chiefly resided in the dwelling adjacent to it; and subsequently became Colonel of the Oldham Volunteers and Local Militia - he died April 9th, 1823. His son, Edward Lees, Esq., succeeded to the property, and was a resident of Werneth Lodge, a modern house, a short distance from the old hall at Werneth. This gentleman, who died May 29th, 1835, was the father of the present possessors of the estate, John Frederick Lees, Esq., and George Lees, Esq., of Werneth Lodge. The former was M.P. for the Borough, from 1835 to 1837.

The ancient mansion of Werneth, the Saxon name of which was doubtless Fernheath, meaning a spot abounding with fern, is an ordinary hall house, now a farm, scarcely remarkable for anything but its antiquity, and nearly all traces of that are effaced. The lands around are highly fertile, and moderately well planted, and, occupying the brow of a hill, they afford splendid prospects of the town of Manchester, and the great plain extended thence to the coast near Liverpool -

"Stretching in immeasurable space,
Far into ocean's bosom leave the coast,
Till, in the distance, Lancastria is lost!"

Several elegant mansions have been recently erected on the estate, but these will be noticed hereafter.

A short pleasant walk over a few fields to the south of Werneth brings the pedestrian to Chamber Hall, a venerable mansion, possessed of an admirable landscape to the south and west. This house forms a happy combination of antiquity with neatness. Eva, the daughter of William Oldham, of Oldham, conveyed this property by marriage to Adam Tetlow, of Tetlow, in Broughton, near Manchester, in the early part of the fourteenth century. This Adam de Tetlow held lands in Crompton, in 1311. His descendants possessed Chamber Hall for a considerable time, and in some pedigrees they are styled "de Wernith alias Chamber." Lawrence Tetlow, gentleman, of Chamber, the tenth in direct

25