Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/206

 Chap. VI. OF MANCHESTER, 177 fcent on; every fide, ditches encircling the hill, and a brook flowing at the bottom. The banks are much ftecper and higher than the banks of Lowcafter, having a (harp defcent of an hun- dred yards upon one fide, a (harper of eighty on another, and a fteep fall of fifty and a gentle one of an hundred in the boggy grounds beyond on the reft. The ditches, which are very vi- fible on one fide, which may be eafily traced along two others, and which form the prefent ditch of the field on the fourth, are. not at the bottom of the flope, but confiderably above the mid- dle of it, and are twenty-five twenty and fifteen yards in depth. And the entrance ;s the prefent road of accefs from the Moor, the road coming up the lane from the brook, and amend- ing dire&ly the fteep of the hill l Another little ftation was placed within the Vale of Brough- ton* in the prefent townftrip of Pendleton, and near the extre- mity of the lane that pafles through New- hall Fold to the river. It is an oblong hillock of fand, and is popularly denominated Hyle or Hill Wood. It has an irregular plane of half an acre in extent, had its entrance, as it ftiU has, on the fouth-weft, and Another opening behind to the river, and is. furrounded in every part by deep ditches or fteep afcents or both that fink fifteen twenty thirty or forty yards below the furface of the Hill. And amid the beautiful valley in which the fort was placed, thQ valley that is formed by the high grounds of Salford Pendleton Kerfal and Broughton,. furrounded as it was by the pleafing cir? cle of thefe doping hills, and remote from every ftationary road, it could have only one military objedt in view. That muft have been the protection of the cattle which grazed along the ample level of. the valley. For fuch grazings the valley muft have * been particularly fuited, as the brown. hazel r coloured mold of it is remarkably rich, as the fite of it was fufficiently near to the great ftation, and as the ftream of the Irwell courfes thrice through the whole extent of it. The Irwell, entering the vale by a large opening on the north-weft, and flowing direftly beneath the weftern hills to the (buth, is turned to the north-eaft by the heights of Pendleton, is warped towards the caft by the heights A a of