Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive NotesGrindon, Leo H. (Leo Hartley)
History
Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes
Grindon, Leo H. (Leo Hartley)
Lancashire (England) -- Description and travel
A few miles beyond Bolton the hills begin to rise with dignity. Here
we find far-famed and far-seen Rivington Pike, conspicuous, like
Ashurst, through ascending almost immediately out of the plain. "Pike"
is in Lancashire, and in parts of the country closely adjacent, the
equivalent of "peak," the highest point of a hilly neighbourhood,
though by no means implying an exactly conical or pyramidal figure,
and very generally no more than considerable elevation, as in the case
of the "Peak of Derbyshire." Rivington well deserves its name,
presenting from many points of view one of those beautiful, evenly
swelling, and gently rounded eminences which the ancient Greeks were
accustomed to call [Greek: titthoi] and [Greek: mastoi], as in the
case of the classic mound at Samos which Callimachus connects so
elegantly with the name of the lady Parthenia. There are spots,
however, where the mamelon disappears. From all parts of the summit
the prospect is delightful. Under our feet, unrolled like a carpet, is
a verdant flat which stretches unbrokenly to the sea-margin, twenty
miles distant, declared, nevertheless, by a soft, sweet gleam of
silver or molten gold, according to the position of the sun in the
heavens. The estuary of the Ribble, if the tide be in, renews that
lovely shining; and beyond, in the remote distance, if the atmosphere
be fairly clear, say fifty or sixty miles away, may be discerned the
grand mountains that cast their shadows into Coniston. Working
Lancashire, though it has lakes of its own, has made others! From the
summit of Rivington we now look down upon half a dozen immense
reservoirs, so located that to believe them the work of man is
scarcely possible. Fed by the inflow of several little streams, and no
pains taken to enforce straight margins, except when necessary, these
ample waters exemplify in the best manner how art and science are able
at times to recompense Nature--
"Leaving that beautiful which always was,
And making that which was not."
After heavy and continuous rain, the overflow gives rise to musical
waterfalls. Up in the glen called Deanwood there is also a natural
and nearly permanent cascade.[35]
[35] These vast reservoirs belong to the Liverpool Waterworks,
which first used them in January 1857. The surface, when they
are full, is 500 acres. Another great sheet of water, a mile in
length, for local service, occurs at Entwistle, near Turton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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