Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/249

 thrown across the Calder, that conduced us into Wakefield, offers a beautiful specimen of Gothic architecture in a little chapel highly charged with sculptured ornaments, and vulgarly said to have been built by Edward IV. in memory of his unfortunate father; but known to have existed seventy years previously to his reign. Its ecclesiastical uses expired with masses and obits at the Reformation, and it now serves the purpose of a warehouse.

The town of Wakefield is laid out in several handsome streets, and ornamented with a magnificent Gothic church. Great wealth has been thrown into it by the woollen trade; an affluence which is seen in its large proportion of respectable private mansions. The business of the common weekly markets of Thursday and Friday is chiefly the sale of this article by the factors, to whom it is consigned from all parts of England, and the purchase of it by the manufacturers of the neighbouring clothing country. A large cattle fair every fortnight supplies provision, in a great measure, to the bordering counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Though some of the white cloths, the production of the Yorkshire manufactories, be sold at Wakefield, yet by far the greatest part find a market at Leeds, nine miles further to the north, a town rising into the first importance in point of internal