THE Workhouse for the Saddleworth Union is a low stone building of no great dimensions, standing on about as bleak and cold a site as could well I have been selected. It stands on the hill-side on your left hand as you walk from Diggle to Saddleworth, part of that dorsal Pennine Range we call "the back bone of Old England." Its exterior is grim and forbidding, nor is the external promise redeemed by any extravagance of luxury inside. It is in unenviable contrast to the palatial structures modern architects design for the option of the sick and destitute. But it is healthily situated, and that counts for much. All in front as you look down the valley, are the green fields; at its rear stretch the moors on which sheep graze and lambs bleat and gamble conies sport and burrow and where the warning "Go-back, go-back" of the grouse salutes the ear as summer softens into autumn, and the purple heather hides the luscious bilberry. At the time of which I write no mill chimney belched their smoke into the air and the breezes that swept the Workhouse on every side though blowing at times with unwelcome force, were pure and sweet. The Workhouse kine yielded milk so abundantly that adulteration was never thought of; the kitchen-garden, tended by the pauper hands, was rich in its herbs and vegetables, and a small flower garden gave forth the fragrance of the hardier roses, of musk and mignonette, whilst sweet williams, forget-me-nots and stocks gave colour and variety, dear to the eye of the female paupers. It is true the wards were low, the benches hard, the light and ventilation far removed from modern notions; but in this respect they differed in no wise, or if they differed, differed for the better, from the houses of the well-to-do farmers and tradesmen of the district.