The Manchester Man

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 Excerpt: ...yet wore his left arm in a sling. Whaley-bridge has been mentioned more than once, for in that village, near the high road from Manchester to Buxton, Mr. Ashton possessed a water-mill on the picturesque banks of the river Goyt, which there divided the counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire. It had been established in the previous century, together with another in the contiguous vale of Taxal, by a speculative ancestor of Mrs. Ashton, whose old hall was in the locality. The two places had been chiefly colonised by his workpeople, many of whom had been pauper apprentices from Manchester and Warrington. Besides the mill, Mr. Ashton owned the "White Hart" Inn, close to the bridge, where the Buxton coaches stopped; and Carr Cottage, a long, low, rough-cast building, nestling under the shadow of a fine old farm-house which crowned the elevated ridge of Yeardsley-cum-Whaley, lang-syne the Gothic stone Hall of the warlike Yeardsleys. From this farm-house, Carr Cottage was separated by a retired walk at the back, which, itself a wilderness of nettles, gave access to the cellarage and a clear well, and led the adventurer away up the hill between the cottage grounds and the farmer's tall high-banked hedges, which almost overtopped the cottage roof. And on the left of the cottage (as viewed from the high road) spread the granaries, stabling, and farmyard, enclosed by remains of the ancient wall, and entered by a step or two through an ancient Gothic doorway, over which ivy and honeysuckle clambered in luxurious rivalry. The cottage, which on each floor contained four capacious rooms in its length, was on the ground divided in the middle by a respectable lobby; the house-place and kitchen lying on the left, the parlours to the right as you entered. There were two...