Echoes of Old Lancashire

by William E. A. Axon

The tendency of modern thought is to simplification. The African savage, bowing to his fetish, has probably a more complex theory of life than the Oxford professor, and the study of folk-lore shows how penetrating was the influence of custom and superstition upon the life of the people. It followed man from the cradle to the grave. There were ceremonies to be observed at birth, at marriage, at death; at every stage of the journey of life. It gave to clouds and birds omens that decided human fate. It peopled the meadows with fairies, and the mountains with witches; and made the woods and waters alive with spirits, sometimes friendly, but often malignant. It lighted the Beltane fires at Midsummer and the Yule-log at Christmas. The Calendar of the Year and the Calendar of Man’s Life alike registered its decrees. Whatever happened, good or bad, was referred alike to the supernatural powers, who for bane or blessing were continually intervening in the most trivial details of every home. Fairies were sometimes friends and sometimes foes, but witches and warlocks were entirely malicious. The dead rested not in their graves, but returned to terrify the living. The old gods, dethroned from their eminence, remained as demons to exercise a real and usually an evil power. Viewed in this light the decay of folk-lore may be regarded as an advantage. We may regret the nymphs and dryads, and even the “lubber fiend,” but with them vanish the whole tribe of “witches and warlocks and things that cried ‘Boh’ in the night.” We will not desire to revive or retain the popular superstitions and customs of bygone days, but as they pass away let us examine them with careful and patient attention, and see what they have to tell us of the past history of the race and the psychology of primitive man. Studied in this spirit we may sometimes learn as much from the observation of a child’s game as from the speculations of a philosopher.

Footnotes:

[13]. Chief magistrate of the police.

Manchester Grammar School Mill.

In 1883 the Manchester School Mill was acquired by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, in order to make a new road from Long Millgate to Victoria Station. With the destruction of the School Mill there passed away a curious relic of ancient custom, and a link that connected modern Manchester with the quaint old town that stood by Irk and Irwell in the fourteenth century. In the very home of Free Trade there existed a monopoly at least six centuries old. The School Mill claimed the right to grind all the malt that is brewed within the limits of the old town of Manchester. This monopoly is but a fragment of its former privileges, which were abolished as inimical to the general good more than a century ago.

In Roman times as a prime requisite a water mill, it is said, was erected upon the rocky channel of the Medlock below the station and town, on a site which in later times was called Knot Mill. If this be correct, the situation must have been found inconvenient, for the town mill next heard of was situated on the Irk. The right of compelling their vassals to grind at the “lord’s mill,” and to pay such tolls as he might fix, was a valuable privilege to the lord of the manor of a busy and thriving place. When Randle, Earl of Chester, granted the first charter to Salford in 1230, he said in it:—“No burgess ought to bake bread to be sold save at my oven by reasonable custom. If I shall have a mill there the burgesses shall grind at my mill to the twentieth measure, and if I shall not have a mill there they may grind where they will.” When Thomas Grelle, Baron of Manchester, in 1301, granted the charter, by which for many succeeding centuries Manchester was governed, he was careful to remind his burgesses that they should have their corn ground at his mill and their bread baked at his oven, “paying to the aforesaid mill and aforesaid oven the customs as they ought and are wont to do.”

The Grammar School was founded in 1515 by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, Hugh Bexwyke, Ralph Hulme, and Joan Bexwyke, and in what respective proportion the institution is due to these worthies may be a matter of doubt. For the endowment of the school they purchased, for a “valuable consideration,” the amount of which is not stated, the lands, rents, and services of the Manchester Corn Mills and all their tolls. Lord La Warr, in thus parting with the ancient soke mills of his manor, merely retained a chief rent, which was then fixed at £9 13s. 4d. The transfer of the mill from the wardens of the college to an independent body of feoffees is set forth in a deed which was executed in 1525, and in which Hugh Bexwyke, clerk, and Joan Bexwyke, widow, state that Thomas West, Knt., Lord La Warr, “did give grant and confirm to them and to Ralph Hulme, deceased, all his lands and tenements, rents, reversions, and services of his water corn mills, called Manchester Mills, situate and being in the town of Manchester, upon the water or rivulet of Irke, running and flowing from and in the town of Manchester and the precincts of the same as far as the water or river of Irwell, flowing between the town of Manchester and the town of Salford, and also of all the tolls soken of the aforesaid mills of all the tenants of the said Lord La Warr in Manchester, and of his sojourners of the same, and of all other residents there.” Further, the same Thomas, Lord La Warr did give, grant, and confirm to them his “fulling mill there, called a walke millne, situate, standing, and being upon the said rivulet or water called Irke; and also his close of land, with its appurtenances, called Walker’s Croft; and also Thomas, Lord La Warr in like manner did give, grant, and confirm to them the aforesaid water or rivulet of Irke, and its free fishery, from a place called Asshelle Lawne as far as the said water or river called Irwell, and also all his lands and tenements adjacent and adjoining, without the several closes and burgage on each side of the same water or rivulet called Irke, flowing in the said town of Manchester, from the place called Asshelle Lawne, into the said river of Irwell.” And farther, the same Thomas, Lord La Warr did give, grant, and confirm to them “full power and authority, and right of making, setting-up, fixing, and attaching mills or messuages, and so many and such weirs, floodgates, and fastenings, to both sides of the same water or rivulet, called Irke, and upon, through, and across the same water, in any places whatsoever, from the said place, called Asshelle Lawne, unto the said water or river of Irwell,” as they or their heirs and assigns should think to be expedient or beneficial for their greater profit or advantage. Lord La Warr also conveyed to the purchasers by the same deed some fulling mills in Ancoats, where there are various evidences of the early practice of textile industries. The value of the Manchester Mills when they were first bought as an endowment for the school was estimated at £47 10s. per annum. Lord La Warr promised that no more mills should be erected within or about the manor of Manchester, and thus ensured to the schools the monopoly of the grinding of the corn and malt for the town. The restraint was probably felt to be injurious at a comparatively early period. In 1556 those who evaded this toll were threatened with amercement, and apparently continued to be undeterred by such threats, for in 1561 it was ordered that “in future” they should forfeit twenty shillings. In 1592 the feoffees had to guard their monopoly against the attack of Anthony Travis, who erected “a horse mill within the town.” The Duchy Court of Lancaster upheld the rights of the monopolists, and actually prohibited the use within the town of even a hand mill or quern mill for the grinding of either corn or malt. If, however, the grain lay at the mill for twenty-four hours unground the owner might take it away to some other mill. In 1608 a horse mill was ordered to be destroyed. During the Commonwealth the people of the town had freedom in this matter, and they used it so that the revenues of the school began to diminish very rapidly. An order of Parliament was obtained in 1647, and the mills were then leased to Mr. John Hartley for £130 per annum. The new lessee established his right against two hardy individuals who had set up a common brewhouse in the college, which they contended owed no suit or service to the School Mills. The decision went against them. In 1701 some persons who had erected mills in Salford were prosecuted for having customers who ought to have ground at the Manchester Mills. They were ordered not to receive any corn or malt for grinding from any of the inhabitants of Manchester. In 1728 some persons who had erected a brewhouse in Salford and sold ale and beer to the burgesses of Manchester were required “under pain of forfeiting £100 to have all their corn and malt that should be spent ground in their houses at the School Mills.” The farmers of the mill at this time made an attempt to obtain a judgment that should include oats, which had not been ground at the School Mills for two generations. The Judges, however, insisted that an issue ought to be directed for trying the custom at common law. This the farmers did not think expedient, and so they dropped the suit and paid the costs. In 1732 they were successful in restraining Sir Oswald Mosley from using a malt mill which he had erected in Hanging Ditch. It will easily be understood that the tenants of the mills were exceedingly unpopular with the inhabitants. Witty John Byrom, in an epigram which became proverbial, thus lampooned the two of them, who from their spare forms had been nicknamed Skin and Bone:—

“Bone and Skin, two millers thin,

Would starve the town, or near it;

But be it known to Skin and Bone