HEBER.
FORTY years ago no part of our neighbourhood more abounded in natural attractions than the district which comprises Moston, Blackley, Boggart–hole Clough, Middleton, Bamford Wood, and the upper portions generally of the valleys of the Medlock and the Irk, the latter including that pretty little cup amid the grassy and tree–clad slopes still known as “Daisy Nook.” How charmingly many of these places have been introduced into our local literature needs no telling. Samuel Bamford was not the man to misapprehend the beauty of nature. Throstle Glen was one of his favourite resorts. Edwin Waugh, happily, is still with us, not alone in perfect story, but ready with the always welcome living voice. The spread of building and of manufacturing has induced heavy changes in almost every portion of the district mentioned, changes partaking, only too often, of the nature of havoc, especially in the immediate vicinity of the streams. So long, however, as it holds centres of social and intellectual culture and refinement—Mr. George Milner lives at Moston—the mind does not care to contrast the present with the past, accepting the record, and in that quite willing to rest. The district in question is peculiarly interesting also from the fact of its having been one of the principal scenes of the work done by the old Lancashire “naturalists in humble life” during the time that they earned their reputation. A noted locality for hand–loom silk weaving, it was long distinguished in particular for its resident entomologists, the delicacy of touch demanded by that elegant art being just that which is needed when one’s play–hours are spent with Psyche; upon the same occupation would seem indeed to have arisen yet another of the old characteristic local tastes—that for the cultivation of dainty flowers, such as the auricula and the polyanthus. Floriculture is still pursued with fair success, though on a smaller scale; entomology, we fear, is like the hand–loom, almost forgotten. We should remember, also, that Alkrington Hall, near Middleton, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Ashton Lever, gentleman, scholar, and naturalist, and that it was by him that the innumerable objects of the famous Leverian Museum were brought together. While a resident at Alkrington Hall (the ancient family seat) he had the best aviary in the kingdom. In 1775 the museum was removed to London, and ten years afterwards it was sold by auction piecemeal. Sir Ashton’s Manchester town house was that one in “Lever’s Row,” now called Piccadilly, which has for many years been the “White Bear” hotel. When he died, in 1788, this house was advertised as eligible for a ladies’ school, being so far away from the centre of business, and fields within a few yards!
“White Moss,” as before–mentioned [(p. 60)], has long since been converted into farm–land, but in the days referred to was still in its glory, dull to look at, no doubt, but to the interrogator a local garden of Eden. Never shall we forget the genial smile that rippled old George Crozier’s broad, round, rosy, white–fringed face as one sunny afternoon in Whitsun–week, 1839, we stepped with twenty or more under his guidance for the first time upon the elastic peat, and beheld the andromeda and the pink stars of the cranberry, these also for the first time. To Crozier the pretty flowers were familiar as the hills; his joy was to watch the delight they gave the juveniles. Presently a man came up and asked if we were “looking for brids.” A little puzzled at first by the strange inquiry, the mystery was soon solved by his taking off his hat and showing it stuck full of butterflies, the “birds,” or in his homely Anglo–Saxon, the “brids” caught during his ramble. Among the more remarkable insects then to be captured on White Moss were the showy beetle called Carabus nitens, the glittering green stripes of its wing–cases edged with a band of brilliant copper–colour; the fox–moth, Lasiocampa rubi, so called from its peculiar foxy colour; and the emperor–moth, Saturnia pavonia, for which the moss had been from time immemorial a noted locality. Great has been the sport of many an entomologist, as, sitting on White Moss on a fine day in early summer, with a captured virgin female of this beautiful creature, the antennæ of which are like ostrich plumes, the males have flocked to him, or rather to her, by the hundred, for the virgin female of the emperor–moth, though she can fly, prefers to sit still until she has been visited by an individual of the other sex. Up to this period she exudes a delicate odour which attracts the latter from long distances, those which have far to come, and arrive late, or not till after the advent of the first, turning back, unless captured by the entomologist’s net, as soon as they perceive by their wonderful instinct that she is virgin no longer. The wings of the males, as with most other kinds of butterfly, are rarely found perfect, except when first fledged. Flying about in ardent search of the female, they tear and chip them against the heath and other plants with which they come in contact through their impatience. The plant that chiefly attracted attention on that memorable day was the cotton–sedge, the most beautiful production of the moorlands, and conspicuous from afar as its silvery–white tassels bend and recover before the breeze. Carrying off a great handful, “Look!” said the rural children in the lanes, amazed that any one could care for such rubbish, “there’s a man been getting moss–crops!” All the mosses about Manchester produce the cotton–sedge, but never have we seen such luxuriant specimens as in the ditches that were then being cut for the draining of White Moss. Three species occur, the broad–leaved, the narrow–leaved, and the single–flowered, the tufts of the latter being upright instead of pendulous. Their beauty, unhappily, is their only recommendation, for the herbage is rough and coarse, and altogether unfit for pasture, and the cotton, so called, is cotton only in name. It cannot be manufactured; the hairs are too straight and too brittle. Instead of twining and entangling, like the filaments of true cotton, they lie rigidly side by side, resembling true cotton merely in their whiteness, and could no more be spun into yarn than slate–pencils could be twisted into a cable.
Boggart–hole Clough, a little nearer Manchester, was reached most readily at the time spoken of, and of course is so still, by way of Oldham Road, going by omnibus or tram–car as far as the end of the first lane carried over the railway. There are plenty of roads under arches formed by the railway, but these will not do; it must be the first that goes over the embankment. Crossing the line at the point in question, a descending path presently brings us to Jack’s Bridge, a sweet little dell, consecrated by one of nature’s own poets, then a resident at Newton Heath:
Jack’s Bridge! thy road is rough,
But thy wild–flowers are sweet!
Other fields gradually lead on towards Moston, several of them containing large “pits,” or ponds, where, in July the white water–lily may be seen in its lustrous bloom, and the Comarum, covered with its deep–red blossoms and ripening fruit; and from there the way is easily found into the clough, which is entered about the middle. On the left, from this point, there is an enticing field–path by the side of the stream to the Blackley road; on the right we mount into the sylvan part, and see for ourselves how well merited is the reputation of this once–affrighting haunt of the boggart. All the charms of a leafy and flowery solitude are there assembled. Not those of the old, old forest, perfect in forest–ways, these we must not look for; but of the gentle ravine, wherein we cannot be lost, and which often pleases so much the more because less grand, since in all things while it is the great and sublime that we admire, that which we love is the little and measurable. Beautiful trees are here, that among their boughs give ever–pleasing glimpses of soft scenery, and in its season, white patches of bridal May,
The milk–white thorn that scents the evening gale,
and that never hinder the sight of the azure overhead; and if while pushing our way through the brown remains of last year’s ferns, brambles with their long arms and claws always seeking to clutch at the traveller, insist on plucking off one’s cap just to show that the way is “on sufferance;” well, never mind, a lively little rill running in parts through beds of wild mint makes a pleasant noise, and wherever a sparkle is wanted to relieve the still and motionless, a silver eye or a glittering rapid is not awanting. Of course we must take with us a disposition to enjoy. “A song,” says some author, “is thrown away that is not in the same key as the listener.”
The clough is not distinguished by anything special in the way of plants, though we have gathered there fine sprigs of the sweet woodruff. As a retreat, however, from the noise and bustle of the town, and the only place of the kind in that direction, it must always be precious to the lover of nature. Unfortunately, the path has of late years become very much disturbed through the falling away of the bank, the steepness of which, and the weight of the trees, unprovided with sufficient anchorage by reason of the lightness of the soil, causes continual landslips, so that now there are in many places rather dangerous declivities. Many of the trees that once stood erect upon the brows, now lie ingloriously with their heads in the brook beneath, and their roots in the air. The increase of buildings about Newton and Failsworth, and the consequent incessant raids of destroying boys, have also tended of late years to mar the place considerably; and now, in 1882, it has to be said with deep regret, that the regular Sunday resort to Boggart–hole of the lowest roughs of the neighbouring villages, leaves it for the week–day visitor tattered and torn and soiled beyond recovery. The signal, with every new season, for renewed mischief, is the opening of the golden sallow–bloom, now not a tenth in quantity of what it was even in 1850. These roughs are the thousand times more affrighting boggarts of to–day, masters, permittedly by the authorities, of a place once another Kelvin Grove,