deep in strong gravel. In the gardens and in Campfield it appeared to be continued in a slanting line considerably to the east of it. This obliquity of the road was necessarily occasioned by the great curve of the Irwell."[1]
Whitaker adds (see p. 121): "In the second garden, near Castlefield, and on the site of Mr. Philips's house, the pavement was dug up, consisting of the largest boulders, and having two layers of stones upon a bed of gravel."
On the 14th January, 1898, when the old deanery, in Deansgate, was pulled down for the new arcade, next to Mr. Armstrong's shop, the road was discovered by me again. It was found 5 inches below the foundation of the old deanery. The top consisted of a layer of sandstone flags, then clay and rubble or red sandstone, 5 inches; gravel, 6 inches; blackish soil, bricks, charcoal, iron nails, scoria, 4 inches; yellow pre-Roman soil, below the river gravel.
Whitaker has a remark (vol. ii., 407): "The parsonage plainly proves to have been near the course of the old and then forgotten road to Ribchester." I have taken photographs of this section of the road.
I picked up traces of the road again in Wood Street, which enables us to produce the slanting road from Quay Street to St. Mary's Street. The road proceeded then along upper Deansgate, falling into Hanging Ditch.
To sum up, the Ribchester road on leaving the northern gate in Collier Street passed across Bridgewater Street, Worsley Street, Liverpool Road, Tonman Street,
- ↑ Whitaker seems to be quite right in this latter remark, for, just at this point, the levels to the west of Quay Street sink rapidly away, and are marked by a line extending from Water Street to Canal Street, where the land lies rather low, which we may express by the 93 feet contour or inundation line, and the ground must have been very swampy.
