Wythenshawe. 79 



botany. But none who have taken the trouble to form 

 them ever regret it, while all confess their inestimable 

 service. Even if the herbarium served no scientific 

 purpose whatever, there is always the pleasure of finding 

 in it a garden all the year round. 



Here spring perpetual leads the laughing hours, 

 And winter wears a wreath of summer flowers. 



Via Northen is the pleasantest route to the beautiful 

 district of which the centre is Wythenshawe Hall, a 

 remarkably fine building of the time of James the First, 

 and at present the seat of Mr. Thomas Wm. Tatton. It 

 is approached through a piece of ground called the "Sax- 

 field," upon which tradition says there was once a terrible 

 fight between Saxons and Danes ; old maps mark the 

 place with crossed swords. We have not much of 

 historical interest pertaining to the neighbourhood of 

 Manchester, but what there is seems to concentrate 

 about Northen. The Pretender, Prince Charles Edward, 

 crossed the river in 1 745, at a place not very far below 

 Cheadle Bridge, and it is curious that the Prince 

 Consort's visit, in 1857, when he came to open the 

 Art-Treasures Exhibition at Old Trafford, should have 

 been made by way of the very bridge alluded to. In 

 1644 Wythenshawe was besieged by a party of Cromwell's 

 soldiers, who planted a battery on the side overlooking 

 Northen, and threw many cannon-shots against the 

 house. During some alterations in the garden a 

 few years since, and the conversion of a pond-bottom 

 into flower-beds, several of the balls were found; and 



