The following lines, from Crabbe, {266} may, without impropriety, be quoted here, after describing the ancient monuments in the church: “Wonder not, mortal, at thy quick decay. See! men of marble piecemeal melt away; When whose the image we no longer read, But monuments themselves memorials need.” CHAPTER XIII. HANDFORD HALL AND CHEADLE CHURCH, CHESHIRE. {267a} HANDFORD is a township of the parish of Cheadle, in Cheshire, in the hundred of Macclesfield, intersected by the London and North Western (formerly the Manchester and Birmingham) Railway, and situated eleven miles from Manchester, and five miles south-west-by-south from Stockport. The village of Handford is agreeably situated in a pleasant part of Cheshire, upon the turnpike-road leading from Manchester to Wilmslow and Congleton. On entering the village from the northward, a neat but small country church, of brick, which is a chapel-of-ease under Cheadle, lying on the left side of the road, and a well-built National School, on the right, are conspicuous objects. The Village Green is noticed by Sir William Brereton, Bart., of Handford, whose family I shall soon have occasion to advert to, and whose travels in Holland, England, &c. &c., in 1634 and 1635, have been published by the Cheetham Society, in vol. i. of the _Cheetham Papers_. He refers to the Village Green, {268a} when narrating his travels in Scotland, and in describing one of the places of public entertainment, he calls it “a poorer house than any upon Handforth Green;” and again {268b} he afterwards states that he had been in a small tavern in Ireland, “a little low thatched Irish house, not to be compared unto Jane Kelsall’s, of the Green at Handforth.” {268c} Her cottage has disappeared, and the Green has long been enclosed: no appearance of either of them now remains, and it may be a question whether portions of the railway and its station do not stand on what was once the south-eastern end of the Green; it is, however, to a certain degree, preserved from oblivion, by the field enclosed from its site, being still called the Green Field.