Preface. vii. 



Church, in the Chester Road, were blue every March 

 and April with the spring crocus, and on the very spot 

 where Platt Church now lifts its tall and graceful spire, 

 there was a large pond filled with the Stratiotes, or water- 

 aloe. If the past be a prognostic of the future, it is easy 

 to guess what will happen to other things, and to under- 

 stand how in half a century hence our present 'Walks' 

 will have become as obsolete as their author, and the 

 entire subject require a new and livelier treatment. A 

 descriptive history of the suburbs of Manchester as they 

 were fifty years ago, would be a most interesting and 

 valuable item of our local literature. It would be as 

 curious to the lover of bygones as this book of to-day may 

 perhaps appear to the Manchester people of A.D. 1900. 

 How extraordinary would be the facts may be judged 

 from the following extracts from De Quincey, whose 

 youth, it is well known, was passed in the neighbourhood 

 of Manchester. Mark first what he says of the place he 

 lived in. 'And if, after the manner of the Emperor 

 Aurelius, I should return thanks to Providence for all the 

 separate blessings of my early situation, these four I 

 would single out as worthy of special consideration, 

 that I lived in a rustic solitude; that this solitude was in 

 England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the 



