Cheshire

 

 "The ladies of Cranford are quite sufficient. A man, as one of them observed to me, is so in the way in the house."These words set the scene for Elizabeth Gaskell's famous novel Cranford, based on observations of middle class life in her home town of Knutsford. She also cared deeply about the social issues surrounding the Industrial Revolution and her first novel Mary Barton pricked many consciences, making hers an influential voice in Victorian Manchester.

On the edge of Knutsford, Tatton Park, renamed Cumnor Towers in Cranford, was the country estate of the Egerton family. And it was Wilbraham Egerton of Tatton, then chairman of the Manchester Ship Canal Company, who at Eastham in 1887 cut the first sod in the construction of the great waterway that would connect Manchester to the sea and ensure the region's fortunes into the 20th century. Not far away at Ellesmere Port, on the junction of the Ship Canal and the River Mersey, the National Waterways Museum is a great day out for all.

 

Gaskell's connections continue in Styal, where her uncle, Doctor Holland, looked after the millworkers and apprentice children of Quarry Bank Mill. This is a fascinating National Trust property right in the midst of stunning beech woods and full of woodland and riverside wildlife. The huge Georgian mill, the Apprentice House where the children's stories are told by atmospheric costumed tours, the millworkers' village complete with school and chapels, all tell vivid stories. And for garden-lovers two very contrasting gardens are worthy of a day out all to themselves - one, at Quarry Bank House, the lavish landscaping of the mill owners; the other, at the Apprentice House, a huge kitchen garden growing food and herbal remedies for the child workers.

 

A journey along the Cheshire Ring of Canals will bring you to the Anderton Boat Lift. This amazing feat of Victorian engineering transports boats between the Weaver Navigation and the Trent & Mersey Canal, a height difference of 50 feet. The first boat lift in the world, known as the Cathedral of the Canals, you can take a boat ride here just for the fun of going in the lift! Nearby at Northwich, the Weaver Hall Museum (formerly the Salt Museum) and the Lion Salt Works tell the stories of Cheshire's salt industry. The Macclesfield Canal skirts the foothills of the Peak District to the Silk Museum in Macclesfield, once the centre of the silk weaving industry. And on the same canal is the Anson Engine Museum - a beautiful place where rhythmical engines, gleaming cogs and levers weave together to make intricate patterns, where everything is polished, balanced, and perfectly in place.

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For more information on what you discover in Cheshire visit http://www.visitcheshire.com/.