2 1 8 Country Rambles. 



unfortunate man is told in the beautiful and pathetic 

 ballad, "The Blessed Conscience," preserved in the late 

 Mr. T. T. Wilkinson's well-known volume. It would 

 seem to have been one of the earliest buildings of the 

 kind constructed entirely of stone. Perfect in design, 

 and in excellent preservation, Hoghton Tower presents 

 to this day, an admirable example of the architecture 

 of the period, as regards both adaptedness to domestic 

 use and to defensive purposes. The great quadrangular 

 lower court is spacious enough for the movement of five 

 or six hundred men. The upper one gives access to 

 noble staircases and long galleries, including one for the 

 minstrels. All that is wanting is the very lofty tower 

 which in the beginning rose above the central gateway, 

 and from which the mansion was named. This tower 

 was accidentally destroyed during the Civil Wars by an 

 explosion of gunpowder, and there seems never to have 

 been any disposition to reconstruct it 



A site more charming than that selected by Thomas 

 Hoghton for the glorious old hall which preserves so 

 many interesting and old familiar traditions pertaining 

 to Lancashire, it would be difficult to find. It stands 

 upon the crest of a gentle slope, from which, as well as 

 from the windows, we look right away over the plain 

 and the bright-faced stream that waters Preston, to the 

 mountains of the Lake District, these looming grandly 

 from their curtains of mist; the sea, glorious in the 

 sheen of sunset, upon the left, and upon the right, 

 gigantic Pendle. The immediate surroundings are no 



