first thought while measuring, not forgetting that while his walls would remain unchanged, the trees would grow. They are not of the same age. The yew being one of the trees which are distinctly unisexual, it is plain that the object in introducing the second individual was to secure red berries, such as are still produced abundantly every year. In 1736 the Speke estate passed, through a marriage, into the hands of one of the Beauclerk family, concerning whom the historians seem to care to say no more than is needful; and in 1780 it was purchased by Mr. Richard Watt, an opulent Liverpool merchant. Continuing in his family, it is now held by the lady--Miss Ada Watt--whose kindly permission to enter the gates is indispensable. [Illustration: Tho. Letherbrow. _Hale Hut._] Hale, renowned for its cottage-gardens, with lilies and roses beyond the counting, is a quiet, peaceful, salubrious little place, claiming celebrity as regards historical mention long anterior to that of Liverpool. When the site of that wealthy city was known to few but fishermen, Hale, so its people assert, already possessed a royal charter. To-day the archæologist turns with interest to the remains of a mansion which in its way must have been a fitting companion even for Speke--the ancient baronial residence called the Hutte, about two miles upon the Liverpool side of the village, and lying back a little distance from the turnpike road. The great hall was a hundred feet long by thirty feet wide; scarcely anything is to be seen now beyond some of the grand old windows, an ancient chimneypiece, and the moat, with its drawbridge. Hale Church, like the Hutte, tells of a time when the maps did not insert Liverpool.[29] The body dates from about the middle of the last century, but the tower is of immemorial age, contemporaneous perhaps with the vast pile at the western extremity of Ormskirk old church, thus with the very earliest ecclesiastical remains extant in Lancashire. Here, too, we have a beautiful example of the ancient lych-gate.