From John O'Groats to Land's End Part 36

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROPE-WALK AT ENTRANCE INSIDE CAVE, CASTLETON, IN 1871.]

If it had been the entrance to Hades, to which it had been likened by a learned visitor, we might have been confronted by Cerberus instead of our guide, whom our friends had warned overnight that his attendance would be required early this morning by distinguished visitors, who would expect the cave to be lit up with coloured lights in honour of their visit. The guide as he handed a light to each of us explained apologetically that his stock of red lights had been exhausted during the season, but he had brought a sufficient number of blue lights to suit the occasion. We followed him into the largest division of the cavern, which was 270 feet long and 150 feet high, the total length being about half a mile. It contained many other rooms or caves, into which he conducted us, the first being known as the Bell House, and here the path we had been following suddenly came to an end at an arch about five yards wide, where there was a stream called the River Styx, over which he ferried us in a boat, landing us in a cave called the Hall of Pluto, the Being who ruled over the Greek Hades, or Home of Departed Spirits, guarded by a savage three-headed dog named Cerberus. The only way of reaching the "Home," our guide told us, was by means of the ferry on the River Styx, of which Charon had charge, and to ensure the spirit having a safe pa.s.sage to the Elysian Fields it was necessary that his toll should be paid with a coin placed beforehand in the mouth or hand of the departed. We did not, however, take the hint about the payment of the toll until after our return journey, when we found ourselves again at the mouth of the Great Cavern, a privilege perhaps not extended to Pluto's ghostly visitors, nor did we see any of those mysterious or mythological beings; perhaps the nearest approach to them was the figure of our guide himself, as he held aloft the blue torch he had in his hand when in the Hall of Pluto, for he presented the appearance of a man afflicted with delirium tremens or one of those "blue devils" often seen by victims of that dreadful disease. We also saw Roger Rain's House, where it always rained, summer and winter, all the year round, and the Robbers' Cave, with its five natural arches. But the strangest cave we visited was that called the "Devil's Wine Cellar," an awful abyss where the water rushed down a great hole and there disappeared. Her Most Gracious Majesty, Queen Victoria, visited the cavern in 1832, and one of the caves was named Victoria in memory of that event; we had the honour of standing on the exact spot where she stood on that occasion.

Our visit to the cavern was quite a success, enhanced as it was by the blue lights, so, having paid the guide for his services, we returned to our lodgings to "pack up" preparatory to resuming our walk. The white stones so kindly presented to my brother--of which he was very proud, for they certainly were very fine specimens--seemed likely to prove a white elephant to him. The difficulty now was how to carry them in addition to all the other luggage. Hurrying into the town, he returned in a few minutes with an enormous and strongly made red handkerchief like those worn by the miners, and in this he tied the stones, which were quite heavy and a burden in themselves. With these and all the other luggage as well he presented a very strange appearance as he toiled up the steep track through Cave Dale leading from the rear of the town to the moors above. It was no small feat of endurance and strength, for he carried his burdens until we arrived at Tamworth railway station in Staffordshire, to which our next box of clothes had been ordered, a distance of sixty-eight and a half miles by the way we walked. It was with a feeling of real thankfulness for not having been killed with kindness in the bestowal of these gifts that he deposited the stones in that box. When they reached home they were looked upon as too valuable to be placed on the rockeries and retained the sole possession of a mantelshelf for many years. My ankle was still very weak, and it was as much as I could do to carry the solitary walking-stick to a.s.sist me forwards; but we were obliged to move on, as we were now quite fifty miles behind our projected routine, and we knew there was some hard work before us. When we reached the moors, which were about a thousand feet above sea-level, the going was comparatively easy on the soft rich gra.s.s which makes the cow's milk so rich, and we had some good views of the hills. That named Mam Tor was one of the "Seven wonders of the Peak,"

and its neighbour, known as the Shivering Mountain, was quite a curiosity, as the shale, of which it was composed, was constantly breaking away and sliding down the mountain slope with a sound like that of falling water. Bagshawe Cavern was near at hand, but we did not visit it. It was so named because it had been found on land belonging to Sir William Bagshawe, whose lady christened its chambers and grottos with some very queer names. Across the moors we could see the town of Tideswell, our next objective, standing like an oasis in the desert, for there were no trees on the moors. We had planned that after leaving there we would continue our way across the moors to Newhaven, and then walk through Dove Dale to Ashbourne in the reverse direction to that taken the year before on our walk from London to Lancashire. Before reaching Tideswell we came to a point known as Lane Head, where six lane-ends met, and which we supposed must have been an important meeting-place when the moors, which surrounded it for miles, formed a portion of the ancient Peak Forest. We pa.s.sed other objects of interest, including some ancient remains of lead mining in the form of curious long tunnels like sewers on the ground level which radiated to a point where on the furnaces heaps of timber were piled up and the lead ore was smelted by the heat which was intensified by these draught-producing tunnels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TIDESWELL CHURCH.]

When Peak Forest was in its primeval glory, and the Kings of England with their lords, earls, and n.o.bles came to hunt there, many of the leading families had dwellings in the forest, and we pa.s.sed a relic of these, a curious old mansion called Hazelbadge Hall, the ancient home of the Vernons, who still claim by right as Forester to name the coroner for West Derbyshire when the position falls vacant.

Tideswell was supposed to have taken its name from an ebbing and flowing well whose water rose and fell like the tides in the sea, but which had been choked up towards the end of the eighteenth century, and reopened in the grounds of a mansion, so that the cup-shaped hollow could be seen filling and emptying.

A market had existed at Tideswell since the year 1250, and one was being held as we entered the town, and the "George Inn," where we called for refreshments, was fairly well filled with visitors of one kind or another.

We left our luggage to the care of the ostler, and went to visit the fine old church adjacent, where many ancient families lie buried; the princ.i.p.al object of interest was the magnificent chancel, which has been described as "one Gallery of Light and Beauty," the whole structure being known as the Cathedral of the Peak. There was a fine monumental bra.s.s, with features engraved on it which throw light on the Church ritual of the day, to the memory of Bishop Pursglove, who was a native of Tideswell and founder of the local Grammar School, who surrendered his Priory of Gisburn to Henry VIII in 1540, but refused, in 1559, to take the Oath of Supremacy. Sampson Meverill, Knight Constable of England, also lies buried in the chancel, and by his epitaph on a marble tomb, brought curiously enough from Suss.e.x, he asks the reader "devoutly of your charity" to say "a Pater Noster with an Ave for all Xtian soules, and especially for the soule of him whose bones resten under this stone." Meverill, with John Montagu, Earl of Shrewsbury, fought as "a Captain of diverse worshipful places in France," serving under John, Duke of Bedford, in the "Hundred Years' War," and after fighting in eleven battles within the s.p.a.ce of two years he won knighthood at the duke's hands at St. Luce. In the churchyard was buried William Newton, the Minstrel of the Peak, and Samuel Slack, who in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the most popular ba.s.s singer in England. When quite young Slack competed with others for a position in a college choir at Cambridge, and sang Purcell's famous air, "They that go down to the sea in ships." When he had finished, the Precentor rose immediately and said to the other candidates, "Gentlemen, I now leave it to you whether any one will sing after what you have just heard!" No one rose, and so Slack gained the position.

Soon afterwards Georgiana, d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland, interested herself in him, and had him placed under Spofforth, the chief singing master of the day, under whose tuition he greatly improved, taking London by storm. He was for many years the princ.i.p.al ba.s.s at all the great musical festivals. So powerful was his voice, it is said, that on one occasion when he was pursued by a bull he uttered a bellow which so terrified the animal that it ran away, so young ladies who were afraid of these animals always felt safe when accompanied by Mr. Slack. When singing before King George III at Windsor Castle, he was told that His Majesty had been pleased with his singing. Slack remarked in his Derbyshire dialect, which he always remembered, "Oh, he was pleased, were he? I thow't I could do't." Slack it was said made no effort to improve himself either in speech or in manners, and therefore it was thought that he preferred low society.

When he retired and returned to his native village he was delighted to join the local "Catch and Glee Club," of which he soon became the ruling spirit. It held its meetings at the "George Inn" where we had called for refreshments, and we were shown an old print of the club representing six singers in Hogarthian att.i.tudes with gla.s.ses, jugs, and pipes, with Slack and his friend Chadwick of Hayfield apparently singing heartily from the same book Slack's favourite song, "Life's a b.u.mper fill'd by Fate." Tideswell had always been a musical town; as far back as the year 1826 there was a "Tideswell Music Band," which consisted of six clarionets, two flutes, three ba.s.soons, one serpent, two trumpets, two trombones, two French horns, one bugle, and one double drum--twenty performers in all.

They had three practices weekly, and there were the usual fines for those who came late, or missed a practice, for inattention to the leader, or for a dirty instrument, the heaviest fine of all being for intoxication. But long after this there was a Tideswell Bra.s.s Band which became famous throughout the country, for the leader not only wrote the score copies for his own band, but lithographed and sold them to other bands all over the country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LIFE'S A b.u.mPER."]

We were particularly interested in all this, for my brother had for the past eight years indulged in the luxury of a bra.s.s band himself. The band consisted of about twenty members when in full strength, and as instruments were dear in those days it was a most expensive luxury, and what it had cost him in instruments, music, and uniforms no one ever knew. He had often purchased "scores" from Metcalf, the leader of the Tideswell Band, a fact that was rather a source of anxiety to me, as I knew if he called to see Metcalf our expedition for that day would be at an end, as they might have conversed with each other for hours. I could not prevent him from relating at the "George" one of his early reminiscences, which fairly "brought down the house," as there were some musicians in the company.

His band had been formed in 1863, and consisted of about a dozen performers. Christmas time was coming on, when the bandsmen resolved to show off a little and at the same time collect some money from their friends to spend in the New Year. They therefore decided that the band should go out "busking" each evening during Christmas week. They had only learned to play five tunes--two of them belonging to well-known hymns, a third "G.o.d Save the Queen," while the remaining two were quicksteps, one of which was not quite perfectly learned.

They were well received in the village, and almost every house had been visited with the exception of the Hall, which was some distance away, and had been left till the last probably owing to the fact that the squire was not particularly noted for his liberality. If, however, he had been at home that week, and had any sense of music, he would have learned all their tunes off by heart, as the band must have been heard clearly enough when playing at the farms surrounding the mansion.

To avoid a possibility of giving offence, however, it was decided to pay him a visit; so the band a.s.sembled one evening in front of the mansion, and the conductor led off with a Psalm tune, during which the Hall door was opened by a servant. At this unexpected compliment expectations rose high amongst the members of the band, and a second Psalm tune was played, the full number of verses in the hymn being repeated. Then followed a pause to give the squire a chance of distinguishing himself, but as he failed to rise to the occasion it was decided to play a quickstep. This was followed by a rather awkward pause, as there were some high notes in the remaining quickstep which the soprano player said he was sure he could not reach as he was getting "ramp'd" already. At this moment, however, the situation was relieved by the appearance of a female servant at the door.

The member of the band who had been deputed to collect all donations at once went to the door, and all eyes were turned upon him when he came back towards the lawn, every member on tip-toe of expectation. But he had only returned to say that the squire's lady wished the band to play a polka. This spread consternation throughout the band, and one of the younger members went to the conductor saying, "A polka! A polka! I say, Jim, what's that?" "Oh," replied the conductor, "number three played quick!" Now number three was a quickstep named after Havelock the famous English General in India, so "Havelock's March played quick" had to do duty for a polka; but the only man who could play it quickly was the conductor himself, who after the words, "Ready, chaps!" and the usual signal "One-two-three," dashed off at an unusual speed, the performers following as rapidly as they could, the Bombardon and the Double B, the biggest instruments, finishing last with a most awful groan, after which the conductor, who couldn't stop laughing when once he started, was found rolling on the lawn in a kind of convulsion. It took them some time to recover their equilibrium, during which the Hall door remained open, and a portion of the band had already begun to move away in despair, when they were called back by the old butler appearing at the Hall door with a silver tray in his hand. The collector's services were again requisitioned, and he returned with the magnificent sum of one shilling! As most of the farmers had given five shillings and the remainder half a crown, the squire's reputation for generosity had been fully maintained. One verse of "G.o.d save the Queen," instead of the usual three, was played by the way of acknowledgment, and so ended the band's busking season in the year 1863.

We quite enjoyed our visit to Tideswell, and were rather loath to leave the friendly company at the "George Inn," who were greatly interested in our walk, several musical members watching our departure as the ostler loaded my brother with the luggage.

Tideswell possessed a poet named Beebe Eyre, who in 1854 was awarded 50 out of the Queen's Royal Bounty, which probably inspired him to write:

Tideswell! thou art my natal spot, And hence I love thee well; May prosperous days now be the lot Of all that in thee dwell!

The sentiments expressed by the poet coincided with our own. As we departed from the town we observed a curiosity in the shape of a very old and extremely dilapidated building, which we were informed could neither be repaired, pulled down, nor sold because it belonged to some charity.

On the moors outside the town there were some more curious remains of the Romans and others skilled in mining, which we thought would greatly interest antiquarians, as they displayed more methods of mining than at other places we had visited. A stream had evidently disappointed them by filtering through its bed of limestone, but this they had prevented by forming a course of pebbles and cement, which ran right through Tideswell, and served the double purpose of a water supply and a sewer.

We crossed the old "Rakes," or lines, where the Romans simply dug out the ore and threw up the rubbish, which still remained in long lines.

Clever though they were, they only knew lead when it occurred in the form known as galena, which looked like lead itself, and so they threw out a more valuable ore, cerusite, or lead carbonate, and the heaps of this valuable material were mined over a second time in comparatively recent times. The miner of the Middle Ages made many soughs to drain away the water from the mines, and we saw more of the tunnels that had been made to draw air to the furnaces when wood was used for smelting the lead.

The forest, like many others, had disappeared, and Anna Seward had exactly described the country we were pa.s.sing through when she wrote:

The long lone tracks of Tideswell's native moor, Stretched on vast hills that far and near prevail.

Bleak, stony, bare, monotonous, and pale.

The poet Newton had provided the town with a water supply by having pipes laid at his own expense from the Well Head at the source of the stream which flowed out of an old lead-mine. Lead in drinking-water has an evil name for causing poisoning, but the Tideswell folk flourish on it, since no one seems to think of dying before seventy, and a goodly number live to over ninety.

They have some small industries, cotton manufacture having spread from Lancashire into these remote districts. It is an old-fashioned place, with houses mostly stuccoed with broken crystals and limestone from the "Rakes" and containing curiously carved cupboard doors and posts torn from churches ornamented in Jacobean style by the sacrilegious Cromwellians, many of them having been erected just after the Great Rebellion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DUKE OF BRIDGEWATER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIDGE CARRYING THE Ca.n.a.l OVERHEAD.]

We now journeyed along the mountain track until it descended sharply into Miller's Dale; but before reaching this place we were interested in the village of Formhill, where Brindley, the famous ca.n.a.l engineer, was born in 1716. Brindley was employed by the great Duke of Bridgewater, the pioneer of ca.n.a.l-making in England, to construct a ca.n.a.l from his collieries at Worsley, in Lancashire, to Manchester, in order to cheapen the cost of coal at that important manufacturing centre. It was an extraordinary achievement, considering that Brindley was quite uneducated and knew no mathematics, and up to the last remained illiterate. Most of his problems were solved without writings or drawings, and when anything difficult had to be considered, he would go to bed and think it out there. At the Worsley end it involved tunnelling to the seams of coal where the colliers were at work so that they could load the coal directly into the boats. He constructed from ten to thirteen miles of underground ca.n.a.ls on two different levels, with an ingeniously constructed connection between the two. After this he made the great Bridgewater Ca.n.a.l, forty miles in length, from Manchester to Runcorn, which obtained a fall of one foot per mile by following a circuitous route without a lock or a tunnel in the whole of its course until it reached its terminus at the River Mersey. In places where a brook or a small valley had to be crossed the ca.n.a.l was carried on artificially raised banks, and to provide against a burst in any of these, which would have caused the water to run out of the ca.n.a.l, it was narrowed at each end of the embankment so that only one boat could pa.s.s through at a time, this narrow pa.s.sage being known as a "stop place."

At the entrance to this a door was so placed at the bottom of the ca.n.a.l that if any undue current should appear, such as would occur if the embankment gave way, one end of it would rise into a socket prepared for it in the stop-place, and so prevent any water leaving the ca.n.a.l except that in the broken section, a remedy simple but ingenious. On arriving at Runcorn the boats were lowered by a series of locks into the River Mersey, a double service of locks being provided so that boats could pa.s.s up and down at the same time and so avoid delay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JAMES BRINDLEY.]

When the water was first turned into the ca.n.a.l, Brindley mysteriously disappeared, and was nowhere to be found; but as the ca.n.a.l when full did not burst its embankments, as he had feared, he soon reappeared and was afterwards employed to construct even more difficult ca.n.a.ls. He died in 1772, and was buried in Harriseahead Churchyard on the Cheshire border of Staffordshire. It is computed that he engineered as many miles of ca.n.a.ls as there are days in the year.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOTTOM LOCKS AT RUNCORN.]

It must have been a regular custom for the parsons in Derbyshire to keep diaries in the eighteenth century, for the Vicar of Wormhill kept one, like the Vicar of Castleton, both chancing to be members of the Bagshawe family, a common name in that neighbourhood. He was a hard-working and conscientious man, and made the following entry in it on February 3rd, 1798

_Sunday_.--Preached at Wormhill on the vanity of human pursuits and human pleasures, to a polite audience, an affecting sermon. Rode in the evening to Castleton, where I read three discourses by Secker. In the forest I was sorry to observe a party of boys playing at Football. I spoke to them but was laughed at, and on my departure one of the boys gave the football a wonderful kick--a proof this of the degeneracy of human nature!

On reaching Miller's Dale, a romantic deep hollow in the limestone, at the bottom of which winds the fast-flowing Wye, my brother declared that he felt more at home, as it happened to be the only place he had seen since leaving John o' Groat's that he had previously visited, and it reminded him of a rather amusing incident.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRIDGEWATER Ca.n.a.l--WHERE IT ENTERS THE MINES AT WORSLEY.]

Our uncle, a civil engineer in London, had been over on a visit, and was wearing a white top-hat, then becoming fashionable, and as my brother thought that a similar hat would just suit the dark blue velveteen coat he wore on Sundays, he soon appeared in the prevailing fashion. He was walking from Ambergate to Buxton, and had reached Miller's Dale about noon, just as the millers were leaving the flour mills for dinner. One would have thought that the sight of a white hat would have delighted the millers, but as these hats were rather dear, and beyond the financial reach of the man in the street, they had become an object of derision to those who could not afford to wear them, the music-hall answer to the question "Who stole the donkey?" being at that time "The man with the white hat!"

He had met one group of the millers coming up the hill and another lot was following, when a man in the first group suddenly turned round and shouted to a man in the second group, "I say, Jack, who stole the donkey?" But Jack had not yet pa.s.sed my brother, and, as he had still to face him, he dared not give the customary answer, so, instead of replying "The man with the white hat," he called out in the Derbyshire dialect, with a broad grin on his face, "Th' feyther." A roar of laughter both behind and in front, in which my brother heartily joined, followed this repartee.

Probably some of the opprobrium attached to the white hat was because of its having been an emblem of the Radicals. We had seen that worn by Sir Walter Scott in his declining days, but we could not think of including him in that extreme political party, though its origin dated back to the time when he was still alive. Probably the emblem was only local, for it originated at Preston in Lancashire, a place we knew well, commonly called Proud Preston, no doubt by reason of its connection with the n.o.ble family of Stanley, who had a mansion in the town. Preston was often represented in Parliament by a Stanley, and was looked upon as a Pocket Borough. In the turbulent times preceding the Abolition of the Corn Laws a powerful opponent, in the person of Mr. Henry Hunt, a demagogue politician, who had suffered imprisonment for advocating Chartism, appeared at the Preston election of 1830 to oppose the Honourable E.G. Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby. He always appeared wearing a white hat, and was an eloquent speaker, and for these reasons earned the sobriquet of "Orator" Hunt and "Man with the White Hat." The election contest was one of the most exciting events that ever occurred in Preston, and as usual the children took their share in the proceedings, those on Mr. Stanley's side parading the streets singing in a popular air:

Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever! Stanley for Ever!

Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever Ho!

Stanley, Stanley, Stanley, Ho!

Stanley is my honey Ho!

When he weds he will be rich, He will have a coach and six.

Then followed the chorus to the accompaniment of drums and triangles:

Hey! Ho! Stanley for Ever, Ho!

In spite of this, however, and similar ditties, "Orator Hunt," by a total vote of 3,730, became M.P. for Preston, and it was said that it was through this incident that the Radicals adopted the White Hat as their emblem.

Lord Derby was so annoyed at the result of the election that he closed his house, which stood across the end of a quiet street, and placed a line of posts across it, between which strong chains were hung, and on which my brother could remember swinging when a boy.

One of our uncles was known as the "Preston Poet" at that time, and he wrote a poem ent.i.tled "The Poor, G.o.d Bless 'Em!" the first verse reading: