LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

"The Cheeryble Brothers,"

Mr John Grant of Nuttall Hall,

St Paul's Church, Ramsbottom,

Ramsbottom in 1893 (the Square in the foreground),

Old Ground Plan, Ramsbottom,

Ramsbottom Cricket-Ground and Players,

Stubbins Vale,

Mrs Wilson in her goth year,

Rev. Andrew MacLean, D.D., .

St Andrew's (Dundee) Presbyterian Church,

St Andrew's (Dundee) Presbyterian Church Choir,

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT.

Nuttall Hall, Park, and Grant's Tower,

Walmersley House,

Springside,

Old Stone,

Ewood Hall,

Waugh's Well,

In Buckden Ghyll,

Crimble Wood,

Old Nuttall Hall Farm,

Ruins in Nuttall Village (octogenarian native in foreground),
Holcombe Church and The Rake,

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INTRODUCTION.

HALLO! You're quite among the hills here he didn't

expect to find a country like this so near the great

Cottonopolis. How far are you from Manchester?" "About a dozen miles."

"So near the great centre?”

"Yes-and we are ourselves a bit of a centre, but of a different kind. In Edinburgh you have the heart of MidLothian; here in Ramsbottom, and the ancient village yonder, perched higher than the Calton Hill or the grand old Castle rock of the Scottish capital, you see the heart of the ancient forest of Holcombe in the Royal Manor of Tottington."

"Well, but for the chimney-stalks and the streak of smoke, one might imagine himself in some northern strath, in the neighbourhood of the grouse and the deer!"

"Oh! we can produce grouse along our hills and moorlands, as well as calico in the cloughs and valleys. Of deer, in former ages, we had quite enough. Now we have something more useful. As for the chimney-stalks, we don't complain of them. They are what a facetious native, during

the cotton famine, called the 'lilies of the valley.' Unfortunately, now, as then, too many of them 'toil not, neither do they spin.'"

"So I understand. But you energetic Lancashire folk have had good times; and, doubtless, they will come again. The sun eventually beats the fog. Your striking array of towers, and spires, and goodly residences on the crests and slopes of these hills, tell of prosperous times."

nor

"We lack neither energy nor hope, substantial homes fine churches and those towers, which crest the terminal hills on either side of the valley, like our staple industry, link us with the great world beyond."

"What are they?"

"The one to the west, on Holcombe Hill, is Sir Robert Peel's. It stands within sight of his birthplace, a little farther down the valley, and commemorates the great service he rendered to his toiling fellow-countrymen in connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had been rendered practicable by the invincible genius of Richard Cobden and his illustrious coadjutor, John Bright. The other, with graceful pinnacles, crowning the crest of the hill on the eastern side of the valley, is the memorial tower of the Grants the “Brothers Cheeryble" of Charles Dickens 1 and commemorates the advent of their father and the elder of the two Cheerybles to the Valley of the Irwell, more than a century ago."

It is with the picturesque and interesting region referred to in the foregoing colloquy, and especially with something of its history, industrial and ecclesiastical, embracing brief personal sketches of prominent and noteworthy actors on the scene, that we propose to deal in this volume.

In Book I., through faint lingering vestiges, and obscure and unsuspected place-names Saxon, Scandinavian, or Celtic-we shall briefly grope our way back to Roman and pre-Roman times, when dusky forests overspread the land, and formed a habitat of bulls and wolves and boars. We shall note the Saxon and Norman periods, to glance at the operation of barbarous and oppressive forest laws; the changes brought about by disforesting the territory, and giving scope to pastoral and agricultural pursuits; and the rise-in humble and ever-increasing homes, scattered along the valleys and adjacent hills of that textile industry for which the Irwell Valley has since achieved renown. We shall see how the first Sir Robert Peel--the father of the illustrious Premierfounded, by his calico-printing works, the modern industrial life of Ramsbottom; how the Grants succeeded him, and found here a home, and the centre of their remarkable subsequent career; and how they here erected the great calico-printing establishment, which was considered at the time to be the best equipped in Europe. We shall make known, for the first time, the genesis of the unwonted form of that structure, whose name "The Square "-with the "rusty and shattered blunderbuss," and the "two swords broken and edgeless above the chimney-piece of its old office," and which there " became emblems of mercy and forbearance," with "shipping announcements," "statements of charities," &c., translated to "the heart of a busy town like London by the pen of Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby,' became familiar throughout, and beyond, the English-speaking world.

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