Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/183

 at the terminus, could also be noticed, and it showed what a fine, broad, and lovely stream this confluent must have been in its ancient and unobstructed condition, with its clear channel and tree-covered, rocky slopes. Unfortunately I had no opportunity of getting a photograph taken; nor did I venture to explore the inside.

Still higher up, at Red Bank, in Hargreaves Street, at the place now occupied by Messrs. W. Clemson & Co., a few years ago, two large separate artificial dome-shaped caves or chambers (showing the work of the pickaxe) were discovered, of which no record exists in our times. They are again cut into the red rock, and their height is 9 to 10 feet. On Green's map (1787–1794) the locality appears as quite unoccupied virgin ground, without buildings. They were professionally examined by an acquaintance of mine, who, as he tells me, explored them for a distance of thirty yards, when he risked no further. They are now used for the disposal of sewerage, and it is impossible to penetrate them thus for excavating the old floor. There is every probability that these caves have been occupied in British, and Pre- and Post-British times as an abode, shelter, and refuge, and it is only a pity that the chance for exploitation is irrevocably gone. They are sure to have yielded inestimable finds of pottery and other remains of prehistoric times.

The antiquity of the occupation of Hunt's Bank, and the banks of the upper courses of the Irk is further accentuated by the discovery of a stone hammer in 1870, at the depth of 20 feet (apparently from the bottom of the old ditch at the junction of Todd and Corporation Streets, and now in Owens College), of a flint flake by me in the Cathedral churchyard, by a perforated stone hammer near Turkey