418 GROWTH OF MANCHESTER. PART V. 



Though Manchester was a place of some importance 

 about the middle of last century, it was altogether in- 

 significant in extent, trade, and population compared with 

 what it is now. It consisted of a few principal streets- 

 narrow, dark, and tortuous one of them, leading from 

 the Market Place to St. Ann's Square, being very appro- 

 priately named " Dark Entry." Deansgate was the 

 principal original street of the town, and so called be- 

 cause of its leading to the dean or valley along which it 

 partly extended. From thence a few streets diverged in 

 different directions into the open country. St. Ann's 

 Square, the fashionable centre of modern Manchester, 

 was in 1770 a corn-field surrounded with lofty trees, and 

 known by the name of " Acre's Field." The cattle-fairs 

 of the town were held there, the entrance from Deansgate 

 being by Toll Lane, a narrow, dirty, unpaved way, so 

 called because toll was there levied on the cattle proceeding 

 towards the fair. The ancient seat of the Radcliffe 

 family still stood at Pool Fold, close to the site of the 

 modern Cross Street, and the water in the moat was used 

 as a ducking-pond for scolds. When the pool became 

 filled up, the ducking-pond was removed to Daub Holes, 

 then 011 the outskirts of the town, where the Infirmary 

 now stands. The site of King Street, now the very 

 heart of Manchester, was as yet comparatively retired, a 

 colony of rooks having established themselves in the tall 

 trees at its upper end, from which they were only finally 

 expelled about thirty-five years ago. Cannon Street was 

 the principal place of business, the merchants and their 

 families living in the comparatively humble tenements 

 fronting the street, the equally humble warehouses in 

 which their business was done standing in the rear. The 

 ground on which the crowded thoroughfares of Oldham 

 Street, London Road, Mosley Street, and their continua- 

 tions, now exist, was as yet but garden or pasture-land. 

 Salford itself was only a hamlet contained in the bend of 

 the Irwell. It consisted of a double line of mean houses, 



