CHAP. Public baths. Names of Summary. Mr. Thomas Duncan, C.E., engineer to the Liverpl Water Opposite the Water Works we enter Margaret Street, ard notice on the west side the Public Baths erected by the Corp ra tion in 1862-3, from the designs of Mr. James Newlands, CE, the borough engineer. When we speak of public baths, one's mind is insensibly carried away to the colossal structures eres tesi by Caracalla, Titus, and Diocletian. Modern cities do not pssess, nor are they likely to obtain, public baths on the gigantie scale of those of ancient Rome; nor with the conveniences and domestic comforts of modern days does there exist the sare necessity for them. At the same time, the provision of baths by the public authorities—a measure of quite recent introduction -has been attended with results of a very beneficial chara ter, and in every way is deserving of support and encouragement, The present building presents a neat elevation, in a style partaking somewhat of an Oriental character. The material is white brick, with coloured dressings. The centre has a wide, deeply recessed arched portal. The windows have colotettes and tracery of cast-iron. The design is on the whole pleasing in its effect. The only blemish is the tent like form of the ros f of the centre building, which imparts something of flimsiness or unsubstantiality to the design. The streets hereabouts manifest the nationality of the builders who constructed them. The Welsh give us Aler, Ogwen, Lavan, and Tegid Streets; the Scotch have left ther imprimatur in the names of Caird, Dunkeld, Perth, and Lyne doch Streets. We have now returned to the gate of the Necrop lis, the point from which we started, and here complete our perambala tion of Everton. I have been led into detail, perhaps some of my readers in vy think, to too great an extent; but it is not often that the materials exist for tracing with such minuteness the ancent condition and gradual change and development of a la..y. The rapid growth of cities is a phenomenon peculiar to our own times, and nowhere has it been exhibited with greater distir tness than in the district which we have just surveyed. It may be reasonably asked, what has been the result of this stealy onward march of brick and mortar, of this absorption of „zy za and field and meadow into the wilderness of streets and aleys which now cover the face of the township like a gigantic n are ↑ XIV. Has the sum of human happiness been increased? Have morals CHAP. and manners received an onward impulse? Or is the movement one to be deprecated and deplored? Whatever may be our Summary. views on this subject, the change is an inevitable one. This is emphatically the "age of great cities." Sentimentally and aesthetically we may look back with regret on the paternal relations and the picturesque aspect of feudal times, but we can no more revive them than the old man can reassume the simplicity and wilfulness of childhood. So with the bosky giales, the rural lanes, the pleasant mansions, and the retired gardens of Everton of the past generation. They are gone past recall, and the rows of cottages and dreary streets which have taken their place may appear a poor exchange. But there is another side to the picture. Modern Everton has arisen out of the commercial prosperity of Liverpool. This implies a greater demand for labour, increased population, better wages, material progress. There can be no question that, with many drawbacks, the bulk of our population has wonderfully advanced in the comforts of life and in general intelligence. The condition of General Everton bears testimony to this fact. There is little of squalid poverty in the district, and a very large proportion of homely respectability amongst the artizan class which constitute the principal population. Churches, chapels, and schools are numer ous, and provision is made for most of the ills which afflict humanity. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number" be the main object of our national institutions, the advance of the masses will always be indicative of the degree of success we have attained. In this respect the change which has come over the face of Everton is by no means to be deplored. condition. СНАР. Site. Brook. CHAPTER XV. KIRKDALE. THE township of Kirkdale, since the Reform Acts of 1832 an i 1835, has become an integral part of the municipal and parlia mentary borough of which it forms the northern extremity. It is a small district, containing an area of 841 acres, having one Elevation. of its sides abutting on the river. The land within Kirkdale 18 comparatively flat, rising from a level of 24 feet above the sea at the western margin to two low eminences, the summit of one being, at Blackfield Terrace, Stanley Road, 116 feet high; te other, near the Industrial Schools, rising to 120 feet. Between these two eminences a tiny stream, rising in the township of Walton, pursued its career down a gully which it had excavated for itself, forming one or two pools in its course, and finally debouched into the river, near the site of the present ra. wy goods station at Canada Dock. Railways and docks, rade, buildings, and brickfields have almost entirely obliterated all traces of this watercourse, except a small remnant a little to the south of the County Gaol, where an old house called Dale Loxige still exists in the upper portion of the gully, and Dingle Late indicates the access to the valley. The name Kirkdale, there can be no doubt, is of Danish origin. These hardy sear vers, about the end of the ninth century, under the renowned. Har 11 the Fair-haired, conquered and settled in the Isle of Man, frien which stronghold they ravaged during the next hundred years the coasts of Cumberland and Lancashire, and graduany extended their conquests inland. On the coast of South LanaSettlement. shire their settlements extended along the curved le fr m North Meols (Southport) to Widnes on the Mersey, and in waris to the chord line joining the two extremities. Within this limit we find the nomenclature in great part Scandinavian Formby, Crosby, Roby, Ormskirk, Thingwall, Widnes, etc. The dale just described offered a pleasant site, with a far Danes. XV. stream of pure water running through its centre; and here, it CHAP. would seem, when the fierce sea-rovers succumbed to the gentle influences of Christianity, they built a church, from whence the Church. name is derived. When the church was built, where it was situated, and when it was destroyed, are all unknown. All traces of it had vanished before the Conquest, no mention being made in Domesday Book, where a reference would undoubtedly have been made, had a church then existed. The entry is as follows: "Uctred tenebat Chirchedale. Ibi dimid. hida quieta Domesday ab omni consuetudine præter geld. Valebat x solid, "Uctred held Charchodale, There is half a hide, free from all custom except land tax. It was worth ten shillings." The next information we obtain of Kirkdale is from the "Testa de Neville," which is an inquisition taken of the feudal Testa de tenures in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. We here Neville. read that Warin Bussel, Baron of Penwortham, one of the subfeudatories of Roger de Poictou, had bestowed three carucates of land in Kyrkedale on one Norman, to be held by military service, and that these lands had been inherited by Quenilda, Quenilda the daughter of Roger de Kyrkedale, and were held by the same service. The family of More-originally de Mora, or de la More established themselves here early in the thirteenth century. Amongst the muniments at Knowsley which passed to the Derby family along with the Moore estates, in 1709, there is a very ancient deed, without a date, in which the name of Quenilda de Kyrkedale is introduced. It would not be straining probability very far if we were to assume that the fair Quenilda was the channel through which the estates of Kirkilale passed to the Mores. There is no doubt that the More family family settled in Liverpool about the time of the creation of the borough by the charter of King John. Adam de la More was endowed with lands in Horton by Richard I., confirmed afterwards by John. The earliest of the name recorded in conneetion with Liverpool is John de la More, son of John de Mora, about A.D. 1200,1 Sir John de la More lived at the Hall, in Oldhall Street, 20th Henry III. (1236). Robert de Mora held the manor of Kirkdale in the 5th Edward II. (1312). The acquisition of the Kirkdale property by the More family must, therefore, have been made between the above dates. As the "Testa de Neville," in which Quenilda is named as the possessor of Kirkdale, was compiled at the end of the reign of "Moore Rental," p. 10, Chetham Society's Papers, vol. xi. CHAP. Henry III., the presumption is strongly confirmed that by ts lady the manor of Kirkdale passed to the Mores, Soon after More family, taking possession a manor-house was erected. The dale or zu ly Bank Hall. above alluded to offered a favourable site, giving a plentiful supply of water, and the provision for a moat, without wr h means of defence no mansion in the middle ages was complete. The date of the erection of Bank Hall is assumed to be a D. 1280, but this is by no means certain. Enfield gives it as 1282, founded upon an inscription said to have existed in onnection with the armorial bearings on the entrance gateway; but this is not free from suspicion, as the style of architee. ture represented in the existing views corresponds better with that prevailing in the sixteenth than that of the thirteenth century. However this may be, the family removed here fr More Hall, in Liverpool (hereafter called the Old Hall, at the latter end of the thirteenth century, and occupied a position of respectability and influence in the district for nearly five hundred years. A.D. 1295. A. D. 1306. To the first Parliament summoned by the Crown (1295) Liverpool sent two burgesses, Adam Fitz-Richard and Robert Pynklow. John de la More appears as one of the sureties for the due attendance of these members at Westminster. In 136 Richard de Mora and John de Mora are returned as representatives for the borough. Frequent indications occur in the old annals of the dignified Edward, the Black Prince, for his bravery at the Battle of Who had long claws, And in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron, With a hide as tough as any buff. Which did him round environ. It is true the song places the scene of the encounter at a locality between Sheffield and Rotherham; but in the days f knight-errantry the knight might have a roving commiss; n fr 1 Fragments for the History of Lancashire, p. 164. |