"The parish of Rochdale partly consists of and is bounded by this tract of hills on the east and north; and what may be called the lowland part of the parish looks, when seen from some of the hills in the immediate neighbourhood something like a green sea of tempest-tost meadows and pasture lands, upon which fleets of cotton mills ride at anchor, their brick masts rising high into the air, and their streamers of smoke waving in the wind."
I have just finished reading Edwin Waugh's Sketches of Lancashire life and localities, of which I have written more on the 'eboowks' page. By the end of the book, I was skipping some of the more tedious pages in order concentrate on what Waugh does best - a good story told by a passing acquaintance in the dialect. Waugh's antiquarian passages are mostly dull and I have to admit that I often find his nature writing to be the same, although it won him praise in his day. Waugh was a Romantic and a lover of Wordsworth and he often quotes him at length. But his saving grace is that, unlike Wordsworth, he does not condemn the industrialization that was beginning to eat into his beloved south Lancashire countryside. Some of his most evocative passages, for me, document the impact of industry on the landscape and this view of Rochdale from the Pennines shows this side of his writing at its his best:
"The parish of Rochdale partly consists of and is bounded by this tract of hills on the east and north; and what may be called the lowland part of the parish looks, when seen from some of the hills in the immediate neighbourhood something like a green sea of tempest-tost meadows and pasture lands, upon which fleets of cotton mills ride at anchor, their brick masts rising high into the air, and their streamers of smoke waving in the wind."
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Phil Benson
Born in Manchester when it was still part of Lancashire, which it still is really. Exiled in sunny Sydney, I love to read Lancashire books Archives
March 2013
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