Have a 'stab' at this one.

[Peter T]

Fascinating language. Even Adam must be impressed. An inundation?? Bet it flooded as well or a vast spate of water entered Lower Wash Lane in torrents..

 

Algy. The second picture is in the Chippy.

 

Also if you go past the new wigwam, and continue through the overgrown bitr, that is where the original ford was.

[Bazj]

Peter, I apologise god knows why I originally called you 'Baz'

 

to compliment him on his youthful good looks I would guess!!

[algy]

Here is what the journal says as it may be of interest to some. I never knew how Wash lane came to have it's name.

 

Taken from a journal dated 1885 (non copyright as long as not used for commercial purposes apparently)... ps NOT my typos they must be errors from scan transcription.. I corrected the more obvious ones but some still remain

 

1.— THE PLAGUE-HOUSB, WASH LANE, LATCHFORD

 

As this is one of the best-established of our Warrington traditions,

and as it lies within the confines of that elastic and irregular limit known as the '* municipal borough,"

I have chosen to giro it precedence in my page of Local Sketches.

 

The Plague-House stands about one mile from the centre of the borough,

in its Latchford division, and upon the line of road which is said to have been the highroad from

north to south prior to the erection of the bridge over the Mersey at Warrington, in 1495.

 

As its name of Wash Lane imports, this road was liable to

occasional inundation, rendering it impassable to passengers on foot

except by the stepping-stones (tripping-stones) shown in the vignette.

 

The stream of water is now contracted into the limits of the brook

which runs on its western side, and empties itself into the Mersey

about 200 yards from hence, at a point where tradition says

the Mersey was alone fordable.

 

The date of 1650 is carved upon one of the timbers of the front of

this house, so that the cases of Plague which occurred here must have

been at or near the last appearance of the disease in England,

viz., 1664-5.

 

The coping-stone at the north-west comer of the garden or court-

yard is now in the Warrington Museum, and is faithfully represented

below our present sketch. At one extremity of this coping-stone a

square cavity has been formed, 5 inches square and 2 inches in depth,

in which the tradition runs that the money paid for provisions

and other necessaries, during the time of their dire suffering, was

steeped in vinegar by the plague-stricken inmates prior to its being

touched by the townspeople.

 

The tradition had long exbted that those who died of the Plague here

were not interred in the consecrated ground of their parish of Grappenhall,

but were rapidly buried in the field known as the firoom? Field, which is immediately behind the Plague-House.

This field is glebe land, and some labourers digging there

in 1843 are said to have come upon three human skeletons,

covered with a flat ashlar stone, without inscription or mark of any kind.

On the 10th of July, 1852, in company with a medical friend,

I made an investigation on this precise spot, and by means of an

iron probe ascertained the existence of a large stone about two feet

below the surface On laying it bare, it proved to be a thick slab of

red sandstone, rough from the quarry, 5 feet 1 inch in length and

2 feet 3 inches broad, with one extremity rounded, and broken across the middle.

 

Beneath it we found the bones of the pelvis and lower extremities of a

male human being, and near the pelvis the skull and lower jaw.

It was clear that in the investigation made by the farm labourers,

in 1848, the slab had been broken, and the bones beneath,

with the exception of the head and lower extremities, removed and lost.

 

In the parish register of Budworth, under the date of April, 1647,

the names of several are recorded as having died in this part of the

county of Chester from the Plague, but who were buried at the village

or hamlet of Bamton, two miles distant from Budworth, although no

consecrated ground existed there. Unfortunately, however, the pariah

registers of Grappenhall afford us no similar information.

 

Dizz, interesting material, have you a link to this site that you could send me please.