208 A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



" In memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Gardner, late of his Majesty's eleventh 

 regiment of dragoons, in which he .served with honour from a cornet, and died 

 lamented, Aug. 1, 1762, aged 71 years. His widow, for the sincere affection 

 she had for him, caused this stone to be erected." 



We are informed in the manuscripts of Sir Simon Degge, that 

 Uttoxeter was remarkable for the longevity of its inhabitants. In 

 his records, dated 1726, he states that " in three weeks three men 

 and two women were buried here, aged from 82 to 94." The only 

 instances of longevity worthy of notice in the monumental inscrip- 

 tions in the church-yard are, Samuel Bell, aged 86; John Hill, 

 who died in November, 1814, aged 91 ; and Catherine his wife, 

 who died in the same month and year, aged 86. But undoubtedly 

 several old people have from time to time died in the town and 

 neighbourhood, who have been buried in Uttoxeter church-yard, 

 without a " frail memorial" of their longevity. 



Besides the parish-church, Uttoxeter contains a meeting-house 

 for the Quakers, who are both numerous and respectable in this 

 town ; a large chapel for the Calvinists, and another for 

 Methodists. 



There is also a free-school in Uttoxeter, founded and endowed 

 by that eminent mathematician, Thomas Allen. 



The inhabitants of Uttoxeter and its vicinity, derive much of 

 their opulence from the fertile pastures and meadows on the banks 

 of the Dove. They include many hundred acres of land, com- 

 posed of deep rich mellow loam, impregnated with a fertilizing se- 

 diment of mud and calcareous earth, deposited from time to time 

 by the inundations of the river. The herbage is very fine, with- 

 out any intermixture of rushes or other aquatic plants, and princi- 

 pally consists of grasses of the common sorts. 



The plain on the Staffordshire bank of the Dove, opposite Ut- 

 toxeter, is nearly a mile in breadth, and comprises several thousand 

 acres of luxuriant pasturage for black cattle, sheep, and a few 

 horses. A very small proportion of this extensive space is fenced- 

 in for hay> in consequence of the uncertainty and suddenness of 

 the inundations of the Dove, for a great fall of rain, or the sud* 

 den thaw of snow in the Moorlands, causes a rapid and resistless 

 flood, which soon overflows the banks of the river, and covers the 

 level fields to a great extent ; insomuch, that it requires much 

 vigilance in the proprietors of flocks and herds to preserve them 

 from drowning. The graziers, on an average, pay two pounds an 

 acre for this excellent pasturage. 



