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HISTORY OF CAWTHORNE.
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eggs. She nodded her head. Soon after she brought Mr. Coke (afterwards created Earl of Leicester) a five-pound-note. 'There, Squire,' said she, 'is the price of a hundred of your guinea fowl eggs.' Of course the Squire made Polly keep the five-pound-note. One time I was staying at Holkham, a bull killed a labouring man in the salt marshes. The savage brute was standing over his victim, and a crowd was assembled at the gate, when Polly appeared at the opposite gate. There was a cry, 'Get out of the way, Polly, or the bull will kill you.' 'Not he,' was the reply, 'he knows better.' She was right. The moment he saw her he backed astern to the remotest corner of the inclosure. It turned out that the animal had once attempted to run at her, but she lodged a charge of small-shot in his muzzle." (Vol. II., pp. 232, 3.) Neither her fine looks of manly womanhood nor her anecdotes of Holkham and her own former powers with dogs and guns will soon be forgotten by those who knew her. She died at Norcroft in 1873, aged 80.

At the east end of the Church there is a headstone to a William Atkinson, the work of his son Thomas Witlam Atkinson who was born at Cawthorne March 6, 1796, in a house adjoining the old Wesleyan Chapel. This William Atkinson came from Northumberland, and was head mason at Cannon Hall: he married an Elizabeth Bates, of Cawthorne, in 1792, by whom he had two children. After her death in 1795, he married, August, 1798, a Martha Witlam, housemaid at Cannon Hall, and Thomas Witlam was their eldest son. "Thomas, son of William and Martha Atkinson, mason, baptised March 25, 1799." This son began life at ten as a mason's labourer with his father, attending school in winter, and receiving lessons in writing and drawing from his elder half-brother. In 1822, he was working as a mason on St. George's Church, Barnsley, walking daily from his home. The headstone to his mother in our Churchyard has been called his "first great work." The Rev. C. S. Stanhope was so pleased with one of his designs that he persuaded him to go to Manchester. He went there, and afterwards to London, and set up as an architect. There are at Cannon Hall several pictures of the Church of St. Nicholas, Lower Tooting, of which he was the architect in 1832, building that church, "to hold 1,083 "persons," at a cost of £4,619. When a considerable part of