BRIEF HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES BY LEO H. GRINDON AUTHOR OF 'THE MANCHESTER FLORA'; 'MANCHESTER BANKS AND BANKERS'; 'LIFE, ITS NATURE, VARIETIES, AND PHENOMENA'; ETC. WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS   London SEELEY AND CO., LIMITED Essex Street, Strand 1892...

The following Chapters were written for the Portfolio of 1881, in which they appeared month by month. Only a limited space being allowed for them, though liberally enlarged whenever practicable, not one of the many subjects demanding notice could be dealt with at length. While reprinting, a few additional particulars have been introduced; but even with these, in many cases where there should be pages there is only a paragraph. Lancashire is not a county to be disposed of so briefly. The present

Directly connected with the whole world, through the medium of its shipping and manufactures, Lancashire is commercially to Great Britain what the Forum was to ancient Rome—the centre from which roads led towards every principal province of the empire. Being nearer to the Atlantic, Liverpool commands a larger portion of our commerce with North America even than London: it is from the Mersey that the great westward steamers chiefly sail. The biographies of the distinguished men who had their birt

The situation of this great city is in some respects one of the most enviable in the country. Stretching along the upper bank of an unrivalled estuary, 1200 yards across where narrowest, and the river current of which flows westwards, it is near enough to the sea to be called a maritime town, yet sufficiently far inland never to suffer any of the discomforts of the open coast. Upon the opposite side of the water the ground rises gently. Birkenhead, the energetic new Liverpool of the last fifty y

First in the long list of Lancashire manufacturing towns, by reason of its magnitude and wealth, comes Manchester. By and by we shall speak of this great city in particular. For the present the name must be taken in the broader sense, equally its own, which carries with it the idea of an immense district. Lancashire, eastwards from Warrington, upwards as far as Preston, is dotted over with little Manchesters, and these in turn often possess satellites. The idea of Manchester as a place of cotton

The writer of the entertaining article in the Cornhill for February 1880 upon "The Origin of London" shows that had the choice of the best site for a capital to be made now , and for the first time, the selection would naturally fall upon south-east Lancashire, and on the particular spot covered by modern Manchester. Geographically, as the author points out, it is the centre of the three kingdoms; and its advantageousness in regard to commerce, all things considered, is paramount. These facts al

Lancashire is not only the principal seat of the English cotton manufacture. Over and above the processes which are auxiliary to it and complete it, many are carried on of a nature altogether independent, and upon a scale so vast as again to give this busy county the preeminence. The mind is arrested not more by the variety than by the magnitude of Lancashire work. Contemplating the inexpressible activity, all directed to a common end, one cannot but recall the famous description of the building

The primitive Lancashire character—industrious, frugal, sanguine, persevering, inflexible in determination—has already been sketched in brief. Some additional features, observable more particularly among the operatives and away in the country, deserve notice, the more so since it is in a people's average temperament that the key is usually found to their pursuits in playtime—after the songs, the most interesting chapter in a local history. The sum total of the private morals of working Lancashir

Scenery more diversified than that of Lancashire, taking the Duddon as its northern boundary, does not exist in any English county. For the present we shall keep to the portion south of the Lune, deferring the Lake District to the next chapter, to which may also be left the little that has to be said concerning the shore south of that river. The eastern parts have attractions quite as decided as those of the north, though of a character totally different. Every acknowledged element of the pictur

The coast of Lancashire has already been described as presenting, from the Mersey upwards as far as the estuary of the Kent, an almost unbroken surface of level sand. In several parts, as near Birkdale, the western sea-breeze, pursuing its work for ages, has heaped up the sand atom by atom into hills that have a romantic and attractive beauty all their own. But of overhanging rocks and crags there are no examples, except when at Heysham, in Morecambe Bay, the millstone grit cropping out so as to

At the period so memorable in history when Wiclif was giving his countrymen the first complete English Bible—this under the kindly wing of John o' Gaunt, who shielded the daring reformer in many a perilous hour—Lancashire possessed six or seven baronial castles; and no fewer than ten, or rather more, of the religious houses distinguished by the general name of abbeys and priories. Every one of the castles, except John o' Gaunt's own, has disappeared; or if relics exist, they are the merest fragm

Christianity in Lancashire—so far, at all events, as concerns the outward expression through the medium of places of worship—had a very early beginning, the period being that of Paulinus, one of the missionaries brought into England by Augustine. In 625 the kingdom of Northumbria, which included the northern portions of the modern county of Lancaster, had for its monarch the celebrated Edwin—he who espoused the Christian princess Edilberga, daughter of the king of Kent—the pious woman to whom th

Although the few perfect remaining examples of the old timbered Lancashire halls are preserved with the fondest reverence by their owners, the number of those which have been allowed to fall into a state of partial decay diminishes every year. They disappear, one by one, perhaps inevitably, and of many, it is to be feared, not a trace will soon be left. Repairs and restorations are expensive; to preserve such buildings needs, moreover, a strong sense of duty, and a profounder devotedness to "rel

With the Lancashire birds, as with the botany, it is not the exhaustive catalogue that possesses the prime interest. This lies in the habits, the odd and pretty ways, the instincts, the songs, the migrations, that lift birds, in their endless variety, so near to our own personal human nature. Adding to the list of birds known to be permanent residents in Great Britain, the names of those which visit our islands periodically, either in summer or winter, the total approaches 250. Besides the regul

Although the new red sandstone, so general in the southern parts, offers scarcely any attractions to the palæontologist, Lancashire is still a rich locality in regard to fossils. The coal-fields and the mountain limestone, the latter so abundant near Clitheroe, make amends. The organic remains found in the mountain limestone almost invariably have their forms preserved perfectly as regards clearness and sharpness of outline. The history of this rock begins in that of primeval sea; the quantity o