Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes

by Leo H. Grindon

Little can be said in praise of the Manchester climate, and that little, it must be confessed, however reluctantly, is only negative. The physicians are not more prosperous than elsewhere, and the work of the Registrar-general is no heavier. On the other hand, the peach and the apricot cannot ripen, and there is an almost total absence of the Christmas evergreens one is accustomed to see in the southern counties—the ilex to wit, the bay, the arbutus, and the laurustinus. In the flourishing of these consists the true test of geniality of climate; rhododendrons and gay flower-gardens, both of which Manchester possesses in plenty, certify nothing. Not that the climate is positively cold, though as a rule damp and rainy. Snow is often seen in the Midlands when in Manchester there is none. The special feature, again negative, is deficiency of bright, warm, encouraging sunshine. Brilliant days come at times, and sultry ones; but often for weeks together, even in summer, so misty is the atmosphere that where the sun should be in view, except for an hour or two, there is only a luminous patch.

The history of Manchester dates, the authorities tell us, from the time of the "ancient Britons." There is no need to go so far back. The genuine beginnings of our English cities and large towns coincide with the establishment of the Roman power. They may have been preceded in many instances by entrenched and perhaps rudely ramparted clusters of huts, but it is only upon civilisation that a "town" arises. Laying claim, quite legitimately, to be one of the eight primitive Lancashire towns founded by Agricola, a.d. 79, its veritable age, to be exact, is 1812 years, or nearly the same as that of Warrington, where the invaders, who came from Chester, found the river fordable, as declared in the existing name of the Cheshire suburb, and where they fixed their original Lancashire stronghold. What is thought to have happened in Manchester during their stay may be read in Whitaker. The only traces remaining of their ancient presence are some fragments of the "road" which led northwards over the present Kersal Moor, and which are commemorated in the names of certain houses at Higher Broughton. The fact in the local history which connects the living present with the past is that the De Traffords of Trafford Hall possess lands held by their ancestor in the time of Canute. How it came to pass that the family was not displaced by some Norman baron, an ingenious novelist may be able perhaps to tell. Private policy, secret betrothals, doubtless lay in the heart of as many adjustments of the eleventh century as behind many enigmas of the nineteenth. The Traffords reside close to "Throstlenest," a name occurring frequently in Lancashire, where the spirit of poetry has always been vigorous, and never more marked than in appellations having reference to the simple beauty of unmolested nature. At Moston there is also Throstle-glen, one of the haunts, half a century ago, of Samuel Bamford. At the time spoken of the county was divided into "tithe-shires." The "Hundred of Salford" was called "Salford-shire," and in this last was included Manchester; so that whatever dignity may accrue therefrom belongs properly to the town across the river, which was the first, moreover, to be constituted a free borough, receiving its charter in the time of Henry III., who died in 1272, whereas the original Manchester charter was not granted till 1301. To all practical intents and purposes, the two places now constitute a social and commercial unity. Similar occupations are pursued in both, and the intercourse is as constant as that of the people who dwell on the opposite sides of the Thames.

The really important date in the history of Manchester is that of the arrival of the Flemish weavers in the reign of Edward III. Though referable in the first instance, as above mentioned, to the action of the king and the far-seeing Philippa, their coming to Manchester seems to have been specially promoted by the feudal ruler of the time—De la Warre, heir of the De Grelleys, and predecessor of De Lacy—men all of great distinction in old Manchester records. Leading his retainers to the field of battle, De la Warre literally, when all was over, turned the spear into the pruning-hook, bringing home with him some of these industrious people, and with their help converting soldiers into useful artisans. A wooden church had been erected at a very early period upon the sandstone cliff by the river, where the outlook was pleasant over the meadows and the arriving Irk. By 1422, so much had the town increased, it sufficed no longer, and then was built the noble and beautiful "old church," the "cathedral" of to-day, the body of which is thus now nearly 470 years old.[19]

Up till 1656 the windows of this fine church, in conformity with the first principles of all high-class Plantagenet and Tudor ecclesiastical architecture, were coloured and pictorial; the design being that they should represent to the congregation assembled inside some grand or touching Scripture incident, making palpable to the eye what the ear might be slow to apprehend. In the year mentioned they were broken to pieces by the Republicans, one of the reasons, perhaps, why the statue of Cromwell—the gloomy figure in the street close by—has been so placed as for the ill-used building to be behind it. While the church was in its full beauty the town was visited by Leland, who on his way through Cheshire passed Rostherne Mere, evidently, from his language, as lovely then as it is to-day:

"States fall, arts fade, but Nature doth not die!"

"Manchestre," he tells us, was at that period (temp. Henry VIII.) "the fairest, best-builded, quikkest, and most populous Tounne of Lancastreshire" (v. 78). Whatever the precise comparative meaning of "fairest and best-builded," there can be no doubt that in Leland's time, and for a long subsequent period, Manchester was rich in houses of the Elizabethan type, including many occupied by families of note. The greater number of these would be "magpie," or wood and plaster fronted, in black and white, the patterns, though simple, often very ingenious, as indicated in relics which have only lately disappeared, and in the old country halls of the same period still perfect, which we shall come to by and by. The style of the inferior kind is shown in an old tavern, the "Seven Stars," in Withy-grove.

MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL

At the commencement of the Civil Wars Manchester was important enough to be a scene of heavy contest. The sympathies of the town, as a whole, were with the Parliament; not in antagonism to royalty, but because of the suspicion that Charles secretly befriended Popery. It was the same belief which estranged Bolton—a place never in heart disloyal, so long as the ruler does his own part in faithfulness and honour. Standing in the Cathedral graveyard, it is hard to imagine that the original of the bridge now called the "Victoria" was once the scene of a deadly struggle, troops filling the graveyard itself. Here, however, it was that the severest assault was made by the Royalists, unsuccessfully, as were all the other attacks, though Manchester never possessed a castle, nor even regularly constructed fortifications.

The town was then "a mile in length," and the streets were "open and clean." Words change their meaning with lapse of time, and the visitor who in 1650 thus describes them may have been given a little to overpraise; but if Manchester deserved such epithets, alas for the condition of the streets elsewhere! As the town increased in size, the complexion may also very possibly have deteriorated. The fact remains, that after the lapse of another 150 years, say in 1800, it was inexpressibly mean and common, continuing so in a very considerable degree up to a period quite recent. People who know Manchester only as it looks to-day can form no conception of the beggarly appearance of most of the central part no further back than during the reign of George IV. Several years after he came to the throne, where Market Street now is, there was only a miserable one-horse lane, with a footpath of less than twenty-four inches. Narrow "entries" led to adjacent "courts." Railed steps led down to cellars, which were used for front parlours. The shops were dark and lowbrowed; of ornament there was not a scrap. Mosley Street, King Street, and one or two others comparatively modern, presented, no doubt a very decided contrast. Still it was without the slightest injustice that so late as in or about 1845 Mr. Cobden described Manchester as the shabbiest city in Europe for its wealth. That the town needed some improvement is indicated rather suggestively by the fact, that between 1832 and 1861 the authorities paved, drained, and flagged the footways of no fewer than 1578 streets, measuring upwards of sixty miles in length. Many of them, certainly, were new, but the great mass of the gracious work was retrospective. These matters are worth recalling, since it is only by comparison with the past that modern Manchester can be appreciated.