Page:The National Gazetteer - A Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands, Volume 2.djvu/837

Rh MIDDLESCEUGH. 829 MIDDLESEX. stone in tho Cleveland district by Mr. Vaughan in 1850> and the completion of tho railway into Middlesborough, have made this place one of the most important manu- facturing centres in the kingdom. The total number of blast furnaces erected in the N. of England in the first forty-five years of the present century, was only thirty- seven, but since the iron of Cleveland was worked, thirty-six blast furnaces have been built in and around Middlesborough alone. From this great manufacturing centre, the very air of which is a mere dilution of soot, the Stockton and Darlington railway runs to Saltburn, passing en route through such a succession of iron works and iron factories as no other spot of the same size pro- bably in all the world can show tho equal of. The most remarkable fact, however, is, that notwithstanding tho evidences of ancient mining operations, from the heaps of scoria scattered around in some places, as at Grosmont, prown over with oaks, the growth of centuries, which testified to the richness of the ore all practical men united in condemning the ore as useless, till Mr. Vaughan, in ISoO, stumbled over a boulder of pure iron, which led him to look for the ironstone, and then it was found to be everywhere. Since that time the iron has been sent to every known part of the world ; and it is now ad- mitted, that this hitherto despised bed of ironstone is fine in quality and boundless in quantity. Tho bed, in fact, extends from the Tees to the Humber, and is fifty or sixty miles broad. In 1863, while sinking a well for the supply of their immense ironworks, the Messrs. Bolckow and Vaughan struck on a now salt bed at a depth of 1,300 feet below the surface, and the vein, as far as at present worked, is 112 feet in thickness. It has not yet been wrought as a source of profit, but may eventually prove a valuable addition to the mineral wealth of this district. A now dock of great magnitude was completed in 1842, in which are several staiths com- municating with a platform and the railway, by which means vessels can bo loaded and- unloaded independent of the fluctuation of the tide. The quantity of coals shipped during the year is considerable. There are ex- tensive building yards for sailing and steam-ships, also other works for the manufacture of dock-gates, bridges, iron sleepers, &e. On the river are saw and flour-mills, breweries, mailings, a tannery, pottery, and other manu- factories. The town, which has recently been created a borough, is governed by a mayor elected annually. It is well paved, lighted with gas, and abundantly supplied with water, under an Act passed in 1841. It contains several good streets, the chief of which run N., S., E., and W. at right angles. There is also a market square, with the townhall in the centre. There are two banks, a savings-bank, literary institution, custom house, and Corporation Hall, where the magistrates hold their meetings. The living is a perpet. cur. in the dioc. of York, val. 34. The church, dedicated to St. Hilda, is a neat structure with a spire, containing one bell. The church was erected in 1839. The Wesleyans, Indepen- dents, Roman Catholics, and Primitive Methodists have places of worship, and the Friends a meeting-house. The cemetery of the old Benedictine Priory is still used, but all vestiges of the chapel have disappeared. Market day is Saturday. MIDDLESCEUGH, a hmlt. in the par. of St. Mary's, C irlisle, Leath ward, co. Cumberland, 9 mile N.W. of IVnrith, and C E. by N. of Hesket-Market. It is situ- ated on a branch of the river Caldew, and is joined to Braithwaite. MIDDLESEX, the metropolitan co. of England, in-
 * ing London. It forms part of the valley of the

lues, on the bank of which it is situated, and of the 'gical tertiary basin of London, being bounded on N r. by the hills of Hertfordshire, on the E. by Essex, from which it is divided by the river Lea ; on the S. and S.E. by Surrey, and a very small part of Kent, from both which it is divided by tho river Thames ; and n the W. by Buckinghamshire, from which it is divided by the river Colne. It extends between 51 23' and 57 42' N. lat., and between 2' E. long., and 32' W. long. It ia the smallest of all the English counties VOL. II. except Rutland, containing only 282 square miles, or 180,136 statute acres. Its form is irregular, stretching from the Lea near Waltham Abbey in the N.E., to the Thames opposite Chertsey in the S. W. 28 miles, and in the opposite direction from near South Mimms in the N.W., to the Isle of Dogs in the S.E., an extreme breadth of 18 miles. It is much built over, containing in 1861 no fewer than 279,153 inhabited houses, 13,379 uninha- bited, and 3,45 1 public buildings. In amount of popula- tion it is exceeded by Lancashire alone, and in density of population far exceeds any other county, having about 7,000 inhabitants to the square mile. According to the census of 1801, the population, including that part of the metropolis which is locally within its limits, amounted to 818,129; in 1851, to 1,886,576; and in 1861, to 2,206,485, showing an increase of 319,909 in the last decennial period. Its surface, which is now so richly cultivated, comprising above 150,000 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture, besides gardens and orchards, was formerly a barren wilderness. In the earliest period of authentic tiistory the northern part of the county was a vast forest, connected with those of Epping and Waltham on the E., and Windsor Forest on the W. ; extending also northwards to Eufield Chase, and southwards to the fenny lands without the walls of London, still designated by the names of Moorfields and Finsbury, or Fensbury. The whole of this forest was abundantly stocked with deer, and other wild animals, many of which survived till the 16th century, and solitary remnants of which may still be occasionally met with in the less frequented districts,- and small patches of primeval wood which have never been grubbed up. At this time the Thames not being, as at present, kept within its channel by artificial embankments, frequently overflowed the lower grounds, and occasionally changed its bed, as shown by the irregular deposition of gravel in various places, and the uniform covering of loam which is found above it. From tho original Iberians, or Britons, whose bone and stone implements are occasionally turned up, the country appears to have been invested at a very early time by the Belgic tribo of the Tranovantwys, "the people beyond the stream," so called by tho southern Britons from the situation of their country to the N. of the wide expanse of water then formed by the Thames. At the time of the Roman invasion (B.C. 54), this people, whoso name was corrupted by Caesar into Trinobantea, possessed two considerable cities, or fortified places ; one occupying the eminence between the Thames and tho Fleet brook, now the centre of modern London, and the other Camalodunum, or Colchester, in Essex, then the most important of the two stations. Owing to their intestine divisions the Trinobantes were unable to mam- tain a lengthened resistance, and were the first to submit to the Roman arms. Atter the complete subjugation of the island, this county was included in the division Flavin Casariensis, and the British town of Londinium, formed into the Roman settlement of Augusta, even then a place of great importance, though not dignified with the name of a colony. The Romans had another station, Sulloniaca, in this county, at Brockley Hill, between Edg- waro and Elstree, and, according to some antiquaries, also Pmtes : but this last was more probably in Berk- shire. Until very recently, traces of Roman camps were visible in Hornsey -Wood Fields, near Islington, at Stanmore, and at Shepperton, near tho place where Caesar crossed the Thames. These camps were formed to guard the line of Roman road, one of which, the ancient Watling Street, ran from Dowgate on the N. bank of the Thames, along the lino of the modern Watling-street to Aldersgate, and thence in a north- westerly direction through Sulloniacce (Brockley-hill) to Verulamium (St. Alban'sj) ; another, the Ermine Street, ran from Londinium northward by the camp at Islington to Enfield, thence diverging to Clay-hill, and so into Hertfordshire. A third Roman road led from Londinium, in the line of the present great western road, by fonta, into Surrey and Berkshire, while another led witward, along Old-street, through Bethnal-green, to Old Ford where it crossed the Lea into Essex. These Roman 5 N