82 Country Rambles. 



across a few fields leads to Baguley Mill. The lanes are 

 full of fragrant roses ; the high hedges shelter innumerable 

 veronicas; and by the sides of the little water-courses, 

 close to the mill, grows abundance of the hart's-tongue fern. 

 To attempt the whole in the space of a single afternoon, 

 of course is not practicable, especially if one is verging 

 towards that inexorable period of life when gravitation 

 begins to get the better of a man sooner than he has 

 been accustomed to; nor is it intended to recommend 

 so much. Gatley Carrs suffice for one walk; the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of Northen and the river banks 

 provide another; and Baguley via Sale will pleasantly 

 supply objects for a third. There is a fourth, moreover, 

 well commenced at Didsbury, but keeping in the direction 

 of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, so as eventually to reach Barlow 

 Hall, the local residence of Mr. William Cunliffe Brooks. 

 The archaeological interest of Barlow Hall we have not 

 room here to enlarge upon. It must suffice to invite 

 attention to Mr. Letherbrow's beautiful etching of the 

 best fragment in preservation, the period of which is 

 believed to be that of the reign of Henry VIII., when 

 the hall was occupied by the very ancient and historical 

 family of de Barlow, allied by marriage to the still more 

 celebrated Stanleys, as shown by the heraldry of the 

 window. 



No chapter of the original little volume of 1858 calls 

 for so many obituary notices, now in 1882, as this one 

 descriptive of Gatley Carrs. The magnificent, not to say 

 unique, Didsbury sycamore was cut down a year or two 



