Country Rambles, and Manchester Walks and Wild Flowers. Leo H. Grindon
The middle portion of the valley, or that which, ascending it, lies about half–way between Ashley and Wilmslow, is occupied by Cotterill Clough, a place of the highest celebrity with the old Lancashire botanists, being not only picturesque in every portion, but containing a great variety of curious and unusual wild–flowers. Many are found here that grow nowhere else in the neighbourhood, and the very commonest attain the highest state of perfection. Hobson, Crozier, Horsefield, and their companions above–named, used to come to Cotterill regularly, both in summer and winter, gathering flowers in the former season, mosses in the latter, and not more for the riches of the vegetation, than, as Crozier once told me, for the singing of the innumerable birds. The journey, both to and fro, was entirely upon foot, and the men were often here by breakfast time. Being a game preserve, there has always been some difficulty of access to the clough, and of late years this has been considerably increased. But gamekeepers, after all, are only men, and “a soft answer turneth away wrath,” so that none need despair if they will but act the part of wisdom.
The approach to this pretty valley is made in the first instance from Peel Causeway station, pursuing the lane for a little while, then electing whether to continue, past Bank Hall and its seventeen yew trees, or to strike through a field–path upon the left, thence along the crest of a gentle acclivity, from which is obtained the best view we are acquainted with, of Bowdon. Although requiring some watchfulness, so as not to go astray, the upper path is decidedly the best to take. One point alone needs specially careful observation, that is, after crossing the little ravine, and emerging into another lane, to turn down it to the right, and upon arriving at a cottage upon the left, to take the path immediately behind. This leads over the fields, Alderley Edge a few miles in front, and Cloud–end rising grandly upon the horizon, then down a steep rough lane into a dingle called Butts Clough, beyond which there is a green–floored lane, leading to Warburton’s farm, which being passed, we bear to the right, and in ten minutes more dip into the valley, and very soon tread the margin of the stream. About a mile and a half further up, we come to Castle Mill, an old–established and celebrated corn–grinding concern—and immediately opposite, the wooded slopes of Cotterill, entered by crossing a single field. The time to select for a first botanical visit to this charming spot should, if possible, be the end of April, or at least before the expiration of May. The chief rarities of the place belong to a somewhat later period, but there are several that grow here abundantly, and are in perfection at the time named, which, although less uncommon, it were a pity not to secure. Such are the goldilocks and the arum. The former, a very graceful kind of butter–cup, its name translated from the Latin one, auricomus, fringes the bank at the foot of the wood for a long distance with its light feathery herbage and shining yellow flowers; the other grows under the trees, and among the brushwood, and in the part of the clough through which the path leading to Ringway from Castle Mill makes its way, thus being reachable without more trespass than of twenty forgiven yards. Few persons fond of cultivating plants in their parlours are unacquainted with that truly splendid flower, the African lily, or Richardia Ethiopica, which, opening a great white vase on the summit of its stem, resembles an alabaster lamp with a pillar of flame burning in the centre; the leaves lifted on long stalks, and shaped like the head of an arrow. Keeping the figure of this noble plant before the mind’s eye, as the type for comparison, there is no difficulty in identifying the arum of Cotterill Wood. The latter is essentially the same in structure, but rises to the height of only some six or eight inches instead of thirty, with leaves proportionately smaller, and the flower, instead of white and vase–like, of a pale transparent green (though often mottled, like the leaves, with purple stains), and curving over the pillar in the centre like the cowl of a monk. The pillar is of a rich puce or claret colour, and occasionally of a delicate light amber. In the south of England, where the plant abounds, the dark ones are called “lords,” and the amber–coloured, “ladies.” Newbridge Hollow, the Ashley Woods, and several other places about Bowdon, share the possession of this remarkable plant, which is, without question, the most eccentrically formed of any that grow wild in the British Islands. It is found also near Pendlebury, at Barton, Reddish, and several other places, but very scantily, a circumstance worth notice, because illustrating so well what the learned call botanical topography. The floras of entire countries are often not more strongly marked by the presence or absence of certain species than the portions even of so limited an area as that of Manchester half–holiday excursions. Here, too, grows in profusion the sylvan forget–me–not, the flowers of an azure that seems sucked from heaven itself. People confound it sometimes with the germander–speedwell, another lovely flower of May and June. But the leaves of the speedwell are oval instead of long and narrow, like those of the forget–me–not; and the flowers are not only of quite a different shade of blue, but composed of four distinct pieces, the forget–me–not being five–lobed, and yellow in the centre. The consummate distinction of the forget–me–not is the mode in which the flowers expand, and which, along with its unique and celestial tint, is the true reason of its being used as the emblem of constancy. Possibly enough, the pathetic legend of the knight and the lady by the water–side may have had a fact for its basis, but the flower was representative of constancy long before the unlucky lover met his death. The world, truly seen and understood, is but another showing forth of human nature, an echo of its lord and master, reiterating in its various and beautiful structures, colours, and configurations, what in him are thoughts and passions, and in the forget–me–not we have one of the foremost witnesses. This is no loose and misty speculation; but to the earnest student of nature who looks below the surface of things, a determinate and palpable fact, the source of the most fascinating pleasures that connect themselves with the genuine knowledge of plants and flowers, and of the objects of nature universally. The peculiarity referred to consists principally in the curious spiral stalk, and the store of secret buds, a new flower opening fresh and fresh every day as the stalk uncoils. It may be added, as furnishing another example of the variety in the distribution of plants, that the forget–me–not, like the arum, is wanting on the Prestwich side of the town, while the sylvan horsetail, so abundant in Mere Clough, is comparatively a stranger to the valley of the Bollin. To young people who have the opportunity of exploring the respective places, independently of the large local knowledge they acquire, it is a most instructive employment to note these phenomena, for they are all more or less intimately connected with the grandest and widest laws of physical geography—the great, as we have shown before, represented in the little—and no science will be found in after life more thoroughly entertaining or more practically useful. Besides these more choice and remarkable flowers, there are in Cotterill Wood at this period anemones and bluebells without end; while in the upper part, accessible by the path before–mentioned, and which should on no account be left unvisited, the firs and larches are at the acme of their floral pride. The flowers of these trees, like those of the hazel and alder, are some of them only male, others only female. The female flowers in due time become the seed–cones, announcing them from afar; the male flowers likewise assume the cone form, but as soon as the purpose of their being is accomplished, they wither and drop off. In the larch, the females are of a delicate pink, contrasting exquisitely with the tender green of the young tufted leaves, and conspicuous from their large size, the males being comparatively small, though noticeable from their immense abundance. In the firs, on the other hand, we are attracted rather by the male flowers, which are of a beautiful reddish buff, and on the slightest blow being given to the branch, shed clouds of their fertilising dust.
The Cotterill portion of the Bollin valley, while the primroses are in bloom, has no parallel in our district. Certain distant places, no doubt, are equally rich in this general favourite—the Isle of Wight, for instance, and the same is said of the Isle of Man, but for Manchester lovers of primroses, Cotterill is a very paradise. All the woods and lanes are full, every bank and sheltered slope is yellow with them, everywhere primroses, primroses, primroses, great handfuls, and bunches, a score every time we pluck, till wonder is exhausted and out of breath, and primroses and nature seem to mean the same thing. Such was the spectacle on the 8th of May—when this was written—the glow of bloom, which lasts in the whole perhaps for a month, being then at its height. On one occasion it was as early as April 27th. We now come to 1882. So great has been the havoc made by collectors of roots for gardens, and for sale in the market–place, that except in forbidden parts, and somewhat higher up the valley, the primrose is now almost as scarce as at the time referred