Page:Roman Manchester (1900) by Charles Roeder.djvu/56

 Medlock, having Great Jackson Street on the left, leaving Hulme on the right, it passed the Cornbrook, near Pomona Gardens, where, as I am informed by Mr. Healy, a ganger, an old structure, consisting of a stone arch of red sandstone, topped by another one, was found 11 feet below some twenty years ago. Then it passed along to Stretford and Broadheath. On issuing from the eastern gate it was 14 yards wide and 1½ yards deep. Even in Whitaker's time all traces in the immediate neighbourhood of Hulme were already obliterated. Mr. George Esdaile exhibited in 1885 a drawing of a section of the Chester road, ¾ mile long, according to which the Roman road in that direction was formed of a layer of gravel boulders, a layer of red gravel, a thick bed of gorse, ling, and brushwood, in thickness from 3 feet to 4 feet. At Edisbury, in Cheshire, the road was found 30 feet to 36 feet wide, and thus seems to have pretty well kept up its uniform width throughout its length.

, 13 yards wide, issued from the western gate. It was 17 Roman miles long and formed the tenth Iter. It probably avoided the morass, crossing at a very acute angle the high bank which fringed the western wall, descending the crest near the south-west angle of the station, and following the southern bank of the Medlock to the Woden's Ford (= Hulme Bridge). According to Barritt, it was a fine paved causeway, and pointed out yet (in 1832) as a broad ridge of gravel and stones on the south side of Regent Road, in the first field on the west side of Ordsall Farm.