An Old Canal: Marple
An Old Canal: Marple
An Old Canal: Marple
The canal turned out so successful that the manufacturers in the Potteries of Staffordshire asked Brindley to make a canal across the Cheshire plain to unite the rivers Trent and Mersey. This was the beginning of the Grand Trunk Canal, which now winds through the heart of England and connects the great industrial towns of Lancashire and Cheshire with the metropolis.
At Harecastle the canal is carried under the hills that separate Cheshire from Staffordshire by a tunnel nearly three thousand yards long. At first the boatmen pushed their barges through the tunnel by 'legging' along the roof. This was such a laborious and troublesome way that another engineer named Telford, the great road-maker, afterwards built a second tunnel large enough for horses to tow the barges through it.
The Ellesmere Canal connects the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey, and thus cuts off the Wirral peninsula from the rest of the county. When this canal was being made, layers of fine sand and sea shells were found, proving that at some not very remote period the estuaries of the Mersey and the Dee were connected with one another.
In the east of Cheshire the Peak Forest and Macclesfield Canal enters the county at Dukinfield. One portion goes southward to Macclesfield and the other crosses the river Goyt at Marple by an aqueduct a hundred feet above the river. The Shropshire Union Canal connects the Dee and the Severn; and thus all the great rivers of the north midlands, the Mersey, Dee, Severn, and Trent, are united with one another by this network of Cheshire canals.
The canals proved a blessing not only to the coal owners and manufacturers, but were also used by the people of the country villages in order to travel from one part to another. Passenger barges called 'fly-boats' enabled the country women to take their butter and cheese to the market towns.
James Brindley was a man of humble birth, and for several years worked as a labourer on a farm, amusing himself in his spare moments with making wooden models of machinery with a pocket-knife. He was so clever that he was often called in by the mill-owners of Macclesfield and Congleton to repair their machinery. When he was first employed by the Duke of Bridgwater he was paid only half a crown a day. He was a very practical man, and gained his knowledge not from books but from his own experiments. When he was called tothe House of Commons to explain his scheme for carrying a canal over the Mersey, which many people laughed at as absurd, he took with him a Cheshire cheese which he cut in halves to represent the arches of the bridge, and made a complete model of his proposed work which greatly amused his audience, and at the same time proved that he was well able to overcome his difficulties.
The rivers also were dredged and made suitable for navigation wherever possible. An artificial channel was made for the waters of the Dee which had become choked with silt and sand, and small ships could once more be towed as far as Chester. The Weaver was made navigable from Winsford to the Mersey, so that salt, which was taken out of the earth in ever increasing quantities, could be taken to Runcorn in barges at a much smaller cost than on wagons.
Salt is necessary in every home for cooking and other household needs. But still greater quantities are required for alkalis and other chemicals, the making of which is the chief occupation of the workpeople of Runcorn and Weston Point. Thousands of tons are also exported every year to other countries where salt is scarce.
Salt has been worked in the towns on or near the Weaver from Roman days. The earlier way was simply to mine it as we do coal now. Some of the mines at Northwich cover many acres, and when lit up by electric coloured lights are very beautiful. The roof of a mine is held up by columns of salt which are left in position for that purpose, but they frequently give way and the buildings above them are wrecked.
The coarser kinds of rock-salt are still taken out in lumps. You may often see pieces in the Cheshire fields which farmers have put there for cattle to lick. For salt contains health-giving properties, and salt-mining is not injurious to health as coal-mining is. Brine baths have been made at Nantwich for people suffering from certain diseases.
In the Middle Ages, wells or brine-pits were sunk and the water carried in leather buckets to the salt-houses. Edward King, a Cheshire historian, who in the seventeenthcentury wrote a book calledVale Royal, says that 'at Northwich there was a salt spring on the bank of the River Dane, from which the brine runneth on the ground in troughs of wood until it comes to the "wich-houses", where they made salt. Some old leaden salt-pans may still be seen at Northwich, pieces of charcoal still sticking to them on the under side, showing that the brine had been heated over wood fires.'
THE MILL TOWNS OF N.E. CHESHIRE
THE MILL TOWNS OF N.E. CHESHIRE
THE MILL TOWNS OF N.E. CHESHIRE
Modern science has found better and easier ways of making salt. The white salt which you use daily is still obtained by evaporation. The brine is first pumped into a reservoir and taken by pipes to large shallow salt-pans heated by furnaces beneath them. As the water evaporates the crystals are formed and scraped from the sides and the bottoms of the pans. You may see specimens of the different kinds of salt in the Salt Museum at Northwich.
In the year 1785 cotton was brought into the Mersey from the United States of America. Long before that time so-called 'cotton' stuffs had been made in Cheshire villages. But these fabrics were not really cotton at all, but a mixture of wool and flax. The flax was brought from Ireland, and woollen manufacturers tried for a long time to keep it out. In the parish records of Prestbury you may read of an Act passed in Charles the Second's reign forbidding any one to be buried in anything but a woollen shroud.
At first there were no cotton-mills, such as you see now in the populous towns of East Cheshire. The raw cotton was given out to poor people, who spun it and wove it in their own cottage homes. Nearly every cottage became a small factory, the fathers, mothers, and children all taking part in the work. The machinery was simple and made of wood. The spinning was done by the womenand children in the house, the weaving by the men in a weaving-shed of one story built in the yard.
As time went on, the machinery was improved by the inventions of clever men, so that one loom would do as much work as several had done previously. The workpeople did not like the new machines, for often a number of people were thrown out of work by them, and frequently the new spinning and weaving-frames of the inventors were wrecked by a furious mob.
The earlier and simpler machines, such as the spinning-wheel and the hand-loom, were worked by hand. But the new discoveries made it possible for one wheel to turn eighty or a hundred spindles at once by means of horse-power or a water-wheel, and the hand-loom similarly gave place to a power-loom. But in remote villages the old-fashioned methods survived, and even to this day you may still occasionally see a hand-loom at work in cottages in the highlands of East Cheshire.
Then great factories began to be built, huge buildings of brick and of many stories, chiefly on the banks of Cheshire streams, or on the canals, by which the raw cotton could be brought in barges to the very doors. You may look down from the churchyard of Mottram into the valley beneath and count a score of them. Steam was applied, and the whole of the machinery of the factories was driven by this new force. Great towns sprang up like mushrooms. Hyde and Stalybridge and Dukinfield, from being tiny villages, soon became great busy hives of the cotton industry.
The cotton had also to be bleached and the calicoes printed, and mills for the purpose were built along the streams, whose waters provided the steam-power which worked the machinery of the mills. From Taxal to Stockport, along the banks of the now polluted Goyt, is an almost continuous line of great mills, the bleach-works of Whaley Bridge, the print-works of Furness Vale and Strines, the cotton-mills of Disley, Marple, and Mellor. The Mellor mills were built as early as 1790 by Samuel Oldknow, and were at one time in the hands of Peter Arkwright, who was one of a famous family of inventors,and who made many changes in the machinery of his works.
Thus the positions of modern manufacturing towns have not been chosen, as were those of the towns of the Middle Ages, by their ability to beat off the attacks of enemies. For war is no longer the principal business of the inhabitants of Cheshire. The 'cotton' towns have come into being just in those parts where the conditions are favourable to the cotton industry. In the first place the climate is damp, owing to the nearness of the Pennine hills, on which the wet winds from the south-west drop their moisture; and cotton can only be spun and woven in such a climate, for a dry climate would make the threads break. Secondly, there is a plentiful water-supply from the numerous streams that flow from the hills, and lastly, the towns are close to big coal-fields from which they may obtain the fuel for the engines that work the machinery of the mills.
In the pretty model village of Styal, on the banks of the Bollin, is a house which is still called by the name of 'Prentice House. Here once lived a number of young girls and boys, orphans many of them, who worked in the picturesque ivy-clad building, strangely unlike a mill, at Quarry Bank. They were 'apprenticed', that is, bound to their master for seven years. During that time they were well fed and clothed by their employer, and certain times were set apart for learning to read and write and sew. On Sunday mornings they walked together to the church at Wilmslow. The girls were dressed in straw bonnets and plain grey dresses, the boys in fustian coats and breeches of corduroy.
They were kindly treated, but the hours in the mill were long. They rose at five, and their breakfast of porridge and milk was eaten in the mill. Half an hour was allowed for dinner, and not until half-past eight did their long day of toil come to an end. At Christmas prizes were given to those who had been most obedient and industrious during the year.
The young people of Quarry Bank were on the whole happy in the service of Samuel Greg their master, butthe lot of the apprentices in other mills was often very different. The harshness and cruelty of some employers led to the passing of Acts of Parliament which shortened the hours of labour and fixed severe penalties for ill-treatment. A later Act forbade altogether the employment of children under a certain age.
Styal Mill
Styal Mill
Styal Mill
In the middle of the eighteenth century the silk industry took root in Cheshire. We first hear of it in Stockport, where a mill was started for the winding and throwing[3]of silk. John Clayton, of Stockport, built a mill at Congleton, and the industry spread rapidly to the neighbouring villages of Sutton, Rainow, and Bollington.
The first silk-mill in Macclesfield, which is now the chief seat of the silk industry in Cheshire, was opened by Charles Roe in 1756. Roe Street is named after him. He made a fortune and built Christ Church. Over the altar you may see his bust in marble, and over it a figure of Genius with a cogwheel in her hand. In the museum at West Park are some models of silk-looms.
There was a silk-mill at Knutsford, as the name Silk Mill Street tells us. In Mobberley also nearly every cottage had its spinning-wheel. The cottagers fetched the raw silk from Macclesfield and took back the spun yarn to be woven into pieces at the Macclesfield looms.
After the making of canals came the railways, and the mighty power of steam, that had wrought such a vast change in the cotton industry, was to be the moving force of the new invention.
Late in the summer of 1830 the people who lined the river banks from Runcorn to Latchford saw a trail of smoke travelling slowly across the nine arches of SankeyViaduct and the peaty plains of the Mersey. The smoke was that of Stephenson's 'Rocket', the steam locomotive that was drawing one of the first passenger trains in England.
CHESHIRE.RAILWAYS
CHESHIRE.RAILWAYS
CHESHIRE.RAILWAYS
Cheshire had its 'Rocket' too in those days, the stage coach that left the 'Black Boy' Inn at Stockport and passed through Cheadle, Lymm, and Warrington to Liverpool. And the old 'Rocket' was very jealous of its new namesake, for it was thought that with the coming of the railways the coaches would be driven off the road. The canal companies also saw themselves threatened, and did all they could to hinder the spread of the new way of travelling.
Some years were to pass before the inhabitants of Cheshire saw railways laid through their own towns and villages. The farmers of Wirral rubbed their eyes when the first train seen in Cheshire carried its human freight along the southern shore of the Mersey. Many of them had doubtless never seen one before, and not a few of the more ignorant fled in terror from the puffing, panting thing, which they looked upon as the invention of the evil one.
It is hard indeed to think of Cheshire without its railways. Before their coming, almost the only way of moving from one place to another was by means of the stage coaches that rattled along the principal highways, putting down at the nearest wayside inn the passengers who lived in villages off the main roads. Goods and merchandise were carried on pack-horses or slow lumbering wagons.
Some of the most important main lines of English railways now pass through Cheshire, for the Cheshire plain is the broad gateway that leads to the busy and populous towns of South Lancashire. Within the space of half a century the county was covered with a network of lines, and to-day it is impossible to find a spot that has not a railway passing within a very few miles of it.
The earliest railways avoided the hilly districts, and for many years there were no lines in East Cheshire. The main line of the London and North Western Railwaycrosses the southern border of Cheshire where the hills are low, and picks its way through the Cheshire plain, keeping closely to the level valley of the Weaver, and leaving the hills of Delamere and Frodsham on the west. It crosses the Mersey into Lancashire at Warrington.
The cotton spinners of Stockport wanted a quick route to London, and so a branch line was made through Alderley, which joined the main line at Crewe. Some of the old country towns would not have the railway too near, so we find Sandbach nearly two miles away from its station. Another branch westwards left the main line at Crewe for Chester and Holyhead, to carry the Irish mails; and a third branched off at Preston Brook for Liverpool, being carried over the Mersey by a big iron bridge at Runcorn.
There were only a few houses at Crewe when the railways were made. The station was in the village of Church Coppenhall, but the shorter and more convenient name of Crewe was chosen from Crewe Hall. The little village rapidly became a big town, for it was chosen to be the head-quarters of the London and North Western Company. Big engine and carriage works were built, and iron foundries for the making of boilers and steel rails. It is now one of the most important railway centres in England, giving employment to many thousand workmen.
But one line was not enough to carry all the traffic from the great manufacturing towns to the Midlands and the south of England. Other railway companies accomplished the difficult task of crossing the Pennine Hills, and Cheshire was thus brought into touch with Yorkshire and the north-midland shires. The Midland Railway tunnelled under the hills at a height of eight hundred feet above sea-level, and descended rapidly to Stockport by the Goyt valley. The Great Northern enters Cheshire by the tunnel near Penistone, and follows the Etherow down Longdendale till it also reaches Stockport. The Staffordshire Railway from the Potteries burrows through the hills at Harecastle on its way to Congleton and Macclesfield. All these railways vied with one another in quickening the speed of their trains, and their rivalry soon caused the fares for passengers and rates for goods to become cheaper.
There is one railway which, more than any other, Cheshire boys and girls may call their own. The Cheshire Line is not one of the great 'trunk' lines to London, but is confined to South Lancashire and the county from which it takes its name. This railway crosses the county from Altrincham to Chester, never more than a few hundred yards from its great ancestor, the Watling Street.
Railway Viaduct Over Goyt Valley
Railway Viaduct Over Goyt Valley
Railway Viaduct Over Goyt Valley
The populous towns of North-east Cheshire are also served by branches of the Great Central and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways. The coast towns of theDee have their 'Wirral Railway', and through the heart of Wirral Great Western expresses rush to their terminus at Birkenhead.
The railways teach us that time is money, and this fact is constantly brought home to us by seeing new lines made to shorten the distance between two points, so that men may get to their places of business more rapidly. The Midland Railway have in the last few years straightened their line by a short cut through Cheadle Heath, that their express trains to Manchester may avoid delay at Stockport; and the new London and North Western line from Wilmslow to Manchester, though it saved less than three miles, was yet thought worth the cost.
The railways have brought town and country into closer touch with one another, and both have gained. Farmers and market gardeners can send their produce quickly and cheaply to the great markets of Stockport and Birkenhead. Coals and salt, machinery and manufactured goods, can be distributed easily from the great towns that produce them. Moreover, many people whose daily life is spent in the crowded cities are able to live away from their places of business and, for a portion of the day at least, breathe the purer air of the country.
Two residential districts of Cheshire are supported mainly by the merchants and manufacturers of Manchester and Liverpool. In East Cheshire, Altrincham and Bowdon, Knutsford, Alderley, Cheadle, and Lymm are practically suburbs of Manchester. In the Wirral, Hoylake, West Kirby, and New Brighton owe their present prosperity to the business men of Birkenhead and Liverpool who have built their homes on the Cheshire seaboard.
In all these places you may see the mingling of the old and the new, the older portions clustering round the parish church, the brand new villas and mansions of the rich spreading on all sides into the surrounding country. New towns spring up round the railway stations, as at Alderley Edge, which is two miles from the older village of Nether Alderley.
With the railways came also the 'penny post', for letters could now be carried cheaply and quickly to and from all parts of the country.
Twenty years before steam locomotives were used to draw passenger trains over the earliest railways in Cheshire, a steam packet boat had been built to ply between Liverpool and the Cheshire port of Runcorn. This boat was called simply 'The Steam Boat', and was the first steamer ever seen in the River Mersey. The sailing packets were frequently becalmed, but the new ship could make her voyage in all weathers.
A number of steam-tugs were built soon afterwards to tow the big sailing-ships that entered the Mersey to the ports to which they were bound, and the first steam ferry-boat crossed the Mersey from Liverpool to Tranmere. In a few years the Cheshire shore of the Mersey was lined with docks and quays at Birkenhead, Seacombe, Woodside, Tranmere, and Eastham. At the last-named port Liverpool passengers could get on the coach for Chester and the midland towns.
In 1819, the year in which Queen Victoria was born, the Savannah, the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic, was seen in the River Mersey. The Savannah took twenty-eight days over the passage, lowering by many days the record of the fastest sailing-vessels hitherto. This was thought a great feat in those days, but the huge 'ocean greyhounds' that the boys and girls of Wirral see riding at anchor off Birkenhead, now make four or five crossings in the same period of time.
Just as Crewe owes its rapid rise to the coming of the railways, so Birkenhead's prosperity dates from the beginnings of steam navigation. Both of these towns are growths of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century Birkenhead was a small village of less than a hundred inhabitants. It is now Cheshire's greatest town, and contains a population of more than 100,000, or, if we include the populous suburbs which have sprung up on either side of it, nearly twice this number.
BIRKENHEAD & THE MERSEY
BIRKENHEAD & THE MERSEY
BIRKENHEAD & THE MERSEY
The old village clustered round its ruined priory, which is still in the heart of the modern town. A triangular piece of land, now covered by the streets of New Brighton, Liscard, Wallasey, and Seacombe, was cut off from Birkenhead and the rest of Wirral by a broad and swampy river called Wallasey Pool. Mr. Laird, the founder of the famous shipbuilding company of that name, bought some land on the edge of the Pool. He saw that here was a firstrate place for dockyards and wharves, which would be protected from south-westerly gales by the natural rampart of Bidston Hill and the high ground of Oxton.
In a few years Wallasey Pool was turned into a huge basin capable of holding hundreds of big ocean-going ships. In the 'Great Float', as this basin is now called, you may see ships of every nation. Twenty pairs of lockgates connect it with the Mersey, and there are ten miles of quays with a network of quay railways laid along them.
The big ship-building yards of Messrs. Cammell and Laird give employment to many hundreds of the working-men of Birkenhead. Here are built some of our largest merchant vessels, as well as ships for the British Navy, chiefly gunboats and torpedo boat destroyers. One of the Lairds was Birkenhead's first member of Parliament. You may see his statue in front of the Birkenhead Town Hall.
Two other men whose names are closely linked with the shipping of the Mersey will always be remembered by the people of Wirral. William Inman and Thomas Ismay were the founders of fleets of ocean liners. With a portion of the wealth that he derived from his business, Inman built churches for the villages of Upton and Moreton. Ismay lived at Dawpool Hall, and is buried in the churchyard of Thurstaston.
The first street-tramway in Europe was laid along the streets of Birkenhead, from Woodside Ferry to the Park, by an American called Train. The cars were built at Birkenhead, and drawn by horses; the length of the line was less than two miles. Now tram routes are spread allover Eastern Wirral, and are to be found in the streets of all large towns. But the horses are gone, and the cars are now driven by the cheaper and more serviceable method of electricity. Our tram-cars are one of the greatest conveniences in the busy life of a town.
Prior to the year 1832 Chester was the only Cheshire town which had its own members of Parliament. The county returned two members, one for the north division and the other for the south. The big manufacturing towns which had increased so rapidly in size and population had no representatives, while numbers of small towns and villages in other parts of England returned one and sometimes even two members to the House of Commons. The workers of the busy industrial districts felt that this was very unfair, and demanded to be allowed to be represented. After a long struggle Reform Bills were passed, and now Stockport is allowed to choose two members, and Stalybridge and Birkenhead one each. The number of county members has also been increased from two to eight, one from each of eight divisions, to which the names Hyde, Macclesfield, Altrincham, Knutsford, Crewe, Eddisbury, Northwich, and Wirral have been given.
Until the passing of the 'Reform Bills' only those who possessed property were allowed to vote, the great majority of the people of Cheshire had no say in the government of the country at all. The Reform Bill of 1832 gave the vote to many more people, to every man in fact who paid a rent of ten pounds or more a year for his house. Thus much of the power which had previously belonged to the rich passed into the hands of the poorer classes.
One of the first results of the Reformed Parliament was the passing of a number of Factory Acts. The cry of the children at work in the mills had long been heard through the land, and the people were indignant at the cruelties put upon them by some mill-owners. As early as the year 1802 Sir Robert Peel, a Lancashire manufacturer, had persuaded Parliament to pass an Act to improve the condition of the factories. The Reformed Parliament now made it illegal to employ children under nine yearsof age, or to make boys and girls under thirteen work for more than twelve hours a day. Later Acts have still further shortened the hours of work for women and children, and in many other respects have made the lot of all the working classes more tolerable. Manufacturers are now compelled to keep their factories clean and wholesome, and fit to work in. Factory inspectors are appointed to see that the laws are carried out, and those whose lives are spent in dangerous occupations, such as coal-mining or the making of chemicals, are protected by strict rules which lessen the danger to life and limb.
The greatest evil from which the poorer classes suffered in the early years of the nineteenth century was the high price of bread. This was due to the heavy duty put on corn imported from foreign countries. In S. Peter's Square, Stockport, is a statue of Richard Cobden, who for six years was Stockport's member of Parliament. Cobden saw that the poverty of the working classes could not be lessened until this corn-tax was removed. He pleaded eloquently on their behalf, and in the end he was successful. The growers of corn grumbled, but as Cheshire is not so much a corn-growing as a pastoral county, the farmers of Cheshire were not greatly hurt.
Cobden also persuaded Parliament to take away or to lessen the duties on imported raw materials, such as cotton, wool, and silk, on which the prosperity of the Cheshire workers so much depended. The result was that the manufacturers were able to pay the people who worked in their mills better wages. Thus, with cheaper bread and wages higher, the lot of the industrial classes became brighter. Soon also the duties on manufactured goods brought to Cheshire from abroad were removed, and the system of Free Trade, under which Cheshire has become rich and prosperous, came into being.
Among the leaders of the working classes were some who wanted far greater changes. In the museum at Vernon Park are some iron pike-heads taken from these men when they tried to arm the people and urge them to fight for their 'rights'. The aims of the Chartists, as these reformers were named, were set forth in a documentwhich they called the People's Charter. Among other things, they demanded votes for all men, yearly Parliaments, vote by ballot, and payment of members of Parliament. But the bulk of the people took alarm, for it was thought that if every man had a vote, too much power would be put into the hands of the working classes. The Chartists were tried for causing riots, and many were put in prison. One of the Chartist leaders was James Stephens, who is buried in Dukinfield churchyard.
In 1861 a great disaster befell the cotton trade. In that year civil war broke out in America between the Northern and the Southern States of the Union. The Southern States were the seat of the cotton-growing plantations, which were worked by millions of negro slaves. The English people had put an end to slavery in their own colonies, and the Northern States of America wished to do the same. When the Southerners desired to extend the cotton industry to other new States, the Northern States refused to allow it, and war broke out.
The war brought much distress to the cotton workers of Cheshire, for the ports of the Southerners were blockaded by the warships of their enemies, and the ships which had brought their cargoes of raw cotton to the Mersey could do so no longer. The result was a cotton famine. The looms were idle, and thousands of workpeople were thrown out of employment in Stockport, Stalybridge, and the other towns and villages which depended for their daily bread on a constant supply of the raw material.
Attempts were made by ships sent from England to run the blockade of the ports of the Southern States. At Birkenhead a ship called theAlabamawas built in the dockyard of Messrs. Laird for the use of the cotton planters. The ship entered the harbours in the night-time or during fogs, and succeeded several times in bringing small supplies of cotton. She was caught at last, but not before she had destroyed sixty or seventy vessels of the Northern fleet, and she very nearly brought about a war between England and America.
The war lasted four years. Then peace was restored, andthe cotton was once more brought to the starving spinners and weavers of East Cheshire. During the famine the poor had been supported by sums of money raised in the large towns of England, and many years passed before the cotton industry reached its former prosperity.
The memory of the hard days of the cotton famine has been handed down to the grandchildren of those who suffered. Within the last few years the cotton merchants and manufacturers have started an association for growing cotton in our own English colonies, so that the workers may not depend entirely on the cotton produced by foreign States.
Many of the changes described in the last three chapters were but partially accomplished in Cheshire, when a young princess of eighteen years became Queen of England. The power of steam was known, but the Cheshire railways were not yet laid, and those who wished to attend the coronation of Queen Victoria had to use the stage or the family coach and take a day and a half over the journey.
Telegraph and telephone were also quite unknown, and the penny post had not yet come into being. That was to follow in the wake of the railways. During her reign all our main roads were lined with telegraph wires, and cables laid at the bottom of the seas sent our messages to the uttermost parts of the earth. The news of distant events, which formerly took weeks or even months to reach us, may now be read in our newspapers within a few hours at most.
Inventions without number followed the discovery of electricity. The shops and warehouses of large towns, railway carriages and ocean liners, and the homes of the well-to-do are lighted with it. Electric launches flit along the shores of the Mersey. Tram-cars are worked by electricity, which also sets in motion the dynamos that workthe machinery of mills and workshops. The pressing of an electric button sets free the big ships when they take the water for the first time in the dockyards of Birkenhead.
The wonderful progress made by the engineers of the nineteenth century is seen in the making of the Manchester Ship Canal, the greater part of which lies within the county of Cheshire. For many years Manchester's great ambition was to become a port. The winding and shallow bed of the inland waters of the Mersey could not be navigated by ocean-going vessels, and a ship canal was wanted in order that the bales of cotton might be brought direct from the United States and other cotton-growing countries to the place where the raw material is distributed. Thus time would be saved, as well as the expense of unloading at Liverpool and putting the cargoes on the railways, whose rates were very high.
It was therefore decided to ask Parliament for powers to make a wide and deep canal, capable of carrying ships of several thousand tons burden. The railway and canal companies and the Liverpool merchants who controlled the navigation of the Mersey were afraid that the trade of Liverpool would be injured, and opposed the scheme vigorously. But Parliament was wise enough to see what a boon the canal would be to the cotton towns and the district through which it was to be laid, and passed the bill for its making. In the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria the work was begun.
Many millions of money were required for such a vast undertaking, and more millions were asked for as the work went on. After seven years of perseverance in the face of tremendous difficulties, the canal was opened by the queen.
The canal is thirty-five and a half miles long, and, roughly speaking, two-thirds of it are in Cheshire. The entrance to the canal is at Eastham, where great locks were built. From Eastham to Runcorn, a distance of thirteen miles, the canal is tidal and laid along the foreshore of the Mersey estuary, and protected by an embankment. At Runcorn 'Gap' the canal and the Mersey, whichhere becomes very narrow, are separated by a concrete wall nearly one mile in length.
The rest of the waterway lies inland. Latchford serves as a port for Warrington, and the locks here always present a busy scene. At Irlam locks the canal enters Lancashire, and its waters are at this point forty feet above sea-level. The canal is fed by the River Irwell, whose waters flow down the canal from Salford to Irlam.
The railways are carried over the canal by lofty bridges, which had to be made very high to allow the masts of ocean ships to pass under them. Bays or sidings, where ships may pass each other, occur at intervals. Wharves and docks have been built at many points along the canal, which some day may be expected to appear one long seaport.
Ellesmere Port, where the Ellesmere Canal and Ship Canal unite, has become a thriving place in recent years, and the trade of Runcorn has also been greatly increased by the canal. Large alkali works have been built at Weston Point, the most suitable place that could have been found for them, because they are equally near to the Lancashire coal-field on the one hand and to the salt beds of Cheshire on the other. The salt is brought in the form of brine direct from Northwich to the works by pipes laid underground, a great saving of money, for salt is heavy and costly to carry.
Though the cotton industry was the one that was expected to gain most from the canal, the traffic is by no means confined to this commodity. Grain and cattle are brought from the United States and from South America, timber from Canada, and hides from the Argentine, and big cargoes of bananas, oranges, and apples, pass up the canal. In addition to this oversea traffic, the canal also has a great share of the coasting trade of the West of England, of which slates from Carnarvon, and china clay from Cornwall may be taken as the best examples.
The triumphs of engineering and mechanical skill have improved our means of travelling from one place to another. The great engines that are now turned out from the locomotive sheds at Crewe are as vastly superiorto the Rocket (models of which are now but a curiosity in our museums) as the twentieth-century motor-cycle is to the velocipede or wooden 'bone-shaker' that your fathers rode. Horse carriages are fast disappearing and giving place to the motor-car, and hansoms to the taxicab. The science of aviation is turning the inventive powers of men into new channels, and 'flying men' are showing to the world that the conquest of the air is but a matter of time.
Before the reign of Queen Victoria, few of the children of the poorest classes were able either to read or write. Such education as these could receive was given in the Sunday Schools, which Robert Raikes had started in 1781. The children were hard at work in the mills all the week. Teachers volunteered for the work, which was carried on in cottages or disused factories. In 1805, Stockport built the big Sunday School which still remains, and a hundred thousand children have been grateful for the simple teaching given to them.
The Education Bills of Queen Victoria's reign brought knowledge within the reach of all. Education is cheap for the middle classes, free for the poor. Schools have been built where none existed before. Money has been found to help any Cheshire boy or girl to receive the very highest education, and to open up the way from village school to university. The municipalities have built their own municipal schools in the chief towns of Cheshire, and technical schools where you may learn a trade. At the Agricultural School at Holmes Chapel you may be instructed in the newest and most scientific ways of farming.
The people have learnt to study the laws of health, and to understand the value of light and fresh air. Towns are cleaner and your homes healthier. Open spaces, parks and playing-fields, brighten the lives of the children in the towns, and by making them stronger, fit them the better for the hard work that lies before them.
Port Sunlight shows how much can be done by those who study the needs of the working classes. This 'garden city', with its avenues of dainty cottage villas, is thehome of those who work in the big soap-works on the Mersey. Here everything is done that can make for the comfort and well-being of the inhabitants. There are schools for the children, and 'institutes' for the young men and women, libraries and reading-rooms, savings banks to encourage thrift, games, clubs, swimming-baths and gymnasium for the strong, a hospital for the sick and infirm, ambulance and fire brigade and a life-saving society, and societies for the study of literature and science.
You are not all as fortunate as the dwellers of Port Sunlight. But some day many of you will perhaps see the slums of great towns cleared away, and you will take care that sunlight is let into dark places. You will have learned how foolish it is to overcrowd the towns and herd together in close and mean streets, and you will have the power to say that these things ought not to be.
The Cheshire County Council was created by Queen Victoria. Its members are elected, and the Council allows large parishes to elect a Parish or District Council to manage their own local affairs. But Stockport, Chester, and Birkenhead do not send members to this Council, for their populations are so big that they are considered as counties in themselves. The County Council also controls the education of the county, keeps roads and bridges in repair, directs the cleansing of the small towns and villages, and provides a pure water-supply.
New boroughs were made at Crewe, Hyde, and Stalybridge in Queen Victoria's reign, with a mayor and corporation to direct their affairs. Macclesfield, you will remember, was a borough in very early times. Altrincham and Over too, once had their mayors, though they have them no longer. Their mayors seem to have been men of very humble position, and to have been looked down upon by their neighbours. You have perhaps heard of the Cheshire saying:
The Mayor of Altrincham,And the Mayor of Over—The one is a thatcher,The other a dauber.
The Mayor of Altrincham,And the Mayor of Over—The one is a thatcher,The other a dauber.
The Mayor of Altrincham,And the Mayor of Over—The one is a thatcher,The other a dauber.
The Mayor of Altrincham,
And the Mayor of Over—
The one is a thatcher,
The other a dauber.
Modern Gothic: S. Margaret's, Altrincham
Modern Gothic: S. Margaret's, Altrincham
Modern Gothic: S. Margaret's, Altrincham
The work of the borough councils has become very heavy during the last fifty years. Gas, water, electricity, libraries, education, public health, baths, markets, and police, have their own special committees to look after them. The handsome Town Halls of Chester and Stockport, the latter opened only a few years since by the present King George the Fifth, had to be built to accommodate the small army of clerks who assist in the government of a great city.
The reign of Queen Victoria was not all one of peace. The war with Russia, and the terrible mutiny of her Indian subjects with its tale of horrors and its glorious heroism, brought woe to many a home in Cheshire. The obelisk by the roadside between Aldford and Farndon reminds us that the soldiers of Cheshire were often called upon to fight our battles and too often find a grave in distant lands. Colonel Barnston, of Crewe Hill, to whose memory this monument was set up, fought at the siege of Sebastopol. In the Indian Mutiny he was wounded while gallantly leading an assault at the relief of Lucknow, and died of his wounds at Cawnpore. Numbers of memorial tablets in the Cathedral of Chester speak of the lives that were cheerfully laid down by Cheshire men in the service of their queen and country.
Your fathers will tell you how bonfires were lighted on the beacons and hill-tops of Cheshire to celebrate the Jubilee or fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Still greater was the rejoicing some ten years later, when she surpassed in length of reign all previous sovereigns of England. Nearly every town and village has some memorial of her: a cross in the village street, a drinking-fountain by the wayside, new bells for the parish church or a lich-gate for the churchyard, a village 'hall' or a public recreation ground, these are but a few examples that prove the love and reverence that Cheshire men and women felt for the great queen whose only thought was ever for the welfare of her people.
Yet her last years were saddened by the long and costly war in South Africa, still unfinished when she died. The call to arms was once more heard from east to west ofCheshire; from town and country, 'reservists' who had thought to end their days in peace were sent oversea to defend the South African dominions of the queen. The brave 'Cheshires'—the fathers of some of you were among them—served throughout the war. A gallant Cheshire officer was one of the first to win distinction. Lieutenant Congreve, of Burton Hall, was one of three who volunteered to rescue the guns at the battle of Colenso. He was shot down in the attempt, but was able to crawl to a sheltered place, and lived to receive the reward that all soldiers strive to merit—the Victoria Cross.
Throughout the Middle Ages, until the end of the Wars of the Roses, war was the chief, almost the only occupation of the leading men of Cheshire. A few entered the Church, Richard de Vernon, for instance, who was Rector of 'Stokeport' early in the fourteenth century (his tomb is in the chancel of Stockport), and William de Montalt, Rector of Neston. One of the Bebingtons, William de Bebyngton, even became Abbot of S. Werburgh's Abbey.
The descendants of the barons who settled in Cheshire in the days of the Conqueror followed the Norman and Plantagenet kings to the Crusades or the French wars. Few of them stayed at home for any length of time, and when they returned, they generally found that some score had to be settled with the Welshmen, who had been making havoc of their lands during their absence. So that whether at home or abroad, fighting was always their chief business.
Cheshire has been called the 'seed-plot of gentility'. The Cheshire gentry prided themselves on marrying within their own county. A Cheshire proverb says: ''Tis better to wed over the mixen than over the moor,' meaning the moorland that separates Cheshire from her neighbours.The result of this intermarriage was that the number of great Cheshire names did not greatly increase, and soon there became