No, this is not another book about the Lakes. It is about the other part of Westmorland that lies to the east of a line drawn north and south from Brougham to Kirkby Lonsdale. I should like to make that clear because when a man tells his South Country friends that his home is in Westmorland, so often comes the rejoinder: “O, you live in the Lakes.”
The English Lake District, an area of about 30 miles square, comprising bits of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire, has been described so well by so many excellent authors – W.G. Collingwood, Canon Rawnsley and H.H. Simmonds (to name but three of them) and has been presented to the public so delightfully in the words of W.T. Palmer, in the water-colours of A. Heaton Cooper and in the photographs of W.A. Poucher (to mention but three others) that there seems hardly any need or room at present for more books on that particular shelf. East Westmorland, on the other hand, is much less well documented, as I have found by enquiry in libraries. This book is merely an account of a walking-cum-motor tour made in the summer of 1947 through the eastern parts of the county. Architecture, historical monuments, birds, wild flowers and scenery were what we went out “for to see.” From the days of my childhood I have always enjoyed reading tale of travel and adventure; “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Alice’s Adventures” came first; later in life came “Pennant’s Tours,” “Cobbett’s Rides,” and “Gilpin’s Tours.” There is always “something doing” in these books – a sense of perpetual motion to be found in them. “I remount my horse,” writes Pennant, “and continue my journey along the side of the lake.” Soon, you are confident, he will arrive at a waterfall or a ruin or a Roman camp or meet a stranger or have an adventure of some sort and, sure enough, you will not be disappointed. Having now completed a tour, I can appreciate what great pleasure those old travellers must have had, and I do not wonder that they kept on walking and riding. The object of this book is to encourage others to explore that relatively less well-known part of Westmorland which lies outside the Lake District and is not usually visited by the main body of the British travelling public.
The two principal works on the history and monuments of the county are Nicolson & Burn’s “History,” Vol. I, published in 1777, and the “Report on Westmorland” by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, published in 1936. Unfortunately, both of these large volumes are out of print and seldom to be found in bookshops. Therefore, for the benefit of those who may read this book I have made extracts from Nicolson & Burn which I hope will lead others on to see the beautiful and interesting places that we visited. Among the writers ancient and modern I find the former by far the most entertaining. In this I follow the great Richard Bentley, D.D., Master of Trinity, who wrote: “It may perhaps be further affirmed in favour of the Ancient, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best.” My old books on Westmorland are not “ancient” in the sense that Bentley meant, when he was writing about the “Epistles of Phalaris,” but my reason for quoting from them is the same as his, because they have “more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius than any others,” and I have tried, as Bentley says he did, “to make the best use I can of both Ancients and Moderns.”
In making this journey we received a great deal of kindness from a number of people whom I should like to thank collectively at this point and individually later on when I come to the place where we met them. But there are many others to whom I am most grateful, whose names I never knew – farmers, inn-keepers, postmen, who by showing us the way, by providing meals at awkward hours, by supplying local information, by telling amusing dialect stories, and in countless other ways, made our tour so pleasant. One of the greatest joys of walking among the fells and
A distinguished native of Westmorland, Arthur Somervell, the musician, whose work obliged him to live in the South of England, told me once that he could say with truth that hardly a day ever passed in his life without his thinking of Westmorland; and if by any chance such an exception to his general rule should occur he felt quite ashamed of himself. In much the same way I can affirm my own faith. Wherever I am – in London or abroad – some memory of the north recurs each day. Walking down the Strand I am suddenly in Stramongate, and, to paraphrase a sentence in Religio Medici, I am in Westmorland everywhere and under any meridian.
C.J.
Godmond Hall, Burneside
11th November, 1947
CONTENTS
PREFACE
POEM by Margaret Cropper
INTRODUCTORY
How, when and where to make a tour in Westmorland.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
Weather – Crops – Stock.
THE UPPER EDEN
Sedbergh – Cautley Spout – Wharton – Lammerside – Pendragon Castle – The river Eden – Mallerstang Edge – Kirkby Stephen – Hartley.
LADY ANNE CLIFFORD
THE BOTTOM OF WESTMORLAND
Warcop – Dufton – Milburn – Newbiggin – Temple Sowerby – Brougham.
BROUGH AND RAVENSTONEDALE
APPLEBY
Long Marton – Crosby Garrett – Soulby – A second visit to Mallerstang – A drive over Stainmore to Middleton-in-Teesdale.
HIGH CUP NICK
High Force – Caldron Snout – Crookburn Beck.
MIDDLETON-IN-TEESDALE TO KIRKBY LONSDALE
A railway journey and a taxi drive – Cotherstone – Barnard Castle – Bowes – Rere Cross – Barrass – Tebay – Firbank – Middleton-on-Lune – Barbon.
KIRKBY LONSDALE
A boundary walk.
THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY OF WESTMORLAND
Burton-in-Kendal – Arnside – Beetham.
page 125
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
From the painting by James Bateman, R.A.
From an engraving in Pennant’s Tour.
29
The remains of the Tudor Kitchen
THOMAS, LORD WHARTON AND HIS TWO WIVES.
Tomb effigies in Kirkby Stephen Church
By permission of Controller, H.M. Stationery Office
LADY ANNE CLIFFORD, Countess of Pembroke
By permission of the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery
GEORGE CLIFFORD, EARL OF CUMBERLAND.
Father of Lady Anne Clifford
By permission of the Trustees of the National Maritime Museum
MARGARET RUSSELL, COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND,
Mother of Lady Anne Clifford. Effigy in Church of St. Lawrence, Appleby
By permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.
First husband of Lady Anne Clifford
By permission of the Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum
THE COUNTESS’S PILLAR, BROUGHAM
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
From W.A. Poucher’s The Backbone of England.
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
From Pennant’s Tour.
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
From W.A. Poucher’s The Backbone of England.
From W.A. Poucher’s The Backbone of England.
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
MIDDLETON HALL, GATEHOUSE. “The big gateway in the curtain wall.”
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
ALDERMAN WILLIAM THOMPSON of Underley Hall,
Sometime MP for Westmorland
From the painting by H.W. Pickersgill, R.A.
By permission of the Governors of Christ’s Hospital.
DEVIL’S BRIDGE, KIRKBY LONSDALE
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
BEETHAM HALL. SOUTH SIDE. “The dining-hall is now a barn.”
By permission of the Controller, H.M.Stationery Office.
EXPEDITION TO NORTH WESTMORLAND