Clarksfield, and they are the present possessors and residents. Higher Clarksfield, is a modern mansion, in the midst of fertile and well planted grounds. The founder of this house, James Lees, Esq., was a younger son of John Lees, gentleman, of Lower Clarksfield, who died about the middle of the last century. James Lees, Esq., became early in life a principal partner in the extensive coal mining operations of Messrs. Lees, Jones, Booth, and others, and by this means he attained to a high degree of opulence. Prior to 1825, he was appointed a magistrate; and on the 3rd of September, 1827, he laid the first stone of St. James's Church, Greenacres-moor. Mr. Lees died on the 12th of June, 1828. His eldest son, John Lees, Esq., now of Higher Clarksfield, and his brothers, purchased, in 1844, the large estate of Alkrington, near Middleton, once the seat of Sir Ashton Lever, knight.

Greenacres consisted, at a remote period, of a group of rather extensive farms, that in later times became a village of moderate sized tenements, and numerous cottages. According to a deed, without date, but apparently anterior to 1466, William de Wernith granted to Adam, his son, part of his lands called Abram Hills, lying nigh Greenakers-moor. John Cudworth, Esq., received a rent of 20s. for lands in Greenakers and elsewhere before 1466. Edmund Ashton, Esq., of Chadderton, paid a rent of twenty-one pence in 1553, to John Cudworth, Esq., for land here. His third son, Richard Ashton, Esq., held sixteen acres of it by knight service, in 1610. The families of Taylor and Lees had become seated in this place in 1633; and Ann Hulme, of Manchester, possessed property here in 1639, which was held by Edmund Rhodes and John Cocker. The Ogdens are also recorded to have been residents as early as 1633. Abraham Ogden, of "Grinacres," was father of the Rev. Samuel Ogden, of Brazen Noze College, living in 1692. In 1747, there was a John Ogden, yeoman, of Greenacres,

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