368 Saddle and SirloiJi 



principle that Mr. Atherton -won a turnip prize* for 

 two years in succession. 



A ride of twenty miles, with a couple of changes, 

 amid a network of railways which it is hopeless to 

 unravel on paper, found us at the Pimbo-lane station, 

 about a quarter of a mile from Mr. Dickinson's Bal- 

 cony Farm. It lies at Upholland, about four miles 

 west of Wigan, and it is now the property of the Mar- 

 quis de Rothwell, of Sharpies Hall, near Bolton. 

 The stone-mullion windows and the comfortable 

 entrance-hall, all mark the old manor house ; and the 

 Derby crest of the eagle and child is still decipherable 

 on the front. In extent the farm is a mere garden of 

 112 acres, and in such a cold and rainy spot, that 

 when Mr. Dickinson took to it in 1838, it had been 

 untenanted for a whole year. There was not a road 

 on it ; it was all undrained, and with hardly a service- 

 able fence, and very little wood except a few " hedge- 

 hog trees" upon wide caps with a crooked ditch, and 

 divers rows of stumps which required clearing. The 

 prospect was not enlivening, and the croakers were in 

 great force when they caught the new tenant at the 

 market ordinary. The most sanguine of them kindly 

 gave him a year, and the majority of them six months. 

 Most men would have thrown up the cards in despair 

 (and no blame to them either), but Mr. Dickinson 

 would not flinch. Fifteen years of steady, unresting 

 diligence brought its reward, and in 1853 he was 

 enabled to claim, at the first time of asking, the Man- 

 chester and Liverpool Agricultural Society's prize for 

 "the best cultivated farm between 100 and 150 acres;" 

 and again in 1861, the earliest season for making a 

 reclaim. In the interval between the two awards, he 



* Several other prizes, including the Centenary one given by the 

 Manchester and Liverpool Society, with a challenge cup of 20 guineas, 

 for the best cultivated farm in 1867, against eleven competitors, have 

 fallen to Mr. Atherton's lot. 



