This volume is not put forth as professedly a history of the places described, the Author’s aim having been rather to seize upon and group from such accredited sources of information as were available, the leading facts and incidents relating to special localities, and to present the scenes of human life and action in a readable and attractive form by divesting, in some degree, the tame and uninviting facts of archÆology of their deadly dulness; to bring into prominent relief the remarkable occurrences and romantic incidents of former days, and, by combining with the graver and more substantial matters of history an animated description of the physical features and scenic attractions of the localities in which those incidents occurred, to render them more interesting to the general reader.

A popular writer—the Authoress of “Our Village”—has said that she cared less for any reputation she might have gained as a writer of romance, than she did for the credit to be derived from the less ambitious but more useful office of faithfully uniting and preserving those fragments of tradition, experience, and biography, which give to history its living interest. In the same spirit the following pages have been written. There are within the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester many objects and places, many halls and manor-houses that possess an abiding interest from the position they occupy in “our rough island story,” and from their being associated, if not with events of the highest historic import, yet at least with many of those subordinate scenes and occurrences—those romantic incidents and half-forgotten facts that illustrate the inner life and character of bygone generations. These lingering memorials of a period the most chivalrous and the most romantic in our country’s annals may occasionally have received the notice of the precise topographer and the matter-of-fact antiquary, but, though possessing in themselves much that is picturesque and attractive, they have rarely been placed before the reader in any other guise than that in which the soberest narrative could invest them. In them the romance of centuries seems to be epitomised, and to the “seeing eye” they are the types and emblems of the changing life of our great nation; legend and tradition gather round, and weird stories and scraps of family history are associated with them that bring vividly before the mind’s eye the domestic life and manners of those who have gone before, and show in how large a degree the Past may be made a guide for the Present and the Future.

It only remains for the Author to acknowledge his obligations to those friends who, by information communicated, and in other ways, have aided him in his design. His thanks are due to John Eglington Bailey, Esq., F.S.A., of Stretford; John Oldfield Chadwick, Esq., F.S.S., F.G.S., of London; Dr. Samuel Crompton, of Cranleigh, Surrey; Lieutenant-Colonel Fishwick, F.S.A., of Rochdale; and Thomas Helsby, Esq., of the Inner Temple. He is also indebted to the kindness of Gilbert J. French, Esq., of Bolton, for the loan of the several engravings which add interest to the story of Samuel Crompton.

Upton Hall, Prestbury, Cheshire,
December, 1881.