dream of the past is rudely dispelled by the shrill whistle of the “express” as it shoots along the edge of the Moss, leaving a long white pennon of steam in its wake.
As we journey on we get agreeable glimpses of the country, and the varied character of the scenery adds to the charm. Below us on the left stretches a broad expanse of bog—Danes Moss, as it is called—commemorating some long-forgotten incursion of the wild Scandinavian hordes—
When Denmark’s raven soared on high.
On the outskirts of the town is an old farmstead, called Cophurst, on the site of which, as tradition sayeth, Raphael Hollinshead, the chronicler, resided three hundred years ago. Close by is Sutton, once the home of another Cheshire worthy—Sir Richard Sutton—“that ever famous knight and great patron of learning,” as King, in his “Vale Royal,” calls him, “one of the founders of Brazenose, in Oxford, where by his bounty many of Cheshire youth receive most worthy education.” The foreground is broken into picturesque inequalities, and in the rear rises a succession of swelling hills, part of the great Kerridge range—the stony barriers of the Peak country. Where the steep crags cut sharply against the eastern sky is Teg’s Nose, famed for its gritstone quarries. Further on, Shutling’s Low rears its cone-shaped peak to a height of 1,660 feet, and behind we catch sight of the breezy moor, on the summit of which stands that lonely hostelry, the Cat and Fiddle, the highest public-house, it is said, to be found in the kingdom. The great hill-slopes, though now almost bare of wood, once formed part of the great forest of Macclesfield, in which for generations the Davenports, as chief foresters, held the power of life and death over the robber bands who in the old times infested it, as well as the punishment of those who made free with the Earl’s venison; and they not only held but exercised their rights, as the long “Robber Roll” at Capesthorne still testifies. Though it has long been completely disafforested, the memory of it still lingers. Forest Chapel, away up in the very heart of this mountain wilderness, perpetuates the name, and Wildboar Clough—Wilbor Clough, as the Macclesfieldians persist in calling it—Hoglegh, and Wolfscote remind us of the former denizens of these moorland wastes. Beyond Teg’s Nose a great gap opens in the hills, and then Cloud End rears its rugged form—dark, wild, and forbidding. From the summit, had we time to climb it, a charming view might be obtained of the picturesquely varied country—
Of farms remote and far apart, with intervening space
Of black’ning rock and barren down, and pasture’s pleasant face;
And white and winding roads that creep through village, vale, and glen,
And o’er the dreary moorlands, far beyond the homes of men.