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 PREFACE

HE County Palatine of Lancaster presents to the eye of the traveller and historian alike a wide diversity of characteristics, physical, social, and industrial. The western or coastal region is flat, or very slightly undulating, whilst the eastern and northern regions consist of extensive areas of moorland and fell, intersected by deep and once secluded valleys. Inhabited at the Conquest by a sparse population mainly dwelling in the open country, the hills and pastoral region in course of time afforded settlements to the gradually increasing population, under conditions somewhat removed from the old-established village communities with their feudal influences. Whilst the western and southern regions were in the main composed of large estates held by knightly families and their dependent franklyns or freeholders, the eastern and northern regions consisted of small estates painfully improved from the woods and hilly wastes by the predecessors of the small yeomen and copyhold tenants, a vigorous and thrifty race of men, whose rapid disappearance during the last half-century amounts almost to a grave national and social disaster. From the race inhabiting these small pastoral estates sprang the great bulk of the spinners and weavers, artisans and colliers, who have done so much to give to this county that industrial supremacy which has long distinguished it in common with the neighbouring county of York. The impetus which led to the result was largely due to the limited application of labour required upon small pastoral estates, whereby the leisure time of the inhabitants was available for home industries, a condition which did not obtain on the arable lands of western and south-western Lancashire. A hardy life, an invigorating climate and surroundings, engendered industry, thrift, and inventiveness. Wool, the raw material for manufacture, and water power for the fulling mills necessary to finish the woven cloth, were available in every valley, whilst an unlimited supply of materials for building and of fuel for burning engendered amongst the people a love of substantially built homesteads and homely comforts.

Trading centres naturally sprang up in such places as Manchester, Liverpool, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, and Lancaster, due to their situation upon frequented roads giving communication between the west of England and the lowlands of Scotland on the one hand, the eastern xix