Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/236

Chap/ VII. O F M A N G rt E S T E R. 205 where therefote within the compafs of this diftri& muft the town, have originally ftood. And a little fold of houfes remains fa this diftrift to the prefent period, which carries in all the fcecorcteof the place the *&ual appellation of ALDPORT- TOW or Old Borough Town *. On the ground therefore im* mediately contiguous to thefe houfes muft the town have been originally planted. And betwixt the Caftle-field and the fold Isapare^ftf fixteen or feventeen acres, which is now convert- ed 1 chiefly- frito gardens, and which was certainly the original .area of the aotient Manchester. This lies immediately without .the northern barriers of the ftation, and thief extends up to the new houfes and the new church in the Camp-field. In the im- mediate ikirts of a great town the plough muft have long and frequently ranftcked the ground. And the many antiquities wfricH it called Intp light would either be never attended to at all f or be feen admired and forgotten. * But the foil of the ibiithfeni part of this area is abfolutely one great body of adven- titious* earth, .fragments of bricks, pieces of hewn ftones^ and remnants of urns. Huge blocks of a . mijlftone-grit, fiich as appeared in the rude foundation of tile £r itons within the Caftle-field, and what had undoubtedly been brought down by the torrents of the Medlock, have been recently dug up within the circuit of the area with their mortar firmly adhering to them* And the whole level of the ground appears to have been tra- verfed with ftreets of fegujar pavemqnt in a variety of dire&ions acrofait Upon that particular ground then which is terminated by an high fteep bank arid a morafs below it on the weft, by the great fofle of the ftation on the (both, by the prefent highway or Ald- port-lane on the eaft, and by TlckJiepitcher-lane or Camp-field on the north, was the TOWN OF MANCHESTER originally ereSed. Upon this plat, thep in the depth of the extenfive wood of Arden, were the Siftuntii of this region induced by Agricola to ereft a town. Thus induced, they felled the trees which from the firft poffeffion of the ifland had been the only tenants of the foil. They laid open the area, then firft laid open, to r*