Читать книгу The Stranger's Handbook to Chester and Its Environs онлайн
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Pass we on now still to the westward, until we come to a curious watch-tower, called Morgan’s Mount, having a lower chamber on the level of the Walls, and an open platform above, accessible by a few winding steps. During the Siege of Chester, a battery was planted on the summit of this tower, and from its commanding position, surrounded by earthworks, successfully kept the besiegers at bay. Let us mount to the top, and survey the diversified prospect before us. See yonder Elizabethan building at the northwest extremity of the city, beautifully placed on a hill, and separated from us by those fine, dark, evergreen trees, through which you can see the bright sunshine, as it were, smiling approvingly upon it. It is the Diocesan Training College, a normal establishment, for preparing masters and teachers for the parochial schools of the diocese. Stretching away to our left is the Hundred of Wirrall, the foreground dotted here and there with a handsome mansion or substantial farm-house, among which those of Crabwall, Mollington, and Blacon, are most conspicuous. That house, so sweetly situate on the eminence to the left, embowered in trees, is Blacon Point, commanding extensive views of the city and North Wales. Still beneath us flows the Canal, which, however, empties itself, close at hand, by a series of descending locks, into the River Dee. That pile of buildings on the opposite bank of the Canal, is the central official establishment of the Shropshire Union Railway Company. The River Dee, the mountains of North Wales, and the ancient Walls, serve nobly to complete this glowing panorama of nature, and of art.