MERE Clough! Where is that? Such will probably be the reception of our present title, at least in thought, by not a few of those whom we hope to be the means of introducing to this romantic little glen. For it is positively surprising how much of the rural beauty of our neighbourhood is unknown, even to those who delight in country scenes and the fresh air of the fields; and how often the very existence of it is unsuspected till some fortunate accident brings home the welcome truth. Nowhere within the same very short distance of Manchester is so much woodland beauty to be found as in Mere Clough and its immediate neighbourhood; nor is any place within four miles of the Cathedral the avenue to so many pleasant auxiliary walks. In botanical riches Mere Clough is second nearly to Bowdon, over which place it has the advantage of its earliest plants being among the rare ones of the Manchester flora, while its latest are some of the most beautiful and attractive. The name of “clough,” though so familiar in Lancashire, is not known in the southern counties. Hence it may be useful to observe that “cloughs,” beyond the Mersey, are those fissures or “clefts” in the ground which give the first and simplest idea of a valley. Formed by the rise, in opposite directions, of two gentle acclivities, which run for a short distance in a more or less irregular and winding parallel, and at last widely diverge, or else undulate away into the plain, these “cloughs” have in every case a little stream along the bottom, while the slopes on either side are clothed with trees and natural shrubbery. Along the borders of the stream there is a slender rustic path, which often quits the water–side to mount high upon the slope, and thus give pretty little peeps of the shining current down below and of the distant leafy intricacies of the wood. Rarely is there so much water as to form a deep and steady brook; in summer–time we may be sure it will be shallow enough to “make music to the enamelled stones,” and beguile us onward with that beautiful magic which always accompanies the artless voices and tones of nature.[21] In the neighbourhood of Prestwich there are several such cloughs, the “Dells” below the church being the nearest and best known, and Mere Clough the longest and most romantic. The others are Hurst Clough, to the west of Stand, and Agecroft Clough, near the bridge of that name. All these cloughs bear more or less directly towards the Irwell, into which river their little streamlets convey themselves. The beauty of Prestwich Dells has long rendered the latter place a favourite resort. Easy, moreover, of access, and with the capital recommendation of a harbour of refuge close at hand, in the shape of the commodious and well provided Church Inn, no wonder that few except naturalists have cared to push on farther. It needs something more than invites people to a place like Prestwich Dells to take us to one still prettier, but where, as far as concerns supplies for the inner man, we are like sailors on the open sea—commanding only what we carry thither.

The conveyance to go by, should the walk be thought too long, is the Whitefield omnibus. About three–quarters of a mile beyond Prestwich, through which village the omnibus passes, there is an old–fashioned “magpie” upon the left. Leave the omnibus here, and, going through the farmyard, follow the path through the field, keeping to the right of the new asylum, and in a few minutes the entrance to the clough will come in view. At first, the path is near the summit of the slope; afterwards it crosses the stream, and continues the rest of the way at the bottom. If we please, when half–way through, we may re–ascend (this time to the top of the northern slope), by going through the field upon the right, to where the great arches support the roadway, and so find our way by the carriage–track which leads to “The Park,” the residence of Mr. R. N. Philips, and eventually through the private lodge–gate at the extremity, there emerging on to the public path by the reservoir, at nearly the same point that is reached by the lower one. The latter course has the advantage of preserving the feet dry, should the path by the stream be deceitful, as often happens after wet weather, and also of providing views of the surrounding country, but the lower path is considerably more romantic. The private grounds are exceedingly pretty and sylvan, and up to about half a century ago were used as pheasant–preserves. Like those at Norcliffe, they are not forbidden to legitimate and respectful request made a few days previously, with the understanding that there shall be no trowels carried.

As stated in our second chapter, Mere Clough is fertile in curious plants. In every part there is abundance in particular of that beautiful reminder of pre–adamite vegetation, the sylvan horsetail, in scientific language Equisetum sylvaticum, in form resembling a tiny larch tree, the leaves, which are no longer or stouter than a violet stalk, curving outwards and downwards in the most graceful way imaginable, and forming a succession of little cupolas up the stem which they encircle. Varying from a few inches to nearly two feet in height when mature, and of a singularly delicate green, sometimes it tapers off to a point, sometimes is crowned with a kind of miniature fir–cone, which serves at once for flower and seed–pod, and will well repay minute examination. When ripe, an impalpable green powder dusts out of this little cone–like body, every particle a distinct and living seed, and originating a new plant, if not destroyed before it can germinate. Under the microscope, these particles perform most amusing evolutions. It is merely necessary that some one breathe upon them while we observe, to make every little atom twist and entangle its long arms as if it were an animated creature. A magnifying power of sixty is quite sufficient to show these curious movements, and the seeds, if preserved in a pill–box, will keep good for many years. All the neighbouring dells and groves likewise contain this charming plant, and growing, as it often does, in large patches, we seem to have woods within woods. Hurst Clough, best reached from Molyneux Brow, noted also for the Rosa villosa, is one of the richest. Not that it is confined to them, being more or less diffused in most directions out of Manchester, but it is here that it grows most plentifully and luxuriantly. Contemporaneous with the sylvan horsetail, there comes a second kind of golden saxifrage. The common sort was mentioned when describing Ashley meadows. This one, scientifically called the alternifolium, is larger and handsomer, as well as rare, and is to be gathered on the left hand borders of the stream, just after passing the white cottage in the middle of the clough. Another plant of special interest, and blooming at the same time, is the mountain–currant, Ribes alpinum, which grows on the bank of the half–lane, half–watercourse, running from the lower side of the reservoir towards the river. It is a large, green, leafy bush, with glossy foliage, and appears to be the only one in the Prestwich neighbourhood. How it got there is a botanical problem, yet only one out of many of the same kind. Nature is for ever putting some droll spectacle before our eyes, and playing pantomimes for our amusement and curiosity, if we would but care for them as they deserve. As Pott Shrigley is the place above all others for bluebells, so is Mere Clough the place above all others for its colleague the wood–anemone. Tens of thousands of this lovely flower, the fairest companion of the opening buds, grow in the open spaces among the trees at the lower part, sheeting them with the purest white, tinged here and there with a faint blush, like sunbeams falling on snow. On a fine day at the end of April or beginning of May, there is not a more charming picture to be found. In the moister parts of the clough, especially near the reservoir, may also now be seen in perfection the deep yellow marsh–marigold. Like the anemone, it is a common plant, but none the less to be admired. The same as to that dainty little flower, the wood–sorrel, which begins to open freely about the time that the anemones depart. Easily discovered by means of its curious leaves, which are formed of three triangular pieces, placed on the summit of a little stalk, and rise about three inches above the ground, no one can fail to be charmed with its fairy form and the delicacy of the lilac pencillings on the inner surface of the petals, which are white as those of the anemone itself. Anemone, translated, signifies “wind–flower,” a name intended to denote fugacity of the petals, or fall at the first touch. But such is not the fate of the anemone–petals of to–day. The original application of the name would appear to have been to the cistus. It was into this last that the frail goddess transformed her love, her tears represented in the disappearance in a moment.

Emerging from the clough, the difficulty is not which way to get home again, but which pleasant way to give the preference to. We may go past the dyeworks, and through the park to Agecroft Bridge; or turn up the lane that curls back towards Prestwich; or, best of all, make our way under the magnificent viaduct of the East Lancashire Railway, and then across the river to Clifton Aqueduct. Arrived here, there is another ample choice; either to ride home from the adjacent station (Clifton Junction); to descend to the Irwell bank, and walk through the meadows bordering the river to Agecroft Bridge; or to take the fields and canal bank, the latter in some parts very pretty, and so to Pendleton, where Mr. Greenwood will be glad to see us, and the feeling probably be reciprocal. To invigorate ourselves, if purposing to walk, it is prudent, and not difficult, to procure tea at one of the cottages near the station. At one in particular, standing back a little from the road, upon the left, with—at the bottom of the garden—a nice, cool, face–refreshing well, that we have seen give challenge on fair cheeks to the morning dew upon the rose, there is a free, plentiful, whole–hearted hospitality, that adds quite a charm to the associations already so pleasant, of summer afternoon in the sweet stillness of Mere Clough. The hostess is as large as her welcome; the bread and butter is incomparable.[22] Every one who has gone by train to Bolton or Bury, will remember this beautiful valley, sometimes called the Agecroft, sometimes after its river, the Irwell. On the left, as soon as Pendleton is passed, the high grounds of Pendlebury come into view, their brows covered with trees. On the right, first we have broad, sweet lawns of meadow and pasture, and in autumn yellow corn–fields; and, beyond these, rising in terraced slopes, with deep bays and rounded promontories, according as the hill recedes or swells, the woods overlooking Agecroft Park, presently succeeded by those of Prestwich. For fully two miles the eye rests upon rich masses of leaf, interrupted only by mounds of tender green, the crests of the Rainsall and Agecroft hills, and towards the close, the picturesque tower of Prestwich Church. The course of the river may be traced by the winding line of continuous foliage, but the water is too low down to be discerned until we catch sight of the white cottage at the foot of Mere Clough, immediately after passing which, if upon the Bury line, we continue along the viaduct and therefrom get a full view, as well as of banks lined to the water’s edge with vegetation. Here the scenery changes entirely, though retained for a short distance on the Bolton line, and we quit the Agecroft valley. Not one of the other railway approaches to our town—ten minutes completing the journey—bears any comparison with this for beauty; indeed, it is quite a surprise to people entering Manchester for the first time by way of Bolton or Bury, to find so picturesque a country at the very edge.

The best way to the valley on foot is to go over Kersal Moor, descending on the further side, and so onward, past the print–works, to Agecroft Bridge, which we must cross, and turn to the right. If more convenient, there is a way by Pendleton and Charlestown, crossing the Bolton railway, then along the path by the river–side. But this, as to its earlier part, is a disagreeable means of access, and very little is really gained. Going by Kersal, on the other hand, we come at once into a green, sequestered walk, which accompanying the river for about a mile, then changes to the bank of the canal, and will take us, if we please, to the aqueduct, and thence round by the cottages to the station. The road straight away from the bridge leads to Pendlebury, to which village there is also a pleasant path across the fields, after ascending the river–side some little distance. Keeping to the Kersal side of the river there is a delightful walk through Agecroft Park, beneath the woods, to the foot of the dells; another, by diverging a little to the left when out of the park, through a farmyard, to the river and viaduct; and if, instead of going through the park, we turn up on the right among the cottages, it is not difficult to penetrate the woods themselves, and to find one or two paths over the hills, all tending to Prestwich as a common point. So numerous and varied are the paths which converge hitherwards and in the direction of Clifton Aqueduct, that it is impossible to go wrong. Were we to give a preference, it would be to the walk first described, or that along the river–side, commencing at Agecroft Bridge, and having the river upon the right. The meadows abound with floral treasures, the rosy bistort, the blue geranium, and the fragrant ciceley, in their several seasons, and on the banks, at the further part, near the canal, may be seen the broad–leaved wood–stitchwort, Stellaria memorum, and the yellow dead–nettle. Early in June is the pleasantest time to go. The grass is then uncut, the sycamores are hung with their honeyed bloom, the clover glows like rubies, the white pagodas of the butter–bur, now gone to seed, stand up like the banners of an army, and we find “the first rose of summer, sweet blooming alone,” amid thousands of juvenile green buds.

But the yellow dead–nettle is the most interesting; it gives so useful a lesson in practical botany. The stem is perfectly square; the leaves grow two together; the large golden–coloured blossoms are set in verandahs round the stalk, each particular flower shaped like the jaws of some terrible wild beast, wide–open and ready to bite, while the stamens are invariably four in number—a pair of long ones and a pair of short ones. The seeds, also, are exactly four. Whenever these peculiarities co–exist in a plant, we may be sure that there is nothing deleterious about it. More than fifty different plants formed on this plan grow wild in England, and considerably over two thousand in foreign countries, and not one of them is in the least degree noxious, either to quadruped or to man. Many are aromatic, and used with food, as thyme, sage, mint, basil, and penny–royal; while others are useful for medicinal tea, as balm and ground–ivy. Rosemary, lavender, and bergamot belong to the same fragrant family. The great object of botanical science is to determine such facts as these, i.e., to make out the relation between the form of a plant and its properties;—can a science of such useful, practical aim be justly deemed, as by some, mere “learned trifling?” Surely not. No slight advantage has that man over his fellows who, when he is walking through the meadows, or when he emigrates to a distant land, can discriminate between the poisonous plant and the wholesome, simply by examining the leaves and flowers. We do not mean to say that every individual plant in the world has its exact quality unmistakably configured upon it. The concurrence is between certain general properties and certain great types or plans of organisation, taking note of which latter we gain a good general idea of the former. The particular nature must be learned by special inquiry. Though the yellow dead–nettle, for example, is shown by its general structure to be devoid of anything bad, it cannot be told whether it is fit to eat until tasted and tried. To persons who have an idea of emigrating, or whose children are likely to go abroad, botany is of the very highest service, for in foreign countries men are thrown upon their own resources, and to be compelled by ignorance to look upon every leaf as a possible poison is helplessness of the most wretched kind.

The railway up the Agecroft valley is interesting as the first that was constructed after the Liverpool and Manchester, and perhaps the “Grand Junction.” People used to go to the Prestwich hills to watch the trains scudding along. The scenery here is certainly not spoiled by it. For our own part, we consider that scenery is scarcely ever spoiled by the presence of railways, and would contend rather that they are a capital addition; for those spectacles are always most salutary to the mind, and therefore most truly pleasing, where along with rural beauties are combined the grand circumstances of human life and human enterprise. Railways count with bridges, ships, gardens, the castles and abbeys of the past, and the mansions of the present. Nature is beautiful, even in its most retired and lonely solitudes, just in the proportion that we connect with it, though unconsciously, the interests, the feelings, the aspirations of humanity; the more of what is noble and comely in human life we are able to assimilate with the outer world, the more does that world minister to our happiness and our intelligence. In the case of the railways, we are recipients of an immense amount of good. There is not only the interest of what is witnessed on the instant, but the pleasant flow of remembrance of the various localities they lead to. As, looking at the sea, we are led in thought all round the world, so, looking at the winged train and its pearly clouds, we visit over again a thousand delicious spots, photographed on the mind, and endeared by association. Here, for instance, in the valley of the Irwell, we go on to the lakes of Cumberland, and its ancient and purple mountains, and anon to the flowered and roofless aisles of sacred Furness. Should these be places yet unknown, there are nearer ones where we have been,—Rivington, Summerseat, Hoghton Tower, with its precipitous beechen–wood and lovely walk by the river underneath; or Southshore, where grow the blue eryngo and the grass of Parnassus, and where, on calm September evenings, the round, red setting sun pours a stream of crimson light across the sea, that reaches to the last ripple of the retiring water, like a path of velvet unrolled for the feet of a queen; or, if the wind blow high and fresh, the grand old deep–voiced waves, with their gray locks hanging dishevelled over their broad bosoms, roll gloriously over the rattling pebbles, change for a moment into arcades as white as snow, then dissolve into a wilderness of foam. Thus to make the common things of life so many centres of thought, from which we can travel away to whole worlds of pleasant remembrance, lying calm perhaps in the golden light of lang syne, is one of the profoundest secrets of happiness, and one of the most useful habits we can cultivate. Every one may acquire the art, and it strengthens every day and year that we live. Happiness is not a wonderful diamond, to be sought afar off, but, rightly understood, a thing to be reaped every day out of the ordinary facts of life, even out of the sight of a railway train steaming across the fields.

The plants of the woods and hills bordering the Agecroft valley are mostly the same that are found in Mere Clough. In addition to those above enumerated, may be mentioned the pretty round–leaved marsh–violet, the whortleberry, and the wild cherry, one of the gayest ornaments of the month of May. The whortleberry seldom ripens its fruit at Prestwich, or anywhere so near the town: it seems to require the bracing air of the moors and mountains. It is one of the shrubs which rival the trees in brilliancy of tint, assumed as in the sky, when the hour of departure is at hand. Along with the Canadian medlar, the bramble, and some kinds of azalea, the leaves change not infrequently to vivid crimson. People are apt to call these changes the “fading” of the leaf; it would be better to say the painting. Primroses are exceedingly scarce, both on the Agecroft hills and in the Irwell valley, and their place is unoccupied by any other vernal flower as fair and popular. The wild pansy is there, on the higher and drier ground, and often with remarkably large and handsome flowers, but it makes no show; and though there are daffodils in a few places, they are not prominent to view. A field at the head of Prestwich Dells is for a little time plentifully strewed with their lively yellow. When September comes the want of the primrose is almost compensated by the cheerful autumn crocus, which lifts its purple abundantly among the grass, in the low meadows on the further side of Kersal Moor, near the rivulet; also in the fields below Prestwich Church, the same that in spring are dressed with the daffodil, and again in those between the asylum and the dells. The autumnal crocus, like the colchicum, is curious in seeming to produce its seeds before the flowers, the former being ripe in May and June, whereas the latter do not open till three months after. When the great Swedish botanist, LinnÆus, was engaged in promulgating the great doctrine of the sexuality of plants, now about a century and a half ago, the circumstance in question was pointed to as upsetting it. But the young seed–pod lies low down in the bosom of the leaves, where it is fertilised, as in all other flowers, by the pollen from the stamens, and there it abides during the winter, elevating itself above the ground with the warmth of the ensuing summer, when it ripens and scatters its contents. The true time of the vital energy of the autumn crocus is thus, not from May to September, but from September until May. The history has always seemed to us a memorable instance of the quiet dignity with which truth and genuine science pursue their way, triumphing and silencing all the little cavillers in the end, however plausible they may make their case at starting.

Before quitting this beautiful valley it will be salutary to pause for a moment upon its geological history, since, with the single exception of that part of the Mersey valley which lies between Didsbury and Cheadle, it is the newest part of our neighbourhood. The date, that is to say, is the nearest preceding that of the first occupation of the British Islands by mankind. The great ridges of Kinder Scout, Glossop, and Greenfield are immensely more ancient than any of the exposed or superficial parts of the country threaded by the Mersey at Cheadle, and by the Irwell below Prestwich. With the remainder of the chain of hills to which the Greenfield summits belong, those great ridges form the eastern margin of an enormous and very irregular stone basin, tilted up in such a way that the opposite or western edge is concealed far below the surface of the ground, nobody can tell exactly where, but in the direction of the Irish Sea, perhaps under it, far away beyond Southport and the sandhills. It is within or upon the inner surface of this great basin that all the other South Lancashire rocks and strata have their seat. In different portions of its huge lap are deposited the Coal strata (themselves often much elevated above the level on which the deposit took place, and this at various periods); then, in ascending order, there are deposits called “Permian”;[23] above these, in turn, come the Triassic rocks; and over all (except on the higher hill–ranges) there is sand or clay, or gravel, both stratified and unstratified. This last, in the aggregate, is technically termed “Drift.” The whole of this great surface was unquestionably once covered by salt water. At the latest period of that marvellous marine dominion, blocks of ice containing boulders floated in it; and wherever great heaps of sand now occur, we have the remains of ancient beaches or sand–banks, many of which were cut through by the water, while others are charged with pebbles that had been rounded by rolling over and over upon some primeval shore, rattling while on their journeys, just as at Walney Island we may hear the pebbles of to–day. The lofty eastern edges of this great stone basin are, as would be anticipated, quite free from deposits of drift. But everywhere else, westwards, drift covers up all the underlying rock, the latter showing itself only where rivers in cutting their channels have slowly worn it away.

The Agecroft valley participates with all the rest of the district in the possession of drift. Here, however, is well shown, in addition, how the first settlings of gravel and sand often themselves became covered at a later period with yet another new deposit—material brought down and diffused by shallow and tranquil streams, then of considerable breadth, but which in course of time shrank into relatively narrow ones, and continue as such to the present moment. That the lower Irwell, as we have it in the Agecroft valley, was once a broad flood of this description is declared by the “river–terraces” discoverable at intervals all the way up, and which correspond with those that betoken the ancient presence of the waters of the Mersey at a much greater elevation than at present. Abney Hall is built upon one of these river–terraces. Cheadle village stands upon a yet higher and older one.

Peculiarly associated with the valley of the Irwell, and the adjacent cloughs and woods of Stand and Prestwich, is the memory of John Horsefield, one of the most celebrated of the old Lancashire operative botanists. It was Horsefield who first showed us the way through Mere Clough, and pointed out the spots occupied by its rare plants. For thirty–two years he was president and chief stay of the Prestwich Botanical Society, and from 1830, up to the time of his death, president also of the united societies of the whole district. He earned his livelihood as a hand–loom weaver, following that occupation in a cottage at Besses–o’–th’–Barn. Though the small wages his employment yielded him, and the trifling amount of leisure it permitted him to enjoy, naturally hindered pursuit of his darling science so fully as he desired, it is marvellous to see how much he accomplished. In the Manchester Guardian of March 2nd, 1850, in the course of a long and very interesting autobiography, he gives some slight idea of his labours. “Since I first held office as president,” he tells us, “I have attended upwards of four hundred of these general meetings; thousands of specimens have passed through my hands, and all my reward or fee is the privilege of being scot–free.” With that autobiography easily accessible, it is unnecessary to do more here than to point to it, and to a continuation of the narrative in the papers of the April following, which include several pieces of original poetry. Perhaps nothing has ever appeared which shows more strikingly how an indomitable will and ardent thirst for knowledge, and a deep and faithful love of nature, will triumph over the obstacles of poor means and humble station in life, and lift a man into the high places of true science, and give him at once the power of usefulness to his fellow–creatures, and of realising the true rewards of existence. Horsefield was a member of the Banksian Society, but rarely came to the meetings of the Mechanics’ Institution class, reserving himself for those country musters where his knowledge and good nature had the full wide scope which they at once merited and deserved. In person he was thin and spare, presenting a great contrast to the tall and patriarchal figure of Crozier, partaking, however, so far as we had opportunities of judging, of all his amiable, unsophisticated qualities.