CAMDEN, in his famous seventeenth century tour, says that he approached Lancashire from Yorkshire, “that part of the country lying beyond the mountains towards the western ocean,” with “a kind of dread,” but trusted to Divine Providence, which, he said, “had gone with him hitherto,” to help him in the attempt. His apprehensions arose, no doubt, partly upon the immense difficulties which in those days attended travelling; but Lancashire west of the Rivington range was, in its rural portions, at the same period almost as rude and cheerless as Connemara. Towards the sea there were vast expanses of moor and marsh, and even the inland parts were cold and inhospitable. How changed by the wand of that greatest of magicians, Commerce! Though there is still abundant need of polish, Camden himself, could he come back, would surrender his fears, let him only be one of a party up to the Pike. Conspicuous from a hundred spots on the western margin of our city, Rivington Pike is little less worthy of a visit than Pendle, and has the advantage over the latter in being comparatively near. Proceeding first to Horwich, six miles beyond Bolton, on the main northern line, the ascent is quite easy, and may be undertaken by two or three different routes—one by the side of the little river Douglas; another by the quarry and Tiger Wood, a deep ravine containing all the accustomed pretty features of Lancashire mountain defiles, rushing water, many cascades, and abundance of trees. Ferns, mosses, and sylvan wild–flowers grow in plenty, and in one part, where the water collects in a large natural pool, there is quite a remarkable display of aquatic plants. The summit gained, over fifteen hundred feet above the sea, the prospect is magnificent, especially if we delay till the green country glows with a summer evening’s sunset. The great plain that stretches to the Ribble, and renews itself as the “Fylde,” lies at our feet. Chorley and Preston seem quite close; in the distance the church–towers and other aspiring portions of Southport are plainly visible, and beyond all there is a shining streak that is unmistakably the play–ground of the sea–gulls. North Cheshire, North Wales, and the nearer Derbyshire hills, are also seen. A very particularly fine view is obtained from the Anglezark end of the hill, a rough and broken eminence reached by a zigzag path from the base, which leads eventually to a soft and turfy brow. Upon the opposite side of the field, a trifle higher, there is a wall with a narrow iron gate in it, and here we take our stand. Now and then, on fine and perfectly tranquil evenings towards sunset, Lancaster Castle may be distinguished; if the tide be in, Morecambe Bay, and even Coniston.
Quite as interesting, every way, as the Pike, and more so in some respects, are the great reservoirs belonging to the Liverpool Waterworks, altogether out of sight from the railway, but as a spectacle from the hill–side undeniably one of the most charming in the county. The area of the entire water–surface is five hundred acres; the supply comes from ten thousand acres of moorland above, brought down chiefly by the little rivers called the Douglas, the Yarrow, and the Roddlesworth. The Act of Parliament authorising the construction of these great reservoirs was obtained in 1847. Water was first delivered from them in Liverpool January 2nd, 1857. Rivington Pike, after all, is not the highest point of the range. Winter Hill, well named, so wild and cold and dreary is the complexion, and so often is it beaten by storms, claims a considerably greater altitude.
By this same line we go also to Chorley for Whittle–le–Woods, distant only four miles from Hoghton Tower, a romantic and secluded spot, noted for its historical associations, its “Springs,” and, if we care to pursue a quiet and pretty walk by the edge of the canal, for wild–flowers found nowhere else near Manchester. Excepting in the canal at Disley, there is not another within the distance where there are in particular so many pond–weeds, that beautiful plant the lucens leading the way. Of these submerged things the question has been asked perhaps more frequently than of any others, What use are they? Rest upon them, then, for a moment. Use is a triple idea. Taking the entire mass of the vegetation of our planet, first there is economic use, as for food, which last being rendered to brute creatures as well as to mankind, is at the best but at a low and menial one. Secondly, comes the admirable use subserved by beauty, which brutes are incapable of appreciating, and blindness to which, like the use of foul and profane language, may be taken perhaps as the infallible sign of an imbecile. Plants can never be truly learned, nor is their highest use realised so long as we rest in the contemplation, albeit so salutary, even of their loveliness. Their last and crowning use comes of their interpreting power. There is not a species that does not cast some welcome side–light, that does not open our understanding to something previously unperceived. The pond–weeds do this, if nothing below, so that meeting with them we may rejoice.
The fine old halls scattered so freely about Bolton have counterparts in the neighbourhood of Wigan, all this part of the county having been in the hands of wealthy men during the time of the Stuarts and of the Commonwealth. Ince Hall, black and white, with its five gables, though of late much disfigured; Lostock Old Hall, Standish, Pemberton, Birchley, and Winstanley, are all very interesting; and if Haigh Hall, the Lancashire seat of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, be less curious, archæologically, there is not one that will compare with it in respect of gardens or romantic approach. The walk through the wood, beginning at a mile from the Wigan market–place, is in its way, for so near a coal and factory centre, without a rival.
For a charming bit of wild nature thereabouts, commend us, however, to Dean Wood. Nothing, as regards landscape and prospects of sylvan solitude, can be more unpromising than the approach thereto through Hindley and Wigan. Two or three miles beyond the latter, where the ground begins to rise, and trees and streams of water make their appearance, it seems possible, after all, that something picturesque may lie concealed; and leaving the line at Gathurst, sure enough, we are by no means disappointed. Turning up on the left, after a few minutes along field–paths, the way changes into a beautiful clough, in many respects not unlike Bamford Wood, and which goes on improving to the end. Of course it is not to be confounded with the Dean Wood upon the slopes of Rivington; nor is the river below to be confounded with the Rivington “Douglas.” This one, in truth, is the Lancashire Douglas pre–eminently: a stream of fifteen miles’ flow before entering the Ribble, and the same with which tradition connects bloody conflicts in the time of the Danes. A tributary comes down the wood, after rain often so much swollen as to drown the path beside, when we may take an upper one, every bit as enjoyable, especially in autumn, since it gives a charming view of the trees below, among which there is unusual plenty of the kinds that bear red berries. Ferns and mosses grow in equal abundance; wild–flowers also, and flowering shrubs. The Gueldres–rose is especially abundant, and upon one occasion—October 10th, 1868—the ground was strewed in certain spots with the fallen fruit of the wild apple. In the upper part of the wood there are some curious varieties of the common oak, the leaves so small that they might be thought to belong to a different species. Emerging near the green lane, the homeward path lies first through Up–Holland, then either by the lanes to Wigan—four miles distant—or more speedily to Orrel station on the Bolton and Liverpool line.
Appley Bridge, the station succeeding Gathurst, is the nearest for that glorious eminence, Ashurst Hill, the prospect from which is once again all that heart can desire, let only the day be fair. Now, too, we have something quite different, the great flat, looking southwards, being that which reaches to the estuary of the Mersey, the eye resting upon the distant trees of Knowsley Park, and detecting even Liverpool; while to the west, almost underneath, is Lathom, Ormskirk beyond, and exquisitely upon the horizon, the lucid sea, and the mountains that talk quietly of the Vale of Llangollen. A similar view is obtainable from the summit of Billinge, half–way between Wigan and St. Helens, but access thereto is not so easy, nor is there the same sweet sense of remote and airy solitude, green as the early spring, which, unless the visit happens to be most unfortunately timed, always awaits the pilgrim to Ashurst. The beacon upon the summit, a stone tower with pyramidal spire, was erected in the time of the French Revolutionary wars, taking the place of one established on the identical spot in the memorable August of 1588,—the year, as Charles Kingsley says, of Britain’s Salamis.
From Appley Bridge there is also a grand walk to the summits upon the right–hand side of the rails, the chief of them, Horrocks Hill, lying about two miles away to the north, and at a spot called Higher Barn, attaining an elevation superior even to Ashurst. But it is not so well adapted for a signalling station, and hence, instead of a beacon, is marked only by a tree. The view from the top is singularly fine, embracing the whole country up to the Lune, with the towers of Lancaster city, Blackpool, Rufford (where there is a very interesting old hall, black and white), the Ribble, and the entire course of the Douglas, embouchure included. For variety, the return walk may be made viâ Standish.
Lathom Park implies, upon the Newborough side, a delicious walk through the intricacies of what in this part would be better called Lathom Wood. The trees are lofty; the shade is dense; the path, gently undulated, crosses about the middle a swiftly–running stream called the Sawd. This, like the water in Dean Wood, is a tributary of the Douglas. Just outside the park there is another, now called the Slate Brook, and of special historical interest, being that one which in the records of the memorable siege of Lathom House is called the Golforden.
Shortly after emerging from the wood, and crossing the smooth greensward of the park where open to the sunshine, the house itself comes in view, a noble mansion, worthy alike of the domain and of the owner. That it is not the original Lathom House—the Lathom which belongs not more to the history of Lancashire than to the annals of English courage and to the biography of great–souled women, scarcely needs saying. The original,—the magnificent building honoured by the visit of Henry VII. and his queen, when the “singing women” walked in front,—which had no fewer than eighteen towers, in addition to the lofty “eagle,” and a fosse of eight yards in width, received so much injury at the time of the siege that on the removal of the family, shortly afterwards, to Knowsley, it soon fell into a state of utter dilapidation. Passing into the hands of the Bootle family, restoration was found impracticable, and during the ten years following 1724 the present building superseded the historic one. Nothing in its style can be finer than the north front, one hundred and fifty–six feet long, rising from a massive rustic basement, with double flight of steps to the first story, the lateral portions supported by Ionic columns. The interior corresponds; the great hall being forty feet square, with a height of thirty feet; the saloon, of almost similar dimensions, and the library fifty feet by twenty. When given over to decay, the original hall was literally carried off stone by stone, the country people in the vicinity being permitted to take whatever they liked for private use, so that now, as has happened with many an ancient abbey and castle, the building may be said to be diffused over the whole district. In farmyard and cottage walls it is not difficult to identify now and then, on a very fair basis of conjecture, a fragment or two of the ancestral home of the Stanleys, every atom suggestive, as we contemplate it, of ancient dignity and heroism almost unique.
To recite, once again, the majestic old story of the siege is not needful. Suffice it to say that in 1642, when James, the seventh Earl of Derby, whose steadfast loyalty so well fulfilled the family motto, Sans changer, was in the Isle of Man, approach was made to Lathom House with a view to capture by the Parliamentarians under Fairfax. The countess, originally Charlotte de Tremouille, a high–born lady whose kindred were connected with the blood–royal of France, replied to the summons to surrender that she had a double trust to sustain—faith to her lord the Earl, who had entrusted her with the safe keeping, and allegiance to her king—and that she was resolved not to swerve from either honour or obedience. The nature of the long defence, the discomfiture of the assailants, and what happened subsequently, constitutes, as well known, a chapter in the family history at once consummately noble and profoundly sorrowful. It reads more touchingly than any romance or tale of fancy, and would supply subjects for many a great picture. Plenty of memorials of the siege have been preserved. A little while ago, upon removal of a tree near the site of the original hall, numbers of bullets were found in the earth about the roots. Tradition also has plenty to say, and apparently with more truth than is sometimes the case. In the history of the siege, written shortly after its time, seven of the defenders are said to have lost their lives, and one of these, called on account of his great stature, Long Jan, is said to have owed his death–wound to his head rising above the wall or parapet. Very interesting was it, therefore, a few years since, when during some alterations in the level of the ground, there were discovered seven skeletons, one of them indicating a frame little less than gigantic. The bones, when uncovered, were seemingly perfect, but all soon crumbled away, and not a trace remained. Another circumstance mentioned in the old history of the siege is that supplies of coal were obtained by excavating in the courtyard. The Earl of Lathom was so fortunate, a year or two ago, as to personally prove the truthfulness of this statement by the discovery of an outcrop below the turf, just in front of the drawing–room windows of the modern mansion.