existence, and the dwellings from Mumps brook to Croft bank were extremely few. The houses on both sides of the road at Side of moor were spotted here and there in unconnected groups, and the spaces from Castle mill to Lower moor, and from Hartford mill to Lower house, consisted of newly enclosed fields. The now populous localities of Glodwick lane, Moorhey, Soho, Bath bank, and Hill were not then existing. The population of the town in 1816, as comprised within the limits ex- tending from Coppice nook to Mount pleasant, and from Royton street to Fog lane, was 7727.

The first complete and efficient valuation of the property in the county assessable to the county rates, was taken in 1815. According to this return, the annual value of the messuages, lands, tenements, and other such property in the township of Oldham, in that year, was £29,970; and the annual aggregate value of the property in the four townships of the parish or borough, was £51,451. From the Land Tax returns of 1692, the only authenticated records of the value of property having an earlier date than 1815, it appears the annual value of the lands and buildings in the township of Oldham, at that time, was only £287 9s. 7d., a sum scarcely equal to the annual value of one of the most ordinary of the 119 cotton mills contained in the borough in 1846. Such have been the amazing effects of the manufacturing system, in imparting increased value to property, that, according to the county assessment of 1841, the annual value of the property in the township of Oldham was £107,500, forming an increase as compared with the valuation of 1692, of 37,400 per cent., a rate of increase, considerably exceeding that of all other places in the county, with the exception of Liverpool, Great Bolton, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Toxteth park, Hulme, and Everton. The per centage rate of increase in value in Oldham, from 1692 to 1841, was 37,400; from 1815 to 1829, 82; and from 1829 to 1841, 96. The annual

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