Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/636

Rh 612 R, O C R C park 12 acres in extent. The parish church of St Chad, occupying the high grounds overlooking the town, is built on the site of a church which was erected in the 12th century. The town-hall is a very extensive and elaborate structure in the Decorated Gothic style, and had originally a tower surmounted by a gilded spire 140 feet in height, which was destroyed by fire in 1883. The building, com- pleted in 1871 at a cost of 150,000, includes a large hall for public meetings and various municipal rooms. For the free public library, with about 40,000 volumes, a new building was opened in. 1884. Of the educational charities the principal are the Archbishop Parker free grammar-school, founded in 1565, and the free English school. Among the other public institutions are the infir- mary (lately much enlarged), the literary and scientific society, and the art society. The staple manufactures are those of woollens and cottons. There are, besides, foundries, iron-works, and machine-factories. Coal and stone are obtained extensively in the neighbourhood of the town. Rochdale was the birthplace of the co-operative movement. The town was first incorporated in 1856 and divided into three wards, but when the area of the muni- cipal borough was extended and made coextensive with the parliamentary borough it was divided into ten wards, governed by a mayor, ten aldermen, and thirty councilmen. Rochdale has returned one member to the House of Com- mons since the Reform Act of 1832. The population of the borough (area, 4172 acres) in 1871 was 63,485, and in 1881 it was 68,866. In early times Rochdale was situated entirely in the township of Castleton, where at one time stood the castle which gave its name to the township. Near the town are the remains of a Roman road leading over the Blackstone Edge Hills, which separate Lancashire and Yorkshire. The name Rochdale appears in Domesday Book as Recedam, and it was subsequent to the Norman Conquest that the town began to spread into the valley of the Roch. From the time of William the Conqueror the manor and estates were held by the De Lacys, but after some centuries they became merged in the crown. By Elizabeth they were bestowed on Sir John Byron, and in 1823 they were sold by Lord Byron the poet to James Dearden, in whose family they now remain. The town obtained a charter for a market in the reign of Richard I. ; this charter was con- firmed by Heniy III., who added the privilege of holding an annual fair. ROCHEFORT, a town of France, the chef-lieu of an arrondissement of the department of Charente Inf6rieure and of the fourth maritime prefecture, lies on the right bank of the Charente, 9 miles from the Atlantic, and is built partly on the side of a rocky hill and partly on old marshland, which renders the position unhealthy. The town is laid out with great regularity in chess-board fashion. The fortifications are sufficient merely to prevent it being taken by surprise. By rail it is connected with La Rochelle (18 miles north -north-west), Niort, and Saintes. There are both a naval and a commercial harbour. The former has the advantage of deep anchorage well pro- tected by batteries at the mouth of the river, and the roadstead is perfectly safe. The windings of the channel, however, between Rochefort and the sea, and the bar at the entrance render navigation dangerous. This harbour and arsenal, which are separated from the town by a line of fortifications with three gates, contain large covered building yards (where eighteen vessels of the first class may be upon the stocks at once), eleven slips, three repair- ing docks, and on the right bank of the Charente in the Gardette meadows a large timber basin capable of floating 1,766,000 cubic feet of timber. Besides the various estab- lishments implied in the name, the arsenal is the seat of a ropewalk dating from 1666, a school of navigation and pilotage, a signal-tower 98 feet high (once attached to a church), the offices of the maritime prefecture, the navy commissariat, a park of artillery, and various boards of direction connected with the navy. About 5000 or 6000 men are usually employed in the arsenal. Other Govern- ment establishments at Rochefort are barracks for infantry, artillery, and marines, a provision factory, and the naval hospital- (800 beds) and school of medicine. In the grounds of this last institution is an artesian well, sunk in 1862-66 to a depth of 2800 feet and yielding water at a temperature of 107 Fahr. The commercial harbour, higher up the river than the naval harbour, has two basins with an aggregate area of 5 acres and 3400 feet of quays, and a third basin is being constructed (1885) 25 acres in extent with 3800 feet of quays, capable of admit- ting large vessels on every day of the year. The town has good public and botanic gardens, and the Place Col- bert contains an allegorical group representing the ocean and the Charente mingling their waters. Besides ship- building, which forms the staple industry of Rochefort, sailcloth and furniture are the local manufactures, and hemp for cordage is grown in the vicinity. Along with Tonnay-Charente, 4 miles higher up, Rochefort has a trade in brandies, salt, grain, flour, cattle, horses, fish, colonial wares, timber, and coal. There is regular steamboat com- munication with the United Kingdom. In 1882 285 vessels (128,570 tons) entered and 270 (123,501) cleared. The population of the town was 26,022 in 1881 (27,854 in the commune). The lordship of Rochefort, held by powerful nobles as early as the llth century, was united to the French crown by Philip the Fair in 1303 ; but it was alternately seized in the course of the Hundred Years' War by the English and the French, and in the wars of religion by the Catholics and Protestants. Colbert having in 1665 chosen Rochefort as the seat of a repairing port between Brest and the Gironde, the town rapidly increased in importance : by 1674 it had 20,000 inhabitants; and, when the Dutch admiral Tromp appeared at the mouth of the river with seventy-two vessels for the purpose of destroying the new arsenal, he found the ap- proaches so well defended that he gave up his enterprise. It was at Rochefort that the naval school now transferred to Brest was originally founded. The town continued to flourish in the later part of the 17th century. In 1690 and in 1703 it escaped from the attempts made by the English to destroy it. Its fleet under the command of La Galissonniere, a native of the place, did dis- tinguished service in the wars of American independence, the re- public, and the empire. But the destruction of the French fleet by the English in 1809 in the roadstead of lie d'Aix, the preference accorded to the harbours of Brest and Toulon, and the unhealthiness of its climate have seriously interfered with the prosperity of the place. The convict establishment founded at Rochefort in 1777 was suppressed in 1852. ROCHEFOUCAULD. See LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. ROCHELLE, LA, a town and seaport of France, the chef- lieu of the department of Charente-Inferieure, is situated on the Atlantic coast in 46 9' N. lat., 296 miles by rail south-west of Paris. Its fortifications, which were con- structed by Vauban, have a circuit of 3| miles with seven gates. In population (20,028 in 1881 ; 22,464 in the commune) it ranks after Rochefort. The harbour, one of the safest and most accessible on the coast, comprises an outer harbour, a tidal basin, a wet dock, and a graving dock. The outer harbour is still protected by the dry stone mole, about a mile long, constructed by Richelieu. The wet dock (7 acres) is capable of receiving ships of 1000 tons. Behind these is the Maubec basin, the water of which along with that of the Niort Canal helps to scour the port and navigable channel. On the fortifications towards the sea are three towers, of which the oldest (1384) is that of St Nicholas. The apartment in the first story was formerly used as a chapel. The chain tower (1476) was at one time connected with that of St Nicholas by a great pointed arch. The lantern tower (1475-76), seven stories high, affords a fine view of the town, the roadstead, and the surrounding islands, and at present is used as a military prison. Of the ancient gateways only one has been preserved in its entirety, that of the "grosse hor loge," a huge square tower of the 14th or 15th century,