OTTER-HUNTING IN THE FYLDE.
Thomas Tyldesley, of Myerscough Lodge and Foxhall (Blackpool), in his diary, under the date of Friday, August 28, 1713, records that he "went an otter-hunting, and killed an otter near New Mill, which Cuddy Threlfall and I dressed. We were a great many, good company—Cuddy Threlfall and Barton, Thomas Barton, and all the neighbourhood—and we ate the whole otter. I paid for Wilding, Cuddy Threlfall, and self, 3s.; so to bed. We drank the house dry." James Lomax, Esq., of Clayton Hall, was long noted for his love of otter-hunting, and his pack of hounds were notorious throughout the whole of Ribblesdale.
KERSAL MOOR RACES.
The yearly Manchester Whitsuntide races were established on Kersal Moor in the year 1730. Afterwards a long controversy arose on the propriety of continuing or discontinuing the races in a large manufacturing town. Ashton Lever, Esq., and William Hulton, Esq., advocated the races, which were opposed by Edmund Chetham, Esq., Mr John Byrom, M.A., and Mrs Ann Chetham, through whose exertions they were discontinued from 1745, the year of the second Jacobite rising, to about 1760, when they were resumed. For many years these local races formed one of the chief attractions to Manchester, and the population of the large manufacturing district of which it is the centre, during the Lancashire annual holiday at Whitsuntide. A few years ago the site of the races was removed from Kersal Moor to some
