SOCIETY NEWS 
Including Lecture Reports

REPORTS

Wednesday 28^th May 2008
Visit to Whitehaven

Eleven members of the Society made the long trek to Whitehaven and were rewarded by fascinating glimpses into the history of this town which was once among the leading ports in the country. Mr Ralph Lewthwaite, who was born in Whitehaven, was a very knowledgeable and amusing guide. The Society is most grateful to him. The starting point of the guided walk was where Captain John Paul Jones, who had grown up in Whitehaven,  made landing during his raid on Whitehaven in 1778, a raid which caused consternation in the country.  We were told about the forts and many cannon which guarded the town and saw the earliest pier, dating from 1634. Also, we learned about the coal mines, particularly Wellington Pit, which ran out under the sea for five miles. The last to close was the Haig Pit in the late 1980s.

Among the industries which Whitehaven boasted were: salt (salt from the Whitehaven saltpans was exported as far as Chester by the monks of St Bees), rope making, a foundry, mineral extraction and  linen making  - the latter spawning an estate of over 100 houses with its own school and church in  the  mid 18^th century.

Sugar, rum and tobacco were imported and, until 1926, a mineral railway ran through the centre of the town to the quay. There are some fine buildings and the town was laid out according to the plan of Sir John Lowther who was able to look, from his ‘castle’, all the way down Lowther Street to the quay. His castle was Whitehaven Hospital from 1921 to the 1980s. The town has boasted a bath house (built 1813), a customs house, several fine churches, a refuge school, a water treatment works, assembly rooms (1736), market halls, and theatres, the last of which lasted from 1736-1930. Also, there were many fine mansions and a beautiful square, named Washington Square, after its connections with George Washington. 

Several famous people were connected with Whitehaven including Mathias Read, the father of Cumberland painting and William Brownrigg, a physician whose work to make pits safer saved many lives.

The local heritage and civic societies have done much good work on putting up informative plaques and in trying to preserve and renovate the fine old buildings. A big redevelopment scheme is underway at the old Wellington Pit.

Where SDHS goes her Majesty follows as she is visiting Whitehaven in early June.

Elspeth Griffiths

Wednesday 5th March 2008
Professor David Shotter    Rome's Northern Frontier in Britain

Professor David Shotter attracted an audience of over fifty people to hear his talk on Rome’s Northern Frontier in Britain.  He stated that by 69 AD the border of the land in Britain ruled by the Romans corresponded to the present route of the A5.  To the north of that the land was ruled by the Brigantes under their Queen Cartimandua and her husband Venutius.  She was friendly to the Romans but he was opposed to them.  In 69AD their marriage broke down and a civil war ensued.  His forces overcame hers and the Romans had to rescue her with the result that they were left with hostile territory to their north.

Vespasian became Roman Emperor in 69AD and decided on a policy of conquering the remainder of Britain in the hope that a military success would gain him popularity.

He appears to have considered setting up two provinces, one being the land to the south of the A5 and the other being the land to the north including present day Scotland and even Ireland.  Chester was to be the capital of this latter province but in the event this did not come to fruition.  By the mid 80s AD they had advanced as far north as Inverness but then trouble broke out in another part of the Roman Empire and troops had to be taken from Britain to deal with this. As a result they could no longer hold on to so much territory and they withdrew south to a line between South Shields and Kirkbride.  This frontier was marked by a road called the Stanegate along which were sited forts such as those at Carlisle, Vindolanda and Corbridge.  South of this they consolidated their hold by building forts such as those at Hardknott, Ambleside and Watercrook near Kendal.  Industrial sites such as Wilderspool near Warrington were also established.

In 118AD there was a war involving tribes from what is now Scotland but by 119AD they seem to have overcome the problem. As a first reaction to the troubles they built a turf wall from the River Irthing to the Solway. In 122 AD the Emperor Hadrian visited Britain and decided to build a stone wall from the Irthing to Wallsend.  There were to be milecastles along the wall with two turrets between each. Even the turf wall to the west of the Irving had stone turrets probably to act as signal turrets to communicate to the south. Every milecastle had a north and south gate so people could pass through the wall under supervision.  This had two purposes, one to keep undesirables out and the other as a means of taxing goods in transit. Although slaves may have been used to quarry and transport the stone the legions built the wall itself.  Each century of a legion was allocated a section of the wall to build and the stones to commemorate their achievement can still be found today.  Soon after the wall was begun a decision was taken to narrow its width and also to build forts on the wall rather than have them some distance to the south.  An example being the fort at Housesteads.

Wherever the terrain allowed a V shaped ditch was dug to the north of the wall.  To the south of the wall the vallum was constructed.  This consisted of a flat bottomed ditch situated between two mounds. Its purpose is not known although it may have been to allow the concealed movement of troops along the wall.  About 140AD the wall was abandoned as the troops moved north and built the Antonine Wall between the Forth and the Clyde. However around 160AD the troops abandoned that and returned to Hadrian’s Wall. The turf section was rebuilt in stone and the defensive system extending down the coast from Bowness on Solway to near the fort at Maryport was strengthened. This section did not have a wall but had milecastles and fortlets on it supported by palisades and ditches. This coastal section was probably to deter raiding for loot and also to enable legitimate trade to be taxed.  Finally to the north of Hadrian’s Wall there were some forts such as the one at Bewcastle.  The purpose of these is not clear but may have been to give advance warning of invasions or else they may have been to give protection to the area of the Brigantes tribe cut off from the rest of its territory by the wall.        

After a lively question session the chairman thanked Professor Shotter for his lecture which had been greatly appreciated by his large audience.

R.W.Cann
 

Wednersday 30th January 2008
Sedberghians inTibet, 1904 – 2004.

On the evening of Jan. 30^th 2008 members of the Local History Society and the local support group of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust gathered in Sedbergh School’s Heritage Centre and the room was packed to capacity for a two part presentation.

Before giving us an historical account of connections between Sedbergh and Tibet, Steve Smith described what life is like now in Lhasa, illustrated by his own photos taken on a visit in 2004.  Parts of the city look superficially much as they have for centuries, where it has pleased the occupying Chinese to allow it.  The Potala Palace is still the magnificent building which the first western visitors would have seen and there are still monks in traditional dress, but much of the indigenous quarter nearby is squalid and dilapidated. It is disorientating to find this cheek by jowl with modern Chinese shopping malls filled with 21^st century goods in a large modern city.  Here and there are signs of the old Buddhist faith persisting, and Steve showed us photos of religious paintings in vivid colours on large rounded rocks near the Jokhang Temple.

At the beginning of the 20^th century there was rivalry between Britain and Russia for influence in central Asia, and as part of this Francis Younghusband led an armed party into Tibet from Sikkim in 1903, reaching Lhasa in August 1904 after numerous battles and having crossed several high passes in winter; a great story in itself.  Lt. William Bruce Dunlop, an Old Sedberghian, was one of the officers in charge of the supply lines employing 3000 ponies, 5000 yaks, 3000 bullocks and 7000 mules, which shows the scale of the operation.  The next connection was in 1922 when Arthur W. Wakefield, Old Sedberghian, was doctor to the Everest expedition which went in from the north, Tibetan, side.  He himself reached camp 3 at 21,000 ft, but didn’t acclimatise well to the altitude and was unable to go further.  We were shown a photograph of him, and Mallory “with his kit off” for crossing a river, which had been hidden from public view until recently, when perhaps people have become less sensitive! 

“Freddy” Spencer Chapman was in Lupton House at Sedbergh School before going on to St John’s College, Cambridge. While on a Himalayan climbing expedition in Sikkim in 1936 he met Basil Gould, who offered him a post as his private secretary on a trip to Lhasa.  On this trip Chapman took about 2,500 still photos, some in remarkably good colour for the time, and also cine film. He had become an excellent photographer and recorded all aspects of life in Tibet, and his photographs, now in the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford, form a wonderful record of a vanished society. In his spare time he collected plants which he sent back to Kew, and these included four previously unknown species.  On his way back in 1937 he almost casually climbed Chumolari, 24,000 ft; alpine style, a first ascent.

George Sherriff was in Evans House at Sedbergh School from 1912-16.  He was posted to the NW Frontier in 1919.  Then in 1929 while vice-consul in Kashgar he met Frank Ludlow, with whom he later explored for twenty years, visiting Tibet between 1933 and 1938.  In 1943 he became British Resident in Lhasa and was there for two years, and he was back again in 1946 with Frank Ludlow.

In 1950 40,000 Chinese troops “liberated” Tibet. Bringing us up to date, in 2003 Jim Fisher led a Sedbergh School party to Camp 2 on Everest from the Tibetan side, the highest ever reached by a school party.

Vicky Aspin has been a volunteer worker at the Holehird gardens, headquarters of the Lakeland Horticultural Society where there are plants from all over the world, for a number of years, and during the second half of the evening she told us about George Sherriff, Reginald Farrer and William Purdom.  They collected plants from Tibet and its borders during the first half of the 20^th century and have connections with this area.

George Sherriff sent back over 21,000 specimens, mainly to Kew, the Natural History Museum and Edinburgh Botanical Gardens.  He was a meticulous man, recording not only details of plants, but also medical equipment and treatments (30 grains of quinine plus whisky as a cure for malaria), food and weather.  He mapped and photographed an area of Himalayas along the northern border of Bhutan and the Tsangpo, a region of steep sided valleys which has given rise to a large number of endemic species since there was little opportunity for interbreeding across the ranges.  In an unlabelled photograph it was possible to identify George Sherriff as the man in the shorts (Sedbergh training!) while his companion Ludlow wore breeches. Vicky showed us how the herbarium specimens were mounted and carefully labelled, even to the extent of  having colour panels to show what the flowers were like before they faded.  It was amazing to learn that even in those days his plants and seeds were air freighted back to Croydon.

Wednesday 16th January 2008

At the first meeting of 2008, Martha Bates spoke about a very influential nineteenth-century lady called Harriet Martineau. Harriet who was born in 1802 was a writer and philosopher, and became renowned as a political economist, journalist, feminist and abolitionist.  Martha began by telling us about her early life, which was spent in Norwich as the sixth of eight children in a family of Huguenot extraction and Unitarian views.  Evidently Harriet suffered from a weak constitution for most of her life.  Furthermore, she had no sense of taste and smell and began to lose her hearing from an early age, eventually having to use an ear trumpet. The austere atmosphere of her home with its emphasis on hard work coupled with a lack of warmth shown by her mother combined to make her childhood quite unhappy.  Nevertheless, she was interested in learning, read widely and developed a strong sense of justice.

Martha described how Harriet’s life became more fulfilled when she began to spend more time away from home.  When she was sixteen she passed some months with an aunt and uncle in Bristol, enjoying the company of intellectual and congenial people. In her early twenties, she began to write anonymously for a Unitarian periodical. However, life became difficult for her when her father died leaving very little money to support his wife and daughters. When the bank in which their money was invested failed, and the man to whom she was engaged died, Harriet had to look for ways to earn her living.  Martha gave an account of how she gradually managed to do this by writing reviews and stories and eking out her income by needlework. Eventually, a breakthrough came with her publication Illustrations of Political Economy which was very popular and successful.

When Harriet moved to London in 1832 she became acquainted with the leading writers and thinkers of the time, including George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Darwin. She went on a prolonged visit to the United States and made herself unpopular with her outspoken support of the Abolitionist party.  She also had strong views on a range of current affairs like Catholic Emancipation, Chartism, women’s rights and educational methods, and her books and articles continued to be well received.

Periodically Harriet suffered from ill health, and in 1839, fearing she had a tumour she left London and spent a few years with her sister and brother-in-law in Tyneside. After a course of mesmerism, an alternative health treatment, and with her health much improved, she moved to Ambleside where she spent most of the rest of her life until she died in June 1876.  Although she continued her writing, her reforming zeal was also put to good use in local projects, such as the improvement of housing for working class people.

The Society were grateful for Martha Bates’ introduction to this inspirational Victorian lady, who was so ahead of her time.  

Julie Leigh
 

Members’ Evening -December 2007

The annual Members’ Evening is always an eagerly anticipated occasion and as usual we weren’t disappointed. Judith Robinson began the proceedings with her fascinating talk entitled ‘Researching John Atkinson’s Copy Book’.  She showed slides of the beautifully handwritten pages of John Atkinson’s arithmetic book. He was thirteen and a half in 1863 when he tackled a variety of problems, many of which would have been quite beyond some of the audience! The actual content of the problems gave an interesting insight into nineteenth-century life. For example, one question concerned the calculation of a servant’s wages, and another showed that the rate of death duties depended on the relationship between the deceased and the beneficiaries of his will. Judith suggested that references to places like Middlesex and Sydenham indicated that the author of the textbook from which the questions had been copied probably lived in the south of the country.

Using censuses and parish registers, Judith had spent some time researching John Atkinson’s family, and she discovered that he had spent most of his short life at Cragg Stones in Cautley, where his father was a farmer and butter dealer. Although the book was unmarked and there was nothing to show whether John Atkinson had worked on the problems at home or at school, Judith was curious to find out about his education. In this investigation she was helped by Diane Elphick, who has researched local education in the nineteenth century. Judith could find no record of him on a school roll, but she concluded that since his family were nonconformists he was most probably a pupil at the Sedbergh British School. Furthermore as an 1868 newspaper mentioned his two younger brothers, James and William as prize winners at the Sedbergh British School, it seemed likely that James had also attended there.

Joyce Scobie’s presentation about Liverpool cow keepers was equally enthralling. Until Joyce became engrossed in this study she had had no idea that such a large number of local families had started dairies in the city. An economic depression was responsible for this migration, which began in 1818. Joyce described how hard life was for the dairymen. Milking started at 5am and was followed by the first round of the day. This procedure was repeated in the afternoon and sometimes there were even three milk rounds. The women of the family made butter which was sold in the shop with milk, eggs and preserves. Care of the animals and cleanliness were priorities, and some fine specimens won prizes at local shows.

Communication with home was kept alive in a number of ways. Some women came back to have their babies, and children often returned for a spell of fresh air. Many people came home to retire, but Joyce said that dairying was such hard work that some men did not reach retirement age. Although stricter rules and regulations made life more difficult for the cow keepers, they numbered 900 by the turn of the century. However, during and after the First World War they began to dwindle, until in the 1970s there were only 4 left.

Interestingly, the Wilson family provided a link between these two excellent talks. Peter Wilson, who had inherited John Atkinson’s diary, is a descendant of Robert Wilson who had written a diary about his time in Liverpool as a cow keeper.

Julie Leigh

Wednesday 3rd October 2007
The Life and Work of Thomas Hayton Mawson

The first lecture of the 2007/8 season was held at Settlebeck School on Wednesday 3^rd October.  Over forty members of the society met to hear a talk by Elizabeth (Bette) Kissack on the life and work of Thomas Hayton Mawson, the landscape architect with particular reference to his connections with the Lake District.

Thomas was born at Scorton, near Lancaster, in 1861.  When he was six the family moved to Lancaster and his father bought a plot of land on which he built a pair of semi-detached houses, in one of which the family lived. It was there that Thomas first started gardening.  The family soon moved to Ingleton but when he was twelve he went to live and work in Lancaster for an uncle who was a builder and a keen horticulturist.  When he was fourteen his father bought a property at Langber End to set up a nursery and fruit farm and Thomas was needed to help.  Sadly his father died after two years and a little later Thomas went to London to find work.  He was soon able to send for his two brothers Robert and Isaac, his sister, Sarah, and his mother to join him.  In London he met Anna Prentice whom he married in 1884.

Whilst on honeymoon in the Lake District Thomas received a letter telling him that a proposed business partnership had fallen through.  As a result he and Anna decided that there was the potential in the Lake District to start a family business there.  The whole Mawson family moved to Windermere with Thomas running a landscape gardening practice with Robert and Isaac running, in conjunction, a nursery and contracting business.  Their first commission was to landscape a garden at Bryerswood in Far Sawrey. This was followed by work at Graythwaite Hall which gave Thomas the opportunity to display his passion for terraces and balustrades complemented by ball-finials. Other characteristics of his work were large lawns for playing games and yew hedges. Whilst working there he met the architect Dan Gibson and the two subsequently worked together at Brockhole.  Mr Gaddum, the owner, was a keen photographer and made a record of the building of the house and the landscaping of the garden.  As a result of this Thomas obtained other commissions at Holehird, Cringlemire, Langdale Chase and Moor Crag.

In 1900 Thomas designed and built for himself The Corbels in Windermere.  On the opposite side of the road his brother, Robert, and family lived in one half of a semi-detached house whilst his sister Sarah, and family, lived in the other half.  Isaac and his wife Rosa lived in Oak Street and Heathwaite was built for other members of the Mawson family. The first edition of Thomas’ book “The Art and Craft of Garden-Making” was published in1900. He opened a London office in 1901 but the same year saw the death of his brother Isaac.

Thomas and Anna’s family, which included eight children, had a holiday home built on the shoreline at Hest Bank and the nearby railway station enabled Thomas to reach London much quicker than from Windermere. Thomas, in conjunction with Dan Gibson, was responsible for building a Congregational Chapel at Hest Bank where he worshipped.  Thomas also wanted to create a model village there and designed several houses including The Pillars.  As an architect Thomas’ designs were characterised by protruding slated gables and windows with a central pillar.  His reputation grew and he obtained a commission from Lord Leverhulme to landscape fifty acres of ground around his house, Royston Cottage, on Rivington Pike.  This included the design for a Japanese garden which was fashionable at that time.

Returning to the Lake District he obtained more commissions including landscaping gardens for Rydal Hall, Briery Close, Wood Hall and Above Beck.  His work on the latter in Grasmere included a Japanese style garden.  Before the outbreak of the First World War he returned home from Greece where he had been working.  All the unmarried men in his Lancaster office enlisted and sadly one of his sons killed in the war.  After the war Thomas was responsible for the building of the Westfield Military Village in Lancaster on land given by Mr Herbert Lushington Storey.  Thomas had previously landscaped the gardens of Mr Storey’s house Bailrigg which now forms part of Lancaster University.  In his last years he and his wife moved from Hest Bank to Caton Hall before returning to Hest Bank where he died in 1933.  He was a man of international status having worked for Kings as well as Dukes, Lords and Viscounts.

The Chairman thanked Bette for her most interesting lecture the highlight of which had been her wonderful collection of slides showing Mawson’s work. 

July 2007
Visit to Briggflats

On a lovely July evening Briggflats Meeting  House was the venue for the final summer meeting.. It was particularly appropriate to sit in a place so steeped in  Quaker history to hear about the local origins of the movement. Tess Satchell welcomed us to Briggflats and showed us some of the archives which are still held there. These included a Book of Sufferings which recorded the persecution that was experienced by early Westmorland Quakers.

The main part of the evening was devoted to what David Boulton called his ‘unstructured romp’ through approximately fifty years of Quaker history in the Sedbergh and Dent district. He based his survey on his book, Early Friends in Dent, and it was anything but ‘unstructured’! He began by making the point that movements arise out of the conditions of their time, and that in the case of Quakerism the catalysts were the Civil War and arguments about secular and religious authority.

David narrated how in 1652 George Fox felt compelled to travel to Westmorland to seek out groups of ‘seekers’ who were rebelling against Calvinist theology, and looking for new ways of being Christian. Many had been officers in Cromwell’s New Modern Army. This area, with its large parishes and lack of strong control was ripe for the rise of a radical movement, demonstrated in1862 by a strike in Dentdale against the payment of tithes. Therefore George Fox’s opposition to the clergy and religious hierarchies provided an attractive option. Beginning at the top end of Dentdale, and initially passed on from group to group, Fox made his way around the area. Gradually he persuaded people by his arguments, and by 1664 missionaries were being sent out to take the message to other regions.

In his description of how Quakers suffered for their religious beliefs, David gave examples of their resilience in the face of prolonged persecution. He recounted how, refusing to attend church, to swear oaths, and to pay tithes, or ‘steeple-house rates’, as they called them, they repeatedly had their goods and chattels seized. Furthermore, some were in and out of gaol many times. Following the Conventicle Acts, their meetings were broken up, sometimes violently. However, there is evidence that local people began to take pity on them, to the extent of sometimes paying their fines and tithes. It wasn’t until 1689 when the Toleration Acts legalised Quaker meetings and meeting houses that they were left alone to practise their religion without interference.

Thanks are due to David for a very informative and interesting talk, and to Tess for her hospitality.
 

Wednesday 6th June
The Webster buildings of Kendal

On Wednesday 6^th June eleven members of the society assembled at Kendal Museum in beautiful weather to be met by Mrs Patricia Hovey and Mr Trevor Hughes who took us on a tour of the Webster buildings of Kendal, starting with Beezon Lodge and finishing at the Town Hall, in the building of the earliest parts of which Webster father and son both played a part

Mrs Hovey told us a bit of the background of the family before we set out. Francis Webster, came to Kendal in 1787 at the age of 20. He was principally a builder but did design buildings also. He became an alderman and then Mayor of Kendal in 1823. When he died in 1827 he had completed many substantial buildings in the town and the surrounding area. His elder son, George, trained as an architect and his younger son, Francis, ran his father’s marble showrooms at Aynam, now the Bridge Restaurant, and he lived next door in another Webster hosue.

Francis the elder was man of entrepreneurial vision, buying up all the land on which the canal, with its attendant buildings, was to be constructed, at the cost of three shillings a yard. He then carried out the building work associated with the canal, including the canal superintendent’s house. He also sold off plots of land on Thorny Hills, proceeding to build houses for the purchasers. There are certain features which mark a Francis Webster building although his architect son could build to any style required.  For example, the former used dressed stone, the cutting and dressing being done at his own water mill at Helsington, where, also, stone from Garsdale and Hutton Roof was polished into what was called ‘Kendal marble’ and used for fireplaces etc. The Websters also had their own quarry and seven lime kilns, making a tramline to carry all the material into Kendal. Both built ‘houses for gentlemen’ and these were much in demand and not only in Kendal. Ingmire Hall and Rigmaden are but two examples of Webster houses elsewhere.

Private housing was but a small part of their building enterprise. Public buildings from churches, schools and assembly rooms to bridges, gaols and a bank were all in their repertoire.

To list them all would be tedious but a few examples follow,  Miller Bridge, built in 1818, took traffic across the river to Aynam and that side of Kendal for the first time, and what is now the HSBC bank, which is now the oldest building still operating as such. The Quaker Meeting House, St Thomas’s Church and the Catholic Church are all Webster buildings as were the Ladies’ College and Stramongate School, now used for other purposes. The Shambles and the Farrers’ building were restored by them and the workhouse built. Francis is responsible for the first pavement in Kendal and for helping construct Appleby Gaol. George built churches in several villages, including Natland and Whittington.  There seemed no end to their enterprise and energy and Kendal is justly proud of their achievements.

One of our members, Judith Robinson, was able to add information and anecdotes from her own youthful days in Kendal, enthusiastically identifying a door in a passage as ‘my great grandmother’s front door’. In times past when streets were muddy and dirty front doors were put on the side of a building. Also the front door often served as the entrance to the business as well, the home being above the shop.

The party was very grateful to our two guides who were so knowledgeable and enthusiastic and from whom we learned many other interesting things on the walk.
 

A Walk Around Appleby

The first summer visit of 2007 was to Appleby. Members were taken on a conducted tour of the attractive town by Vivienne Gate and other representatives of the Appleby Society. Our tour began at the ancient Moot Hall where the business of the town council is conducted. The present mayor gave us a short talk about the town’s history and traditions. Appleby, which was originally the county town of Westmorland, gained its charter in the twelfth century, and the Moot Hall was built in Tudor times. On a plaque over the door, the date 1596 is recorded. Appleby was ravaged by the Scots on several occasions, and some of its original streets have not survived. However on Boroughgate, its wide main thoroughfare, there are some lovely old houses.

The mayor, indicating some of the many pictures of former mayors and inhabitants of the town on the walls of the chamber, told us about a few of the town’s notable inhabitants. One of these was Jack Robinson, who gave his name to the saying, ‘as quick as you can say Jack Robinson’. He also showed us some of the impressive robes and regalia which are used on ceremonial occasions. Interestingly, two halberds belonging to the town always stand outside the house of the incumbent mayor during his time in office. We were reminded of the annual Horse Fair for which Appleby is widely renowned. Evidently, so many visitors descend on the town for the event that many citizens tend to batten down the hatches during the fair.

Armed with our newly acquired local knowledge we were led up Boroughgate to St Anne’s Hospital, a group of small almshouses clustered around a small courtyard with a fountain. They were founded by Lady Anne Clifford, a local sixteenth-century landowner, for destitute widows. We were allowed into the tiny chapel, where much of the woodwork dates from the seventeenth century, and the striking eighteenth-century texts around the walls replaced older originals. At the back of the almshouses is a peaceful grassy area where the residents once had small gardens. Next we walked to the top of the hill and looked through large gates at Appleby Castle. Sadly, it has been closed to the public for several years since English Heritage refused to accept the plans of the owner of the castle to develop the site.

Then we were given an unexpected treat. John and Jill Hodge who live in a lovely Georgian fronted house halfway down Boroughgate invited us in to see the building and the garden. Attractive period features have survived in the house and these are complemented by beautiful furniture and decoration. For the gardeners amongst us,  their collection of interesting plants was of special interest. 

Our tour ended with a visit to the parish church of St Lawrence at the bottom of the town. Like so many churches, it has been added to over the centuries, from the oldest twelfth-century building in the tower, the fourteenth-century porch and pillars in the nave, to the restoration of more recent times. Perhaps the most memorable items in the church are three memorials at the far end of the church. One is a small, unadorned effigy of an unnamed lady, which contrasts with a beautiful alabaster figure representing Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, mother of Lady Anne Clifford. She herself is commemorated on a large black marble monument.

Appleby is a most interesting ancient town, and we were really grateful to our knowledgeable guides, who gave up their time to show us some of its finer points. 

Wednesday, 21^st March
Ken Clarke on “Victorian Photography and the Brunskills of Sedbergh and Bowness”.

The true inventor of photography was a Frenchman, Joseph Niepce whose first successful image was of a view from his window in about 1826.  Then in 1839 two people published papers on different methods of obtaining a permanent image.  Daguerre in France had built on Niepce’s work to produce daguerrotypes.  These were high quality images but they produced a mirror image and could not be reproduced.  Fox Talbot in England introduced the modern system of negative and positive image production which enabled copies to be easily made.  His first photo was of a window at his house, Laycock Abbey, taken in 1835.  Initially because of cheaper cost and superior quality the method of Deguerre was the more popular but eventually after a modification the Fox Talbot process became supreme.

Photographic studios were open in London by 1840 and by about 1850 they had reached the Lake District.  The technology improved with time but it still required the sitter for a portrait staying still for a considerable time.  Various props were available to hold the head still which looked more like torture implements than aids to photography.  

William Brunskill was born in Ingleton in 1797 but later moved to Sedbergh and in 1818 married Hannah Wright.  Later that year Hannah died in childbirth.  In 1821 William married Elizabeth Blenkarn and in 1824 their son, Richard, was born.  Their second son, John William, was born in 1825.  William was a painter, plumber and glazier and his two sons joined him in the family firm.  The family lived in various premises in Sedbergh probably starting in Settlebeck cottages. From there they moved to a house in Main Street in the area of what is now the Nat West bank.  From there they had moved to what is now 7 Main Street by 1847.  In 1850 Richard married Isabella Ellis.

By 1858 the two brothers had started taking photographs as several street scenes of Sedbergh exist showing a house with a gallery on the site of what is now the library.

However, this must have been a minor occupation because the 1861 census lists them as being painters, plumbers and glaziers like their father.  They soon started to buy property, in Kendal and by 1865 in Back Lane on the site of the present numbers 21/22.  It was there that they probably had their Sedbergh studio.  For health reasons and also because of the greater number of tourists they decided to open a studio in Bowness although for some time they seemed to spend the winter in Sedbergh and the summer in Bowness.  Pictures of their original studio in Bowness still exist.  They eventually decided to move permanently to Bowness and sold their Kendal and Sedbergh properties.  They built themselves a purpose built house with a large glass window to provide the light needed for photography.  The house still exists.

 Their business flourished and even when Richard died a man was employed to take his place.  When John William died his wife carried on the firm until it finally closed.  Luckily about 17500 of their images survived and have been bought by the Armitt Museum in Ambleside.   

 The chairman thanked Ken Clarke for a most interesting talk that had provided a fitting end to the winter programme.  Thanks to a generous donation the society has been able to buy from the Armitt Museum copies of the 300 photos connected with Sedbergh.

Richard Cann

Wednesday 21st February

Members' Evening
 A large audience assembled in Dent Memorial Hall on Wednesday 21^st February to hear Denis Sanderson start off by talking on 'The Geological History of Dentdale and Area'.
 
Standing in the very schoolroom where he had sat at lessons as a child, in a region famed for its geological  associations, he was able to put his local knowledge to good use. In an informative and lively presentation he explained where various features of interest could be seen in the locality. He started by walking us up Barbondale where the beck follows the line of the Dent Fault with Silurian age rock to the left and limestone to the right. The Dent Fault is not quite dead and he reminded us of the earthquake of 9/8/1970, the biggest recorded in England, measuring 4.9 on the Richter Scale, Haycock Ghyll is another good vantage point and at Gawthrop the older Ordovician rock shows through. Flinters Ghyll is a good place to observe the flat like paving called Hawes Limestone and Binks Quarry up Deepdale is a good spot to see fossils . He likened Rise Hill to a giant layer cake with 11 or 12 different aged limestones sandwiched between sandstone and shale.
  This was a really good laypersons guide to local geology and will have no doubt encouraged members to take a fresh look at our local rock formations.

The second talk by Julie Leigh entitled 'The Policing of 19c Cumberland and Westmorland' was based on her research into local policing, particularly relating to the Kirkby Stephen area.
An amusing role play exercise illustrated the difficulties encountered by the then elected village constable with conflicting evidence, unreliable witnesses and local petitioning. The local lock-ups were very basic, very confined and offered no privacy.
As the population grew so did the crime.
 

Wednesday 7th February
John Claister on The History of Cricket in Sedbergh

On a cold February night, in weather not at all suited to the topic of the talk, members and visitors met to hear John Glaister tell us about the history of cricket in the town.

Cricket had started at the school and in 1841 the first match was played against a team from Kirkby Lonsdale. Presumably because of transport difficulties it was played in a field opposite the Swan Inn at Middleton. In the early years the team seemed to consist of schoolboys plus a few men from the town. One of these, Mr Smith a solicitor, caused an incident in 1846 when he ran out the star of the Kirkby Lonsdale team. He ran him out whilst he was backing up at the bowler’s end which was considered unsporting. The players adjourned to the Bull afterwards and the drink did nothing to improve relations. Eventually the visitors coach left to a mixture of abuse and missiles with Mr Smith trying to restrain the boys. In those days cricket in this country was sometimes played in the autumn which would be considered unseasonable now. Bowling was underarm and not overarm as now. Wickets and pitches were very bad and as a result matches did not last long even if they were two innings games. Indeed the drinking afterwards seemed the major event and could go on until the small hours of the next morning!

Cricket at the school had thrived sufficiently for the first past versus present match to be played in 1850 which the present won convincingly. Over the years the school produced several good cricketers but only one test match player, Mitchell-Innes, who has died recently. However, Mr Glaister thought that J.A.Burrow from the nineteenth century was the best. He was a local boy and had played for many local clubs and ones in central Yorkshire with great success.

Sedbergh town club played its first game in1863 and its formation may have been connected with the decline of the school under Dr Day as headmaster. Its zenith was reached when cricket leagues were reformed some years after WW1. The town team was the best in the Westmorland league during the 1920s when it was composed of a mixture of school staff and local men. However, it had ceased to exist by the mid thirties and was not reformed for another forty years.

The chairman thanked the speaker for his talk and during coffee and biscuits afterwards members were able to look at a display of photographs from the archives of Sedbergh School and the History Society.

Richard Cann
 

Wednesday 17th January 2007

Andrew Lowe on "Bank Barns, Boskins and Bee-Boles"
Over fifty members and visitors attended the opening talk after the festive break. It was given by Andrew Lowe on the subject of “Bank Barns, Boskins and Bee-Boles”.
Andrew had a career in planning, being Senior Planner with the Lake District NPA and then its Building Conservation Officer. In addition he has lectured for various universities on the industrial archaeology of the Lake District and also on its traditional buildings.

His talk to the society dealt with the various farm buildings that could be found within the Lake District National Park. Farm buildings are the best vernacular buildings for the absence of change whereas domestic buildings are continually altered due to the fashion of the time. Barns by definition are a building where corn can be threshed and stored and they usually have a section for cattle. They need to be watertight yet ventilated. Most of the barns in the Lake District have been built of stone obtained within a radius of 200 yards of the building. Originally they had steep roofs when thatched but less steep roofs were needed when slates were used.

Bank Barns were built on slopes with the main door, which was situated on the slope, not in the middle of the barn. The larger area was used for storing the corn before threshing and the smaller area for storing it after it had been threshed. Opposite the door was the winnowing window which helped cause a draught to blow away the chaff which was formed during the threshing. The bottom floor of the barn was used for cattle or storage of carts, etc. The threshing could be done by hand but there were examples where water or horse power had been used. The earliest barn dated from 1659 but even this had been built using some foundations from an earlier barn. The status of a farmer was shown by the quality of the workmanship on the barn and by decorative features such as finials on the gable end of the roof.

Inside the barns the partitions were known as boskins and these could be made of wood or stone. They were usually lime-washed to act as an antiseptic. Many of these have now been removed to give larger open spaces within barns.

Other types of farm building still exist such as hennery-piggeries. In these the hens were housed on the upper floor and pigs on the ground floor. Only the top levels of society could afford coach houses and dovecotes. Finally before the advent of sugar from the Americas every farm house would have had its bee-boles. These were recesses where bee hives could be sited to protect them from the rain. They were usually facing south-east so that the bees got the maximum hours of light.

Andrew dealt with a variety of questions and gave his opinion on the uses to which the surviving barns should be put. To date a considerable sum of money has been given as grants to ensure their preservation. He was thanked by the chairman for a most interesting an entertaining talk.

Richard Cann

Wednesday 1st November 2006

Report by Tony Hannam
on Professor Roger Fawthrop’s lecture

WITH ONLY CROWS AS PASSENGERS TO SEDBERGH
Professor Fawthrop has featured on our programme before and there was a large audience in anticipation of another fascinating talk about the Furness & Yorkshire Union Railway Project of 1865. He began by giving some background to the politics behind railway development in the Victorian age.

There were two major periods of planning and construction.
1. 1843 – 1855 The principle trunk routes and 2nd tier routes, the core of which still exist today; e.g. the east and west coast main lines.
2. 1865 – 1880 The major cross country routes such as the Settle – Carlisle, the branch lines and metropolitan commuter lines.

Railway mania was at its height with 268 Railway Boards in existence in York County alone in 1847. The mentality of the time seemed to be to fill in the open spaces on the map; no National Parks to contend with in those days. That only a handful came about was because of the necessity for an Act of Parliament for each project and stringent compliance with the tiniest detail. The Boards had to have the power to construct, finance and operate the line. Also agreement had to be reached to hook up with other existing lines. The vested interests of the powerful LNWR and NER made life difficult.

The East & West Yorkshire Union railway (EWYUR) had plans to run a line up Wensleydale from the NER line at Melmerby (nr Ripon) to Leyburn, Hawes, Mallerstang, Sedbergh (via Garsdale) and Barbon to link up with existing lines at Kirkby Stephen, Ingleton or Milnthorpe. This was opposed by the big two and eventually only the Leyburn – Hawes section was built by NER. The demise of EWYUR followed but ‘the baby got a new suite of clothes’ and the Furness & Yorkshire Union Railway (FYUR) came into being.

What was at stake was the transport of high quality coke from Durham to Barrow in Furness so that it could be shipped to the South Wales blast furnaces. At the time this was traveling on the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway (SD&LUR) via Barnard Castle and Kirkby Stephen to Tebay. 68 million tons were moved during WW1.

James Ramsden at the Barrow end of FYUR had an eye on this lucrative traffic as he was a major shareholder in both companies. He was also interested in moving 200,000 tonnes of Haematite per year from Barrow to the South Staffs. steel works. Neither company could avoid paying LNWR for using the Tebay to Carnforth section or indeed from Carnforth to Derby.

This is where a Furness line link from Arnside to Barbon via Milnthorpe could have hooked up with the proposed Hawes-Sedbergh line, and the Ingleton-Leeds line, cutting out LNWR. Only the Milnthorpe-Arnside section was eventually completed. This enabled the gentry of Kendal to go to Grange but ‘only crows’ to Sedbergh.
 

Wednesday 4th October 2006

The first lecture of the 2006/2007 series drew an audience of forty people to hear Yvonne Luke's talk on  "Rethinking Ingleborough".
 From Victorian times up to the Royal Commission of Monuments survey in 1988 it was considered that the summit of Ingleborough contained an iron age fort surrounded by a rampart.  It was thought that there were twenty hut circles within the rampart.  These were clustered in the central area of the summit with the north-western and north-eastern areas apparently empty.
 Yvonne had studied aerial photographs and detected a faint circle in the north-western corner and later investigation on the ground had suggested that this was a ring cairn pre-dating the iron age by about a thousand years.  A path appeared to lead from it to a break in the south-western part of the rampart.      From there a pathway occurred in the scree below leading to a grassy area.  Ring cairns are well known in the Peak District and are thought to be ritual structures dating to the second millennium BC.  They are also found in the Dales were they are 10-12 metres in diameter. Yvonne wondered if what had been thought to be iron age hut circles on Ingleborough were really bronze age ring cairns.  She also thought she had detected a few half ring structures there.
 She had investigated the rampart and decided it could not be a defensive feature of a fort for various reasons.  Firstly in places there was what appeared to be a ditch, or a quarry site for the stones of the rampart, on the inside the rampart.  This would have been a nonsense defensively.  Secondly there were several breaks in the rampart and many of these appeared to be part of the original design and marked by orthostats (standing stones).  They did not have a ditch or quarry scoop behind them.  Finally the most imposing part of the rampart occurred where it was least needed defensively as there were sheer drops below it.  She thought Ingleborough had been a sanctuary in that it was used for ritualistic purposes and also provide a shelter for cattle and people when danger threatened their pastures below but had not been a fort.
 The surface of the summit was getting badly eroded by the large number of walkers there and already some archaeological sites had been lost.  She hoped that money would be found for a dig to occur to answer questions before the evidence had been destroyed.  After her talk she answered several questions before being thanked by the chairman who wished her success when she submitted her thesis for a Ph.D.   Richard Cann
 

AGM Saturday 25th March 2006

The Annual General Meeting of the society was held in Settlebeck School on Saturday 25^th March.  After the minutes of last year's AGM had  been approved the officers of the society presented their annual reports.  Apart from the usual lectures and visits the year had been dominated by 25^th Anniversary celebrations.  Two successful exhibitions were held in Sedbergh and Dent and there had been an enjoyable dinner at which the guest speaker was Sir Christopher Booth.  The society had also launched a web-site, www.sedberghhistory.org, and had gained some new members as a result. The finances of the society were sound and there were 279 subscriptions to the society meaning it had about 350 actual members spread throughout the world.

The Very Reverend Ingram Cleasby was re-elected as President and the existing officers and committee members were re-elected en-bloc with the addition of Mrs Josie Templeman.  After the formal part of the meeting the large number of members present took part in a short quiz and then enjoyed splendid refreshments provided by the members themselves

Wednesday 15^th March 2006

The last in this season's lectures took place on Wednesday 15^th March when a large audience came to hear one of the society's most distinguished members.  Professor Robert Fox is the Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford and his talk was on "The Scientists and Schools of Sedgwick's North Country".

Grammar schools were schools that had been endowed for the free teaching of the grammar of the classical languages, Latin, Greek and sometimes Hebrew.  They often taught other subjects but the pupils would pay for this tuition.  A survey done in 1818 showed a wide range in the number of pupils and the salary paid to staff.  The Master at Leeds received £500 per annum whilst many in small schools only got about £50.  In addition to the Master some schools had an Usher who helped him and some had a person who taught the three Rs.  The buildings were similar in that all the pupils were in one large room.  The Master sat at one end on a raised dais and the pupils sat on forms.  These were grouped together so that pupils sat with others who had reached the same standard.  The pupils learnt the grammar by rote. During the nineteenth century these schools declined except for those in big towns or a few such as Eton that attracted wealthy people. There were several reasons for this. The importance of the classical languages for getting a career had declined although they were needed to get into Oxford and Cambridge Universities. National, British and Dames' Schools provided a cheaper way of being taught the three Rs.  Also those schools endowed on a fixed income found that to be increasingly insufficient.  By the end of the century the Grammar Schools had either closed or had been converted into elementary schools or in some cases survived by become fee paying schools teaching grammar as well as other subjects.  Dent came into the first category and Sedbergh into the last.

In the seventeenth century the Grammar Schools in the North West had produced many pupils who had gone on to Cambridge where they had made successful careers mainly in Science and Mathematics. A contemporary had called them the "hard progeny of the North".  Examples were Sedgwick and Watson. The former had been appointed Professor of Geology, without any knowledge of the subject, but had gone on to a very distinguished career. Watson had been appointed Professor of Chemistry, again without any knowledge of the subject.  He had gone on to be Professor of Divinity and finally Bishop of Llandaff, a
place he hardly ever visited in over twenty years.

Other people came up through different routes. John Dawson, from Garsdale, was largely self-taught initially but became an apothecary in Sedbergh after studying in Lancaster, Edinburgh and London. He also coached Mathematics to some of those reading it at Cambridge. They stayed with him in their vacations and he was so successful that he gained a national reputation and eventually earned his living from it.  John Dalton from near Cockermouth went to Kendal and then to Manchester teaching and lecturing.  He produced an Atomic Theory of immense importance in Chemistry.  Finally there was Thomas Garnett from Barbon who had become an apprentice of Dawson. He had gone to Edinburgh and then set up as a doctor in the spa town of Harrogate.  He next moved to London where a glittering career as a lecturer beckoned. However, his wife died, he became depressed and soon died of typhoid.

The chairman thanked Professor Fox for a most interesting lecture which the audience had enjoyed and it had provided a fitting end to the season.

Wednesday 1st March 2006

A meeting of the society was held in Dent Memorial Hall on Wednesday 1st March and it attracted a large audience. The first item of the evening was a showing of a film made in 1985 called “Adam in Paradise”. David Boulton at that time was running Granada Television’s current affairs and regional programmes and he commissioned the film and was the presenter on it. The Adam referred to was Adam Sedgwick and the Paradise was Dentdale. In the film David outlined the history of the dale, in particular its opposition to tithes over the centuries. He then went on to meet some of the characters in the dale in 1985. Some of the views on the history would need to be revised in the light of recent research but the film provided an interesting record of the dale and its inhabitants two decades ago. Unfortunately David was unable to be present but sent a letter giving details about the film and we are very grateful to him for lending the copy to the society for the meeting.

The film’s mention of the importance of knitting to the history of Dent provided an excellent introduction to a showing of “The Terrible Knitters of Dent” starring Betty Hartley, Elizabeth Middleton and pupils from Dent School. This delightful film explained how the knitting was done and the clothes and equipment used by the knitters. The trade was an economic necessity for survival due to the decline of farming in the dale. Copies of the video are available in various places in Dent and it is well worth buying as it provides an excellent record of a past way of life.

Richard Cann

Wednesday 15th February 2006

'A Year at Killington Hall' with Mrs Judith Robinson
 Judith is a member of the Society and a large audience turned out for her presentation of 'The 1876 Diary of Agnes Ann Kendal' which is the title of a book she has recently published.
 Agnes Ann was the 8^th and youngest child of Robert and Elizabeth Kendal (nee Fawcett).
 Robert was a tenant farmer at Killington Hall which is where Ann lived along with her unmarried older sister Sarah and brother John.
The diary gives a quite fascinating insight into life in Victorian England through the eyes of a 19 year old farmers daughter.
Judith was congratulated for bringing the diary to life in such a compelling way with old and new photographs interspersed with voice-overs reading extracts from the diary. What would Agnes have thought if she had known her most private diary had been made so public 130 years later?
Today we regard Killington Hall as somewhat isolated. In 1876 we hear of a constant stream of social visitors and frequent outings to Kendal, Orton, Sedbergh and occasionally to Cautley. The 'Red Lion Inn' was only across the yard but the family were tee-total.
 The diary reveals Agnes to be a committed Christian and although the Anglican Church was only yards away it was to the Vale of Lune Chapel, then non-conformist and now known as St Gregory's, that Agnes went to worship and teach at Sunday School. Making 2 trips on Sunday would have meant walking about 16 miles.
She rather surprisingly made no reference to shopping of having any money other than pocket money.
She enjoyed baking and there are references to sewing, dress-making, mangling, cleaning and churning butter.  She only seemed to help on the farm with milking cows and bringing in the hay; 116 carts and 47 sleds in 1876.
 The highlight of the year was the visit to Orton Pot Fair in June where the previous year she had met her future husband Jim Wharton and to whom she was secretly betrothed.
 Her courtship and Jim's visits delightfully enlighten her days. Jim would often catch the train to Tebay from Sedbergh, even hitch a lift on a goods train and frequently walk the 13 miles back home.
It was 5 years later on February 9th. the day before her 25^th birthday, that they were married. Sadly they did not live happily ever after. On Dec. 5^th she gave birth to a son but 3 days later she was dead as was her son 10 days later.
 Jim remarried, moved to Kendal and had 9 children. No photos were kept of Agnes and there is no gravestone for her and her son in Orton Churchyard.
Happily the diary survives and having been handed down through Jim's family to Judith's aunt and now the book is a fitting memorial.
 Judith was warmly thanked for sharing this in such a delightful way. 

 

Wednesday 1st February 2006

 Members' talks:This year the members giving the talks were Kevin Lancaster and Roger Underwood.
 
Kevin's subject was "Inventories and Bonds". Soon after a person died an inventory was taken, of the possessions and debts that they had, to be used in conjunction with their will. This task was normally undertaken by four neighbours.  For this area the earliest surviving record was from the first half of the sixteenth century. From then the number increased until the Commonwealth during which there was a steep decline. After that the number sharply rose and peaked around 1700. During the eighteenth century the practice declined and finally ended in the nineteenth century. Most of the inventories for this area are to be found in Preston and we are lucky that the society has transcripts of so many, the latter fact largely due to Kevin's efforts. In his lecture he compared some from a period in the seventeenth century with another sample taken a hundred years later. The comparison showed the effects of inflation and increasing wealth in the area. Particularly interesting was the much wider range of furniture in the houses. Also the terms used to describe some of the farm animals had changed with the later ones being the same as our contemporary ones. Finally Kevin stressed the importance of the information provided by bonds, sureties required when loans were involved.
 
Roger Underwood's subject was "From Bristol to Sedbergh and back again, a journey of fifty years." This talk linked the fortunes of the Uptons of Ingmire Hall with the Smyth's of Ashton Court near Bristol. The latter were a much more important and wealthier family with the head being a baronet and Ashton Court being the centre of a very large estate. The family were leading figures in Bristol society. Florence, the sister of the baronet, became the second wife of John Upton of Ingmire Hall. His first wife had been the daughter of the Bishop of Bristol. Their son Thomas died in 1843 of pneumonia, caught from exposure on Kendal Fell, but not before he had produced two sons, Thomas and Greville. Back in Bristol Florence's brother Hugh had died and been succeeded as baronet by another brother, John. The latter was a confirmed bachelor and this meant the title would pass to Thomas. However, he was indulged by his grandmother and he died in Bristol due to his excesses, leaving Greville as the heir.
  At this stage a man suddenly appeared on the scene claiming to be the son of Hugh from a marriage contracted in Ireland. John accepted his claim to be the heir to the baronetcy and then conveniently died the next day. Naturally a court case, which was the talk of Bristol, was held to decide who had the right to succeed as baronet. The claimant was found to be an impostor and Greville became the baronet.  Florence eventually died in 1852 having seen her grandson inherit the title. Another Florence, the daughter of Thomas born in 1837, later acquired Ingmire Hall as Mrs Upton-Cottrell-Dormer.  Ashton Hall was eventually overwhelmed by death duties in the early nineteenth century and was bought by Bristol City Council.
  The speakers were thanked by the chairman who remarked that the evenings such as this showed how lucky the society was in being able to draw on the skills of so many talented members.
 

Wednesday 18th January 2006

Dr Simon Smith of York University addressed the society on the topic 'Robert Lowther, Governor of Barbados 1711-20: saint or Sinner?' In an interesting account of Lowther's time in the West Indies, Dr Smith explored some of the controversy surrounding this enigmatic character.
  As a plantation owner, married to the Barbadian heiress, Joan Carleton, Lowther was already well acquainted with the Caribbean island. Dr Smith suggested that Lowther's appointment as Governor was probably connected with his family's support for the Stuart regime. Lowther cannot be condemned for his involvement in slavery , since the practice was generally considered to be acceptable during this period, and many other members of the gentry were engaged in it. However, he was heavily criticised for various aspects of his governorship.
  Some of the charges against him were outlined by the speaker. He was accused of extortion and corruption, and manipulating the law for his own ends. He was recalled in 1714 to answer the charges, but after the death of Queen Anne, he was allowed to return. According to his critics, things continued much as before. A law was passed which made trading with other islands illegal without the purchase of expensive licences, but apparently he himself engaged in illicit trade or turned a blind eye to it. Furthermore, he raised a tax to fortify the island, but it was reported that much of the money was diverted elsewhere.
  Dr Smith then considered how far the criticisms against him were justified. He maintained that leading contemporary opponents of Lowther, like Rev William Gordon and Samuel Cox had personal reasons for their condemnation, and that later critical histories reproduced some of the earlier accounts. Seemingly, other writers had their own reasons for castigating him. Although there seems to very little evidence to suggest that there were many positive outcomes of Lowther's governorship, Dr Smith reminded his audience that in judging him it has to be remembered that standards in eighteenth-century public life were very different from today.

Wednesday 4th January 2006

'Andrew de Harcia and the Scottish Wars of Independence' by Adrian Rogan
The story of his amazing career: border warfare in the early fourteenth century

Andrew de Harcla was one of the outstanding northern knights involved in the Scottish Wars of Independence. He was the subject of Adrian Rogan’s interesting talk to the History Society in January. Unfortunately, there were computer problems so that we were unable to see his collection of photographs very well.
The de Harcla family had connections with Hartley Castle near Kirkby Stephen and several photographs showed how well it had been positioned. Sir Andrew also owned land in Sedbergh and district and had the advowson of the church in which he placed his brother James!
De Harcla served under both Edward I and Edward II and for his services he was created Keeper of Carlisle and later Keeper of Carlisle Castle. He amassed a large body of soldiers; men at arms, esquires, hobelars ( mounted soldiers who could also fight on foot) and archers. He was defending Carlisle Castle at the time of Bannockburn in 1314. A year later the Scots attacked Carlisle, capturing it but de Harcla defended the Castle so well that the Scots retired.
He was involved in several other skirmishes eg. at Boroughbridge where he defeated the Lancastrian rebels and was rewarded by being created Earl of Carlisle. At this time he could do no wrong!
Mr Rogan believed that de Harcla and Robert Bruce had met several times. A self confessed romantic he mentioned the rumour that de Harcla was in love with Bruce’s sister Constancia. De Harcla thought that it was time for a permanent truce between England and Scotland so having no faith in Edward he went secretly to Loch Maben to meet Robert Bruce to conclude a peace treaty. The townspeople of Carlisle were delighted as it would mean peace but the king was furious and ordered the capture and execution of de Harcla. Without a proper trial he was tied to a hurdle and dragged through the streets of Carlisle before being hung, drawn and quartered and then beheaded.

Adrian Rogan is writing three docu-novels on the life of Andrew de Harcla. The first entitled Northern Warrior is already in print’

Wednesday 7th December 2005

Slate Quarries and Quarrymen in the South Eastern Lake District: Dr Rob David

At their last autumn meeting for 2005 members spent a most interesting evening learning about quarrying activity in the Lake District. Dr David focussed on our nearest quarries in Troutbeck, Kentmere and Long Sleddale which produced either the better quality green slate from Borrowdale volcanic rocks or inferior bluish slate of Silurian origin.
In the late 1850’s 120-150 workers were employed in Westmorland producing about 2000 tons per annum at a rate of 19 tons per worker.
By 1896 Welsh quarries dominated the industry, attracting more capital investment and producing 80% of the total output compared with the Lake District’s 4.4%, putting it 4th in rank behind Wales, Scotland and Cornwall.
Slate competed with tiles and thatch as a roofing material and was also used for building construction, walling and paving.
Most quarries in our region were relatively small and usually fell in and out of use. Dr David explained how census data on quarrymen was hard to come by as many of them had other seasonal occupations such as in farming or transferring the slate on carts to the transport networks. Locally extracted slate was usually used within about 15 miles.
There were 3 main categories of worker: rock hands who drilled and extracted the slate; rievers, who split it into thin sheets, or dressers. The latter were itinerant workers and were important to the success of the company in producing the finished article.
Until the coming of the railways most slate was moved by local shipping from small ports or on the canals. Slate barges even travelled up and down Coniston Water and Windermere.
Dr David illustrated several quarries with excellent slides.
Quarries still form an important part of our former industrial landscape and after this lecture our members will be enthused to resume their survey of local quarries in Sedbergh and district in 2006.

Tony Hannam

Wednesday 19th October 2005

The Memorialisation of The Great War 1914-1925 by Ian Lewis.

Every village, town and city has its own memorial commemorating those who lost their lives in the two world wars.

Ian Lewis has been researching World War One memorials and in his fascinating lecture and overhead slide show brought our attention to the great diversity of memorials in South Cumbria. These ranged from seats dedicated to specific people, trees planted in memory of local soldiers and decorated mugs to the more conventional war memorials found in local graveyards, which list those who fell ‘for King and Country’.

There was a feeling in 1914 that British ‘values’ were being eroded; the war that broke out was thought of as a means of purifying and cleansing the nation. Pressures for young men to join up were considerable and initially most left their homes in euphoric mood little dreaming of the horror and destruction that was to ensue.

Once the war ended, local people felt that a tangible form of remembrance of their dead was the least they could do. Parish Councils met to discuss how to raise the necessary money; this was not always easy as unemployment was growing.

Amongst the different memorials were street shrines dedicated to those who had lived in the neighbourhood, wooden crosses at road junctions, lych and cemetery gates. Some buildings displayed Rolls of Honour, many being beautifully decorated. Stained glass windows in churches remembered officers and men from well-to-do families.

Members were able to supplement Mr Lewis’s list by suggesting Sedbergh, Garsdale and Dent memorials with which he was not familiar.

Wednesday 5th October 2005

 The Sedbergh and District History Society opened its 2005/6 season with a lecture by Dr Peter McCue on “Ghostly Armies: an Examination of some British Cases”.

Over the centuries there have been numerous reports of people seeing apparitional warriors, soldiers or armies. Dr McCue dealt with three such cases the first happening at Edgehill, the site of the first battle in the English Civil War, which was fought on 23rd October 1642. About two months later according to two tracts ‘A Great Wonder in Heaven’ and ‘The New Years Wonder’, ghostly sounds and sights related to the battle were experienced in the area on a number of occasions. It was claimed that King Charles I sent people to investigate the phenomena and they themselves saw the apparitions. However, no documentary evidence supporting this has been found in the royal correspondence.

The second case of a ghostly army was reported from Souter Fell near Keswick. The army was allegedly seen on the eastern side of Souter Fell on several occasions in the Eighteenth Century. They were reported in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ in 1747 and in a book by Clarke in 1787. William Lancaster of Blake Hills and his household observed the phenomena and he, at least, did exist dying in 1788 aged about 78.

The third case involved a phantom battle near Loch Ashie to the east of Loch Ness. Sightings have been reported over the centuries including some from the second half of the Twentieth Century. One account reported the men as being dressed in ragged clothes with bare feet and bare legs. They carried either short swords or sticks. Short swords were used by the Picts and they may have been the warriors in the sighting.

Finally Dr McCue mentioned an alleged sighting of a Danish or Viking army in Dent. There was a reference to this in a book in the 1950’s. It was reported as having been seen by the Middleton family but he had not been able to confirm that. His lecture stimulated his audience to ask him many questions and they provided him with information about sightings in Dent and Souter Fell.

Dr McCue had given the society an excellent lecture on an unusual topic.

Richard Cann

********************************

25th Anniversary Exhibition 2005

History Matters

The exhibition celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Sedbergh & District History Society.

Displays, based on members’ research, highlighted particular people and activities, but they also paid tribute to the people who stayed in the dales and those who moved on to wider horizons. The exhibition recognised the role that the lives and activities of local people played in the evolution of our landscape and that the clocks did not stop with the Industrial Revolution. The clocks tick here just as in other cities and towns around the world.

The exhibition offered a small glimpse of past worlds. It did not tell the whole story, or offer a chronological history lesson. It provided snapshots to remind us that time does not stand still. Traces of the earliest settlers, the Celtic tribes who named Dent and some of our hills and rivers, and the Norse language, survive in many farm names. Mills, quarries and other remains reveal our industrial heritage, and together with roads and tracks, show the ebb and flow of economic life. Documents, and photographs, illustrate the lives of the people.

It was pleasing that so many people found something of interest in the exhibition. The archive was available to look through or for personal research. The exhibition was adapted for each venue; for example in Dent, the Parish Council kindly agreed that the Enclosure Award map was available for display.

Thank you to all the people, too numerous to mention individually, who helped to make the exhibition possible.