352 A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



and many other articles, on Shrove-Monday, Easter-Monday, Whit- 

 Monday, and the first Monday in November, besides two other move- 

 able fairs in the months of July and September. 



This Borough, and also a Manor of considerable extent adjacent 

 to it, known by the name of the Manor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, 

 derive the former part of their appellation from a Castle, which 

 stood in the midst of a large pool, now nearly surrounded by the 

 town. The Manor appears, from ancient documents, to have ex- 

 tended over the liberties of Penkhull, Wolstanton, Shelton, Hanley, 

 Clayton, Seabridge, Knutton, Dimsdale, Holditch, Hanchurch, 

 Hanford, Whitmore, Keel, Fenton, Longton, Meer-lane, Normacot, 

 Tunstall, Chatteriey, Bradwell, and Thursfield. 



Antiquaries have generally supposed, upon the authority of 

 Camden, that the castle had its name on account of an older castle, 

 which stood not far from it at Chesterton-under-Lyme ; but, sup- 

 posing this to be correct, the addition of under-Lyme still wants 

 explanation, and if it ever formed part of the name of Chesterton, 

 it has long ceased to do so. Camden's account of Newcastle is as 

 follows :* 



" The Trent first runs southward, with many windings, not far 

 from New-Castle under Lime, so called upon the account of an 

 older castle which formerly stood not far from it at Chesterton- 

 under-Lime, where I saw the ruinous and shattered walls of an old 

 castle, which first belonged to Ranulph Earl oT Chester by the gift 

 of king John, and after, by the bounty of Henry 3d, to the House 

 of Lancaster." 



Later authors have been led into error by the ungrammatical 

 construction of the above quotation, for it is certain that Camden 

 must have meant, that the ruinous walls which he had seen of an 

 old castle formerly belonging to the Earl of Chester and afterwards 

 to the House of Lancaster, were the walls of Newcastle, and not, 

 as the sentence at first reading seems to imply, the walls of the 

 castle of Chesterton. 



Dr. Plot fell into the above-named error, and he proceeds to 

 state,f that the castle of Chesterton went to decay " as long ago as 

 the reign of king Henry 3d, when the Earl of Lancaster built ano- 

 ther near by, in the midst of a great pool, which he called the New 

 Castle, that gave original (no doubt) to the town of that name 

 close by it." 



* Camden' a Britannia, edit. 1695, p. 530. 

 + Plot's Natural Hist, of Staffordsh. p. 434. 



