52 JOSIAS CHRISTOPHER GAMBLE 



game also was abundant ; even after various 

 works had begun to spring up, on wintry 

 days, pheasants would venture to seek shelter 

 from the blast in the warm sheds that 

 glowed with the light of furnaces. On one 

 occasion, about the year 1845, a stag pursued 

 by Sir John Gerard's hounds scampered into 

 Gamble's works, and crashed into a pile of 

 disused carboys. The chimneys of colliery 

 engine-houses, and cones of glass-works rose 

 amidst farm buildings and stacks of hay and 

 corn. Cornfields, luxuriant hedgerows, and 

 healthy though always stunted timber, for 

 the soil was not congenial to its growth, 

 adorned the landscape. Families that con- 

 stituted the society of that day, had their 

 comfortable halls, or commodious and well- 

 built residences, with ample and highly- 

 cutivated gardens. 



The names of Greenall, Cross, Caldwell, 

 Fildes, Speakman, Orrell, Robinson, Watson, 

 Pilkington, Gaskell, Casey, Daglish, Bromi- 

 low, Keates, West, Fincham, Cotham, Morley, 

 the three Johnsons, Grundy, Eckersley, 

 Haddock, and others will recall many memo- 

 ries of those days ; a vivid picture presents 

 itself of the pleasant social life of which St. 

 Helens was the scene, and many a tale is 



