Peaceable Mary Fairbrother,
1766. Aged 90.
For the return walk there is a cheerful route through fields and lanes to Knutsford, entering the town behind the prison; or, for variety, there is Lostock Gralam station.
Pushing a few miles further, we find ourselves at Northwich, a place at which there is little occasion to delay, unless it be wished to inspect one of the salt mines, permission to do so being asked previously of the proprietors. At Whitsuntide the public are in a certain sense invited, and truly, a more interesting and wonderful spectacle than is furnished by the Marston mine it would be hard to provide for holiday pleasure. But at present we are seeking enjoyment upon the surface, and to this end the journey should now be continued to Hartford, the station for Vale Royal. “Vale Royal” is essentially the name of the immense expanse of beautiful, though nearly level, country over which the eye ranges when we stand amid the ruins of Beeston Castle. It is still worthy of the praise lavished on it in 1656. “The ayre of Vale Royall,” says the old historian of that date, “is verie wholesome, insomuch that the people of the country are seldom infected with Disease or Sicknesse, neither do they use the help of Physicians, nothing so much, as in other countries. For when any of them are sick, they make him a posset, and tye a kerchief on his head; and if that will not amend him, then God be mercifull to him! The people there live to be very old: some are Grandfathers, their fathers yet living, and some are Grandfathers before they be married. … They be very gentle and courteous, ready to help and further one another; in Religion very zealous, howbeit somewhat addicted to Superstition: otherwise stout, bold, and hardy: withal impatient of wrong, and ready to resist the Enemy or Stranger that shall invade their country. … Likewise be the women very friendly and loving, in all kind of Housewifery expert, fruitful in bearing Children after they be married, and sometimes before. … I know divers men which are but farmers that may compare therein with a Lord or Baron in some Countreys beyond the Seas.”—A considerable portion of this great expanse is represented in the still current appellation of Delamere Forest—a term not to be understood as meaning that it was at any time covered by timber–trees, either indigenous or planted, but that it was “outside,” ad foras, a wild, uncultivated and comparatively barren tract as opposed to districts that were well farmed and sprinkled plentifully with habitations. Trees there were, doubtless, and in abundance, but the bonâ fide woods occupied only a part of the “forest” in the aggregate. An idea of such a forest as Delamere was in the olden time is very easily formed. We need do no more than think of that imperishable one, “exempt from public haunt,” where Rosalind found her verses, with its stream–side where the
Poor sequester’d stag,
That from the hunter’s aim had ta’en a hurt
Did come to languish.
The “forest,” so late as two centuries ago, comprised no fewer than eleven thousand acres of wood and wilderness. Much has now been brought under cultivation, so that only about eight thousand acres remain untilled, and of these about one–half have been planted with Scotch fir, whence the peculiar and solemn aspect which masses of conifers alone can bestow.
Entering this part of the “Vale,” we are at once attracted to the beautiful park, woods, and waters, distinguished particularly as “Vale Royal,” or in full, Vale Royal Abbey, the mansion—the ancient country seat of the Cholmondeley family—being nearly upon the site of the famous monastic home founded in 1277 by Edward I. Lord Delamere liberally permits access to the grounds, the approaches to which are eminently sweet and pleasant. The railway should be quitted at Hartford, quiet lanes from which place lead into the valley of the Weaver.[9] Thence we move to the margin of Vale Royal Mere, with choice, upon arrival, of one of the most charming sylvan walks in Cheshire, obtained by going through the wood, or a more open path along the opposite shore. To take one path going, the other returning, and thus to secure the double harvest, of course is best. So, for the final homeward journey, which should not be by way of Hartford, but viâ Cuddington. A drive through the glorious fir–plantations which abut upon Vale Royal carries the privileged to another most beautiful scene—Oulton Park, the country seat of the Grey–Egertons. Here again is a sheet of lilied water; here, too, are some of the noblest trees in Cheshire, including one of the most remarkable lindens the world contains.
For the visitor to Delamere Forest there is after all no scene more inspiring than is furnished by Eddisbury. Cuddington station will do for this, but the walk is rather too long; it is best to go direct to “Delamere,” thence along the road a short distance, and so to the foot of the hill. In the time of the Heptarchy, it was an important stronghold. Rising to the height of five hundred and eighty–four feet above the sea, when in A.D. 914 that admirable lady, Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, and widow of Ethelred, king of Mercia, sought to establish herself in positions of great strength, her feminine sagacity at once pointed to Eddisbury as impregnable. Ethelfleda, says the old chronicler, was “the wisest lady in England, an heroic princess; she might have been called a king rather than a lady or a queen. King Edward, her brother, governed his life, in his best actions, by her counsels.” We have admirable women of our own living among us—women in every sense queenly by nature:—let us never forget, in our gratitude to God for the gift of them, that in the past there were prototypes of the best. Continued in her rule, by acclamation, after the death of her husband, Ethelfleda, “the lady of the Mercians,” reigned for eight years. Rather more than eleven acres of the green mound we are now speaking of were defensively enclosed by her, partly with palings, partly with earthworks, traces of which remain to this day. Frail and perishable in its materials, the “city of Eddisbury,” as historians call this once glorious though simple settlement, in the very nature of things could not last. A good river, essential to the prosperity of an inland town, it did not possess. After the death, moreover, of Ethelfleda, who went to her rest in 920, the subsidence of the Danish invasions reduced the importance of such fortresses, and so, by slow degrees, the famous old “city” disappeared. The name of Eddisbury occurs, it is true, in Domesday Book, but apparently as a name and nothing besides. Places like Eddisbury are to England what the sites of Nineveh and Palmyra are to the world. Standing upon their greensward, the memory of great things and greater people passes before the mind in long and animating procession. The once so great and powerful “Queen of the East,” proud, chaste, literary Zenobia, was not nobler in her way than Saxon Ethelfleda. Thinking of her, pleasant it is to note how the little wild–flowers, the milk–wort and the eyebright, the unchanged heritors of the ground, are virtually just as she left them. Upon these, in such a spot, Time lays no “effacing finger.” “States fall, arts fade, but Nature doth not die.” Not without interest, either, is the fact that from the name of the people or kingdom she ruled so well, comes that of our chief local river. The Mersey was the dividing line between Mercia and Northumbria, and of the former it preserves memorable tradition. All the way up the stream till we get to the hill country, the topographical names further illustrate the ancient Saxon presence. The view from storied Eddisbury is of course very extensive and delightful, including, to–day, the venerable Cathedral of Chester, Halton Castle, and the broad bosom of the river, not to mention the boundless champaign to the south and east, and afar off, in the quiet west, grey mountains that seem to lean against the sky.