Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/103

 the neighbourhood respecting the wealth and expenditure of Sir Humphrey Chetham during his residence at the Tower; and certainly they are quite justified by those portions of the structure which bear his name.

At a short distance from the Tower there is a farmhouse, known by the name of Timberbottom, or the Skull House. It is so called from the circumstance that two skulls are or were kept here, one of which was much decayed, and the other appeared to have been cut through by a blow from some sharp instrument. Tradition says that these skulls must be kept in the house, or the inmates will never cease to be disturbed. They are said to have been buried many times in the graveyard at Bradshaw Chapel, but they have always had to be exhumed and brought back to the farmhouse. They have even been thrown into the adjacent river, but to no purpose; for they had to be fished up and restored to their old quarters before the ghosts of their owners could once more rest in peace.

TYRONE'S BED. a bend of the Roach, to the north of Morland or Merland, is Tyrone's Bed, a woody glen, admired for its picturesque scenery, which is said to have been the retreat of one of the Earls of Tyrone in the reign of Elizabeth. The craggy rocks on the one side of this lovely valley, and the steep wooded slopes on the other, with the rivulet in the channel below, are not inappropriately termed "the bed;" but the chief interest of this "romantic dell" centred in the ancient home of the Holts of Grizelhurst, but of which not a vestige now remains. At the period of the legend it was surrounded "by dark