Fig. 14. Part of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. Of such tongs I possess three legs, each apparently from a separate pair of tongs. The leg figured is square, with a broad beaten-out handle, four inches long, bearing incised ornamentation. The others have round handles, and are as roughly made as the tongs seen in an ordinary modern smithy. Fig. 15. A well-finished iron axe, 3 in. wide at the edge of the blade. The late Mr. W. Thompson Watkin, author of "Roman Cheshire," &c., saw this implement, and informed me that he believed it to be of Roman manufacture. Fig. 16. A bent specimen of a carpenter's augur. This must have been a weak tool, and coarsely finished, the shaft being little more than in. in thickness, by in. wide. It has the pointed cut screw of the gimlet, which is flattened out, perhaps by use. Fig. 17. A tool, the use of which is uncertain. The flattened, pointed blade may once have been sharpened for cutting purposes; or it may have had an unsharpened edge, and have been used for the ornamentation of leather. The blade is rather longer than those in use at the present time for that purpose. It probably had a wooden handle. Figs. 18 and 19. These tools are also of uncertain use. The ends, in both cases, are slightly curved, and have had sharp cutting edges. The edge of fig. 18 is 1 in. wide. The tool is much stouter and stronger than fig. 19, which is only in. wide. The shortened fork in fig. 19 may have been broken. Fig. 20. A cooper's tool, used in cutting grooves for the insertion of heads and bottoms in R casks, tubs, and pails. The tool is in three pieces; first, a very stout iron-socketed frame, 2 in. wide, from which projects a handle, 3 inches in length; the sides of this frame are bent, or doubled over, to form the socket to allow a toothed cutting blade to be worked up and down in it. From this blade projects a second handle, 2 in. long, corresponding to the one on the frame. Between these two handles is an iron wedge, which being driven down fixes and holds the blade in the position required for the work to be done. At first this is but a scratch on the surface of the wood; as the cutting proceeds the toothed blade is projected further from the socket, until the groove is of the required depth to hold the heads of casks or the bottoms of tubs and pails. Fig. 21. A wooden mallet, of the same shape as those used in the present day by plumbers for beating out lead. It has been cut from a solid block of oak. Fig. 22. A muller, formed of mountain limestone. An implement of this kind is still used by painters in grinding and mixing paint, usually on a smooth stone slab. This muller is 9 in. high, 2 in. diameter at the top, expanding to 3 in. at the bottom; it is well rounded throughout. The base of this specimen gives evidence of much use, by its smoothed and polished surface. What clay has done in preserving the ice grooving and marking on the old surfaces of the Triassic rocks, or the blown sand in preserving the wind ripples and foot prints in the drift material of which these rocks are composed, blown sand has also done on the old cultivated soils, which it covers, abutting on the Cheshire shore. Occasionally, after a storm, a strip of land may be found from which the drift sand has been swept away, without obliterating the indented foot-prints of cattle, &c. Before I visited this shore, the late Canon Hume, in his Ancient Meols, had pointed out that in some places the land covered by sand dunes had been cultivated in butts; also that the old foot-prints of cattle, pigs, and sheep were deeply indented in its surface. To this I can bear witness, having seen the same thing many times at Great Meols. When visiting the shore in the company of Messrs. Edw. W. Cox and W. Fergusson Irvine, in the spring of 1892, we came across the uncovered patch of an old track, or road: its direction was E. by W. On this were deeply-impressed wheel marks, 5 feet apart, the breadth of the wheels. being 9 inches. The horses had been shod with. the very broad mediæval shoes, and the driver with the sharp-pointed shoes of the same period, which left an impression 11 inches in length, by 4 inches at their greatest width. There were also the footprints of cattle. In my collection I have leather pointed shoe soles, and broad horse shoes so similar that they might possibly have formed these very impressions. The marks were deeply impressed in the soil, and as sharp and fresh as if made within twenty-four hours previous to exposure. When these impressions were made by man and beast it is possible that the flooding, which must have depopulated and played so important a part in devastating this settlement, had commenced. But whether that was the case or not, it is evident that the first irruption of drift sand followed close upon those wheels and the feet of man and beast, that were apparently the last to traverse this old road. |