was built. Eccles is two miles beyond Pendleton, and here, as we shall see, were two crosses in the market place. There may have been others between these villages. Patricroft is a mile west from Eccles. In all probability a cross, dedicated to S. Patrick, once stood here. Proceeding from Patricroft, on the ancient road to Warrington, Barton Old Hall is reached at a distance of a full half mile. The ancient cross discovered here by Mr. Rowbotham is described later in these pages. The site of another cross is probably recorded by the words "Cross Field," which we find on the ordnance map on the north side of this road-two miles south-west from Barton Cross—and about half a mile short of the village of Higher Irlam. This road skirts the vast morass called Chat Moss, a dangerous place for travellers in the old times, and this cross (and possibly others of which there is now no record) may have been placed here as guides to travellers.

LADY PEARLE.-In the Salford Portmote Records the editor refers to the various entries in these volumes which show that miraculous powers were supposed to belong to the waters of this spring. The site was on the northerly side of the Irwell, half a mile in a southwesterly direction from the Salford Cross, a little to the west of the present New Bailey Street bridge.

Mr. J. G. de T. Mandley writes: "Among such items there appear several sums paid for 'Carrying a Creple (cripple) to the powl.' In some cases the 'creples' were carried on horseback, in others on a barrow-probably a hand, not a wheel barrow. By the 'powl' or pool I take it that the 'Pirle' or 'Lady Pearle' spring is meant. all probability this spring was the one that gave the name to the spaw or spa house (shown in the engraving,

In

'South West Prospect of Manchester and Salford,' 17101730), supposed to have been on the river bank where Stanley Street now is and where the Lying-in Hospital used to be, and credited, like Holywell in North Wales, and other such places, with miraculous healing property."

Halliwell Lane, Cheetham Hill, about one and a half miles to the north of Manchester, may have been the site of a mediæval holy well, although these words do not necessarily prove that such a well ever existed here.

KERSAL CELL is thus described in Dugdale's Monasticon: "At Kershall or Kyrkshawe, a Cluniac cell. King Henry II. granted and King John, anno reg. 1, confirmed, to the monastery of Lenton, in Nottinghamshire, the hermitage here, which thereupon became a small house of Cluniac Monks, and a cell to that priory was granted, 32 Henry VIII., to Baldwin Willoughby."

Kersal Cell is now an interesting old-fashioned house. It contains an ancient domestic chapel on the first floor. The house is two and a half miles north-west from Manchester Cathedral.

Pendleton CROSS.-A record of this structure is to be found in the Binns Collection at Liverpool, on a map of Pendleton Green—a triangular piece of ground on which S. Thomas's Church now stands. A small church, Baines states, was built here in 1776. It was rebuilt in 1831. The plan is undated, but on it is drawn a Latin cross on steps, similar to those shown on Saxton's map of Lancaster. Close to the cross are some lines, which, I think, are intended to represent the stocks. These structures are shown on the southerly side of the green.

ECCLES.

The site of this village is about four miles west from Manchester and a quarter of a mile north of a bend in the river Irwell. The church is ancient, and stands about two hundred yards to the north of the heart of the village. The market place is of a somewhat unusual shape, two hundred yards in length with a triangular space at each end, from which roads diverge in various directions. At the time of the original ordnance survey (in 1845) the easterly triangle was regarded as the market place, and is so marked on the map. In the middle of it is still to be seen a rough stone pillar, which may have. been the shaft of the ancient cross. The surveyors evidently so regarded it, for the word "Cross," in ancient Gothic letters, appears close to it on the map. This pillar resembles that near the stocks at Roby, in the West Derby hundred. Near this pillar an ill-proportioned Latin cross has, in recent times, been erected on two thin steps. In the triangular space at the west end of the market place, at one time stood another cross, all traces of which have disappeared. This was called the Lower Cross, and the market cross the Upper Cross.

LADY'S WELL, ECCLES.-This holy well is marked on the ordnance map in a clough on the easterly side of Gilda Brook, a small tributary of the Irwell. The site is about three hundred yards east of the parish church. The spot is well-known to the Eccles villagers, and the well is still in existence.

*From ecclesia, the source of such Welsh and Scotch names as Ecclefechan we may probably explain the names of Eccles, and five places called Eccleston."

in Norfolk and Lancashire Names and their Histories.

LORD'S WELL, ECCLES.-This well is shown on the ordnance map on the opposite side of Gilda Brook, within a few yards of Lady's Well.

Monk's Hall is distant a quarter of a mile north-west from Eccles Market Place.

SALTER'S LANE CROSS.-During the formation of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1889 a portion of the shaft of a pre-Norman cross was discovered at a depth of about seventeen feet below the surface, at the point where Salter's Lane leads from the Eccles Market Place down to a very ancient ford over the river Irwell. The stone is now in the Owens College Museum in Manchester, and is two feet in height, five inches thick, and thirteen and a half inches across the top. The face is covered with interlacing rope-work ornamentation of a type very familiar to us. A good example occurs at Bolton-le

Sands.

This ford has been assumed to be one over which salt was carried to Manchester from the mines in Cheshire, but unquestionably it has a much earlier derivation. Canon Isaac Taylor tells us (as already mentioned) that "Salterford, Notts (D.B. Saltreford), must be the ford at the sallow tree (A.S. sealh, a sallow)." Crosses in mediæval times were often placed near fords for the purpose of encouraging acts of devotion on the part of travellers, whose business not infrequently compelled them to cross a river in flood time, or when there was some real danger to life.

Patricroft (as we have seen) is an ancient village on the old road between Manchester and Warrington, one mile west of Eccles. I have been favoured with some ingenious speculations as to the probability of there once