H O L 9 



which is crossed by another near its centre of equal 

 goodness. 



The church was built in the year 17G9- It is a plain 

 neat building, with a square tower at the west end ; 

 but though it is furnished with a bell, yet, from its si- 

 tuation below the town, its sound is so inaudible, that 

 it has been found necessary to summon the congrega- 

 tion by a person, who suspends a pretty large one from 

 his neck by a leathern strap, and fixes a cushion upon 

 his knee. This moveable spire walks along eliciting 

 sounds from the bell, whenever the cushioned knee 

 strikes the instrument. There are other three places of 

 worship in the town, two for Roman Catholics, and one 

 for Protestant dissenters. 



The spring called St Winifred's well is reckoned one 

 of the finest in the kingdom. It was found by one ex- 

 periment to discharge twenty-one tons in a minute, and 

 by another 84 hogsheads. In the course of nearly two 

 miles from the source of the spring to its junction with 

 the Chester Channel, its water drives one corn mill, four 

 cotton manufactories, built in 1777, 1785, 1787, and 

 1790, a copper smelting-house, a brass-house, a foun- 

 dry, a large copper smithy, a wire mill, a calamine 

 calcinary, &c. The water boils up with great force into 

 a well of a polygonal shape, covered by a colonnaded 

 cupola, having its groined roof loaded with ornaments. 

 It is supposed, but without much reason, to harve been 

 built by the Countess of Derby, mother of Henry VII. 

 Near the well is a chapel in the pointed style, which 

 seems to have been built before the time of Richard 

 III. This building belongs to Mr Leo of Llanerch, 

 and has recently been converted into a charity school. 

 A precipitous hill above the church was the scite of a 

 fortress belonging to Ranulph the third Earl of Chester. 

 No traces of the building, however, are now to be seen. 

 The great mining concern, called the Holywell Le- 

 vel, began in 1774, and till lately was an unprofit- 

 able concern. The level is carried horizontally for 

 the length of a mile into the hill, and serves both as a 

 drain to the work, and as a canal for the delivery of the 

 ore. Numerous vertical shafts have been cut from this 

 horizontal archway, some of them in pursuit of the 

 mineral veins, and others for the purpose of ventilating 

 the mines. The products obtained from the hill are, 

 1. Limestone; 2. Chertz or petrosilex, which is ground 

 for the use of the potteries ; 3. Lead ore of two kinds, 

 via. cubic or dice ore, employed in glazing earthen 

 ware, and white or steel-grained ore, containing some 

 silver ; 4. Calamine, or ore of zinc ; 5. Blende, another 

 ore of zinc, called Black Jack by the miners. The 

 lead ore sometimes brings from thirteen to fifteen pounds 

 per ton, and at other times not more than seven or 

 eight pounds. 



An account of the copper and brass manufactures 

 of Holywell has already been given in our article 

 FLINTSHIRB, vol. ix. p. 371. to which the reader is re- 

 ferred. 



The following is the population abstract of the town 

 ofHolywellfor 1811.- 

 No. of inhabited houses, 1313 



No. of families, 1541 



Families employed in trade and manufactures, 752 



Do. in agriculture, 117 



Males, 2925 



Females, 3469 



Total population, 6394 



> H O M 



See The Beauties af England and Wales, vol. xvii. p. 708, 



&c. 



HOMANN, JOHN BAPTIST, an eminent German 

 geographer and mechanic, and a very excellent engra- 

 ver of maps, was born at Kamlach, a village of Suabia, 

 on the 20th of March, 1663. His parents, who were 

 Catholics, intended that he should embrace the monas- 

 tic life ; but having repaired at an early age to Nurem- 

 berg, he became a convert to the tenets of Lutheranism, 

 and devoted himself to the art of engraving, particu- 

 larly that of maps, which he executed with a degree of 

 correctness and elegance then very uncommon. His 

 first performances of this kind gained him so great a re- 

 putation, that he was summoned to Leipsic, where he 

 was employed in engraving the maps to Cellarius* Or. 

 bis Antiquas. On his return to Nuremberg, he under* 

 took to execute the maps to Scherer's Atlas Novus, 

 which was published at Augsburg in 1710. In the 

 year 1702, he established at Nuremberg a manufactory 

 of map?, from which there issued successively, speci- 

 mens to the number of two hundred. In 1 719, he pub- 

 lished son. Alias methodicus, for young persons, in eighteen 

 sheets. Under the direction, and with the assistance of 

 another able geographer, Doppelmayer, he also under- 

 took the execution of an astronomical atlas, which ap- 

 peared, after his death, along with Doppelmayer's Ele- 

 ments of Astronomy, in 1742. Besides maps, he like- 

 wise constructed small armillary spheres and pocket 

 globes, and a very curious and ingeniously contrived 

 geographical time-piece. 



The scientific and mechanical talents of Homarm 

 were deservedly held in high estimation ; and his merit 

 was not suffered to languish unrewarded. He was pa- 

 tronised by the Emperor Charles VI. who appointed 

 him his Majesty's geographer; and also by Peter, the 

 Great, of Russia. The Royal Society of Berlin admit- 

 ted him a member of their institution. He died in the 

 year 1724. The manufactory of maps, which he esta- 

 blished at Nuremberg, subsists to this day, and is still 

 conducted under the auspices of his name. 



Homann is chiefly known as an excellent engraver 

 of maps ; but he likewise possessed a great deal of geo- 

 graphical and astronomical knowledge ; and with an 

 active and enterprising spirit, he combined an inven- 

 tive genius and uncommon mechanical skill, (z) 



HOMBERG, WILLIAM, an eminent chemist, was 

 born at Batavia, in the Island of Java, on the 8th of 

 January 1652. His father was a Saxon, who had en- 

 tered into the Dutch service, and obtained the command 

 of the arsenal of Batavia. Having left this settlement, 

 and gone to Amsterdam, he sent his son to the princi- 

 pal universities in Germany and Italy, where he suc- 

 cessively pursued the studies of law, anatomy, botany, 

 astronomy, and chemistry. He was admitted to the bar 

 at Magdeburg in 1674 ; but having become acquainted 

 with Otto Guericke of that city, the celebrated inventor 

 of the air pump, he devoted most of his time to the acqui- 

 sition of the sciences. He now went to the university 

 of Padua, where he studied medicine, anatomy, and bo- 

 tany. After visiting Rome and Bologna, where he dis- 

 covered the method of making the Bologna stone lumi- 

 nous, he went through France to England, and labour- 

 ed for some time with our celebrated countryman Mr 

 Boyle. Returning to Holland, he resumed his anato- 

 mical studies under De Graaf, and took out his medi- 

 cal degree at Wirtemberg. His passion for travel- 

 ling, however, prevented him from settling to the 

 practice of medicine. After visiting Baldwin ' 



Homanv, 

 Homberg. 



and 



