Drainage hy Steam Power, 



157 



Some time afterwards, Mr. Fleetwood's executors erected an- 

 other pair of flood-gates, nearer the outfall, which proved bene- 

 ficial. About the year 1750 Mr. Fleetwood's lease expired. In 

 1755 the flood-gates and walls were washed down by " a very 

 uncommon high tide," but were rebuilt at the joint expense of 

 the different proprietors, and were then made 14 feet wide. 

 From this time the Mere remained in the hands of the pro- 

 prietors, in a neglected state, until the year 1781, when Mr. 

 Eccleston, according to his statement, obtained leases from all 

 the proprietors (one only excepted), and immediately began the 

 work of improvement. He erected three pairs of flood-gates, 

 with paddles at the bottom of each for the purposes of flushing. 

 These gates were 18 feet wide and 19i high, and the sill was 5 

 feet lower than that of the gates first put down. In 1783 the 

 sluice was extended further into the Mere, and the waters thereof, 

 which were then very high, ran off in 5 days. The sluice was 

 now nearly 5 miles in length. In 1784 Mr. Eccleston commenced 

 ploughing a few acres of the land thus drained, and states that it 

 " yielded a tolerable crop of spring com ; some yielded a very 

 inferior kind of hay, and the rest w^as pastured." The following 

 year he sowed 200 large acres* of corn : part of this w^as oats and 

 part barley. The latter he sold at IIZ. Us. 6r/. the large acre (the 

 purchaser paying the expense of reaping, 6cc.), off land that 

 before only let for 45. per acre ; and the oats he sold at lOZ. 175. 6cZ. 

 per acre, off land which hitherto had produced nothing. Before 

 the drainage, he says, " the best meadow-lands in the most 

 favourable seasons did not let for more than 95. per acre ;" whilst 

 afterwards he mowed some worth 3Z,, and let off the grass of 

 other land at 2Z., reserving the after-grass for his own cattle. 



In 1789 Mr. Eccleston made a further report to the Society 

 of Arts, informing them of the losses he had sustained by the 

 failure of the banks of the river Douglas and of the Leeds and 

 Liverpool canal, having caused an inundation of the Mere. After 



his monument in the church, and which has reference to his labours on the Mere, 



has been translated as follows : — 



" Thomas Fleetwood, of Bank, Knight, descended from a Stafford family (and 

 that one of the first), a truly noble, polished, and facetioiis man, and the delight of 

 his circle. He wished his bones to be here laid, because he made into dry and firm 

 land the great Martinensian Marsh, by the water having been conveyed through a 

 fosse to the neighbouring sea, — a work which, as the ancients dared not to attempt, 

 posterity will hardly credit. He likewise constructed, not far off, a handsome 

 bridge over the estuary at no small cost, from a regard rather to the public good 

 than to his own prospective advantage. These labours having been accomplished, 

 he at length, alas ! too soon, laid down and died, on the 22nd April, a.d. 1717, in 

 the 56th year of his age." 



* This, no doubt, refers to what is now more commonly termed " Cheshire mea- 

 sure," and which would be 423 statute acres. In Lancashire the use of customary 

 measures still obtains : there are the Cheshire 64: square yards to the perch — the 

 Lancashire 49 yards— the West Derbjj 42j ; besides the statute measure 30^ yards. 



