Peeping out from the thick umbrage on the adjacent height we get a glimpse of the modern mansion of Shrigley—the successor of an ancient house that for full five centuries and a half was the abode of the once famous, though now extinct, family of Downes; the chiefs of which held the hereditary forestership of Downes and Taxal, in the Royal forest of Macclesfield, with the right of hanging and drawing within their jurisdiction, and further claimed the privilege of holding the King’s stirrup when he came a-hunting in the forest, as well as of rousing the stag for his amusement; in allusion to which office they bore a white hart upon their shield of arms, with a stag’s head for crest. But Shrigley has other associations. In more recent times the name was identified with an outrageous case of abduction—the carrying off and pretended marriage of the youthful heiress of that pleasant domain by the notorious adventurer, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, in 1826. Below, where the great break occurs in the mountainous ridge, and the hills look as if riven asunder by the stroke of a giant’s hand, lies the little town of Bollington, where the cotton trade has established itself, and the tall chimneys—the “steam towers,” as Crabbe calls them—do their best, though in a small way, it is true, to detract from the natural beauties of the landscape. The hill which terminates the ridge nearest to us bears the name of the Nab, and the one that bounds the opposite side of the defile, the summit of which is crowned with a whitewashed summer-house that gleams brightly in the sunshine, is popularly known as White Nancy. With White Nancy the Kerridge hills, famed for their freestone quarries, come in view. The name (Cær Ridge) suggests the idea that the Romans had a camp or minor station in the vicinity, and the opinion is strengthened by the fact that one of their highways led eastwards over the rocky ridge.