Dovenby – a rural village past and present
It lies at the foot of Skiddaw, and its lake is the third biggest in Lakeland. ”This house done by John Grave 1736″ says one little house in the village.
We see the spire of the new church as we ride along by the lake, but only those who turn across the fields see the old one near the water’s edge. It is the work of the Normans made new last century, and stands charmingly by a busy little stream. The interior has crooked old arches. and there is a medieval gravestone carved with a cross and a sword. There are several memorials to the Speddings, who lived near by at Mirehouse, where the most famous of their family was born. He was James Spedding. who gave 30 years to the study of Francis Bacon, his edition of Bacon’s Life and Letters so impressing Carlyle that he called it “the hugest and faithfullest bit of literary navvy work I ever met with in this generation.” Among the friends of Spedding were Coleridge and Thackeray, and it was Tennyson who called him “the Pope among us young men, the wisest man I know.”
Bassenthwaite does not rank high in Lakeland scenery. Its commanding feature is the view of Skiddaw. which at some points shows a clear rise from the lake level to the summit. A striking show when we called in June was the array of foxgloves on the wooded fells on the western side of the lake. We found whole hillsides as coloured as the bins of Scotland are coloured by its richest heather later in the year. The finest viewpoint overlooking Bassenthwaite is the bold hill Barff, opposite the head of the lake. Compared with such lakes as Ullswater, Derwentwater, or Hawes Water, Bassenthwaite is just a quiet exit from the Lake Country.
From its hill above the River Eden we see Carlisle four miles away and Scotland across the Solway Firth. Here still are traces of the Roman Wall, and near the church is a Roman stone found in the river about a century ago.
Where the church stands a Roman mile-castle once stood. and in this simple building are Roman stones that have been used again. Its first builders were the Normans, and some of their masonry is still at the east end of the chancel. The nave has old beams in the roof, and there are two gravestones 600 or 700 years old, one with a flowered cross, the other with what looks like a minstrel’s harp. One of the rectors, Thomas Lewthwaite, ended a ministry of 57 years here in 1762.
The village has seen some of the great figures of history passing by, for here came Edward the First on bis last journey, before he died at Burgh-on-Sands, and here, a few years later, came Robert Bruce to camp for five days. The village has also seen the discovery of remarkable treasure trove: in 1837 many medieval coins were found at Sandsfield near by. and in 1884 a box containing 6000 coins of the 14th century came to light.
Close neighbours in this narrow strip of Cumberland between the mountains and the sea, these two little places, Beckermet St John and Beckermet St Bridget, are named after their churches, and each has relics nearly a thousand years old.
St John’s is a 19th-century church standing high on a pretty comer, where the Black Beck and the Kirk Beck meet at an old stone bridge before hurrying on to the sea. A neat and simple building it is, in which we found a collection of ancient stones in the porch and on the windowsills. Some are gravestones, whole and broken, big and small, carved with crosses and sometimes with a sword. One has parallel tines branching from the stem of a cross, and another a flower in the centre of three circles forming the head of a cross. There are some big fragments which are perhaps the oldest of all pieces of crosses carved with patterns 900 or 1000 years ago.
Here as a peace memorial is something modern in the style of the 15th century, an attractive, chancel screen with linenfold panels and traceried bays.
St Bridget’s church stands lonely and rarely used on one of the rolling hills. It bas an old bellcot, and thick walls which tell of Norman days, and its chancel arch seems to suggest alterations in the 13th century. But we do not need to go inside to see its best and oldest treasures, for they are in the churchyard-two shafts of crosses made and carved in the time of the Normans. One is of very worn white stone, about six feet high. and has a plait pattern; the other, of red stone, is shorter, with spirals and cable bands and an inscription no longer readable.
Here still are fragments of building foundations in a Roman camp that has sent many relics to Carlisle museum; and here too are the gaunt grey walls of a ruined castle built almost entirely of material from Hadrian’s wall. There is a massively-built farmhouse which was perhaps a border fortress 600 years ago. Here is Hobbie Noble’s Well, reminding us of the Hobbie Noble in Sir Walter Scott’s ballads, and an unlovely 18th-century church which does not attract the pilgrim. All these old things has Bewcastle, but they are not what we come here to see. We come to this faraway spot for one magnificent possession, the Bewcastle Cross in the churchyard, one of the most famous in England.
Long before the Conquest it was here, perhaps in the 7th or 8th century. The head which once crowned its 14-ft shaft has gone, but the carving of the shaft is exceptionally well preserved, enough to show at a glance that the sculptor who fashioned it was a master of his craft. Beautifully and boldly done it all is. though some of the detail is worn by time, and on each of the four sides is still something to see. The north face has panels of vine. scrolls, and knotwork:, and a chequered panel rather like a chessboard. The south face includes a line of runes, about the meaning of which scholars differ, and part of a sundial dividing the day between sunrise and sunset into 12 parts. The east face is a long panel filled with many devices, bold vine scroll patterns with clusters of fruit, two delightful squirrels, birds and strange animals, one eating the grapes.
But most interesting of all is the west face, where three of the four panels are carved with human figures. One shows John the Baptist holding a Holy Lamb; another Christ standing on a lion and an adder with his right hand raised in blessing; while the third shows a man holding a hawk on his wrist, his hair falling over what looks like a cape on his shoulders. The fourth panel is the key to it an, for its inscription tells us why the cross is here; it was set up as a victory column, long before the days of Alfred.
It is little more than a farm, yet Roman Cumberland is all about us. Here on the steep cliffs above the River Irthing. with a magnificent view of the river in its deep wooded ravine, was the fortress the Romans caned Ambloganna, the biggest of all their camps near Hadrian’s Wall. It extends over more than five acres, and parts of the dry ditch can still be seen.
But more interesting still are the remains of its Roman buildings, which include among many others a kiln for drying corn. We see walls six feet high and five feet thick, many of them finely preserved ; on some of the stones are the marks of Roman chisels. The stones of the Romans were used by the builders of the farmhouse, and a host of Roman treasures have come to light on this remarkable site, including statues of Hercules, altars, pottery, and coins, most of which are in the safe keeping of Carlisle Museum. A neighbouring farm also has Roman stones in its walls, and there is a magnificent Roman gateway through which Cumberland men and women still pass today.
The Great Wall is plain here for all to see like a raised road; and not far away are the remains of a considerable tower: Equally thrilling are the inscriptions on the rocks at Gait Crags., thought to have been written by the Romans using the quarry.
About a mile from Bjrdoswald is Triermain Castle with its two towers, another old house built of stones from Hadrian’s Wall.
Three roads run from its little green triangle, and along one is the old fortified Hall of the Blencowes, a sorry but impressive sight. It has towers of the 15th and 16th centuries, one with a yawning rent and the other with its top gone for ever. What was once a mansion fine and strong is now a homely farmhouse joining these two ruins together.
From Queen Elizabeth’s time until 1913 Blencow had its own grammar school, now merged in that of Penrith. Among its famous pupils were the great Quaker George Whitehead, who did much to improve the status of the Friends. and the great lawyer Edward Law, who was leading counsel for Warren Hastings and became Lord Chief Justice, raised to the peerage as Lord Ellenborough.
It stands ,above the little River Ellen on a slope facing Skiddaw, and we found its church appealing to us because it is thought to have been built by that Earl of Westmorland who comes into Shakespeare on the eve of Agincourt with that little band of brothers to whom King Henry comes. hearing one of them wish that they had with them one ten thousand of those men in England who do no work today:
What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmorland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die we are mow,
To do our country loss; and if to live
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
God’s willi I pray thee, wish not one man more
The earl gave his church two stone porches, two little transepts, and windows with fine tracery. Most attractive outside, its most striking feature indoors is the stone vaulting of the roof of the nave, which suggests that perhaps the earl was thinking of churches on the Continent when he planned one for himself.
An ancient village between the fells and the sea, its dull grey street is gladdened by the little River Annas flowing by the wayside under pretty bridges. By the wayside, too, is the imposing tower of the church, which, though modern, is lit by lancet windows and has a chancel arch in the style of the Normans. The modern oak stalls and pulpit are finely carved, and among the glass are scenes of John the Baptist preaching and in prison, a figure of his father Zacharias, and a richly coloured scene of the Nativity with shepherds and angels.
The tall 15th-century font has shields round the bowl carved with initials and old lettering signifying the Trinity, and on one of these shields are the arms of the Huddlestons, whom we meet elsewhere in the county. A fine littIe brass portrait is shining on the chancel wall. It shows Sir Hugh Askew who was knighted by Edward the Sixth at the battle of Pinkie, when Protector Somerset marched against the Scots, slew thousands of them, and gained nothing by his victory. But Sir Hugh gained his knighthood, and here he stands in armour with his hands in prayer and with flowers in the grass at his feet.
On a pedestal in the churchyard is a sundial which only the very tall can read, and close to the church a modem granite cross marks the site of BootIe’s ancient market cross.
Rising up in swelling lines behind the village is Black Combe. Its 1970 feet, easily climbed from here, reward the climber with one of the most magnificent panoramas in the country. On some days no less than 14 English and Scottish counties come into view, as well as the Isle of Man, Snowdon. the Irish coast, and the Mourne Mountains beyond it. Wordsworth, coming this way, saw it all with the poet’s eye, and in a poem that is not one of his best described this spectacle:
Of Nature’s works, In earth, and air, and earth-embracing sea. A revelation infinite it seems.
A little link with the England older than Chaucer is still at Seaton Hall a mile from BootIe. Here by the farm buildings are some ruins of Seaton Nunnery, founded in the 13th century, and there are three fine lancet windows in what was once the east wall.
Those who call it the loveliest valley in England cannot be far from the truth, for in a very few miles it has all the beauties of our Lakeland paradise. Here are smooth fells and rocky crags, wooded slopes and rich pastures, the majesty of great mountains seen afar, the music of running water, and the rare magic of Derwentwater that is never twice the same.
From the lake to the natural gateway called the Jaws of Borrowdale, and on to the farthest end where only lonely passes take us out, it is all pure Cumberland delight, with nothing we would change. The five hamlets in Borrowdale have all their character and charm.
There is Seatoller. whose cottages begin to climb up the hill to the Honister Pass; Rosthwaite where the valley divides; Stonethwaite with its little roads going in and out and leading nowhere; Grange, with a bridge that attracts the artists, a simple church with a fine cross to four who fen in the war, and the viewpoint of Peace How, given by Canon Rawnsley in memory of the Keswick men who fell; and at the very end of Borrowdale is Seathwaite, one of the tiniest and the very wettest inhabited places in England. Here, on the same hillside, with a silvery waterfall and the deserted plumbago mines, are the old yews of which Wordsworth wrote, calling them
Those fraternal four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove:
Huge trunks, and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling and inveterately convolved.
Alas for the four brother yews! One has vanished and one is now a twisted wreck. Time and storm have made them what they are.
Borrowdale church stands near to the road, white and lowly. The first minister on its list was here 56 years, and the three fonts seem to have been quarrelling with each other for more than a century. The oldest, small and simple, was thrown out in 1825 in favour of the second, a little more elaborate. The second went in 1875, in favour, we suppose, of the third and grandest; and now all three are here again together.
Many of the delights of this valley belong to the nation for ever. One such is Castle Crag (an ancient fort). standing within the laws like a sentinel and having on the top a stone with the names of the Borrowdale men who died for us. Another is the curious Bowder Stone, an immense boulder of about 2000 tons, 60 feet long and 35 high, which, after rolling down the fellside, has remained balanced on an edge so narrow that through a hole in it two people can shake hands. A third national possession is the fell whose summit is called King’s How, in memory of Edward the Seventh. From it the mountain scenery is magnificent, and on the top is an inscription telling how King Edward’s sister dedicated it as a sanctuary of rest.
Here may all beings gather strength, and
Find in scenes of beautiful nature a cause
For gratitude and love to God, giving them
Courage and vigour to carry on His will.
Close to Derwentwater are two falls, one famous. In Barrow Falls the water comes down about 120 feet in two jumps; in the Falls of Lodore it is hemmed in by high wooded cliffs and pours grandly over mighty boulders when there has been a heavy rainfall on the Watendlath Fell and High Seat above them:
Retreating and beating and meeting and meeting,
Delaying and staying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing.
Recoiling, turmoiling.. and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
So Southey said, but in simple truth the Lodore Falls usually have no resemblance to the poet’s fantasy, though in imagination they go tumbling and splashing all over the world.
The obvious way of approach to Borrowdale, the most beautiful dale in England if variety in scenery is the test, is from Keswick by the highroad alongside Derwentwater, which many people think the most beautiful English lake. The lake is the continuation of the dale, filling the whole trough of the River Derwent which makes the lake. Between picturesque crags on the eastern side and the graceful Cat Bells range on the western side it lies smiling, with a strip of woodland on its margin nearly all the way.
Those crags, Castle Head and Walla Crag, rising from woods, and Falcon Crag standing more clear, all have lovely views of Derwentwater, Borrowdale waiting beyond, and a medley of mountains as backgrounds all around. More woods hide Lodore when the vale is reached beyond the lake, and more crags make a draped border for the vale, and presently, always wooded, rise from the floor of the dale itself and seem to block the way, while the fells on the other side rise into mountains. Straight ahead the dark mass of Glaramara gives the warning that soon there will he no way out of this paradise to the still loftier heights beyond except by toilsome passes, available only to the human rambler or the sure feet of the mountain pony.
Beyond Rosthwaite the one main road turns westward, and at Seatoller begins the climb out of the vale by Honister Pass., perhaps the ruggedest main highroad in England. But this is not the end of Borrowdale, except to people who only travel on wheels. On each side of Glaramara, east and west, comes down, past that lofty wilderness of rocks, a narrow upland glen, bringing the headwaters of the Derwent, and giving access to the highest cluster of peaks in England : Scafell Pike. Scafell, Great End, Bow Fell, and Great Gable. These two lonely valleys draw their highest waters from within a stone’s throw of each other on Esk Hause, the hub of the Scafell range, behind Glaramara; and the traveller who knows Cumbria from above as well as from below never forgets the Borrowdale Fells whence its waters come, and where the grandeur of England culminates.
Proud memories it his of its place at one end of Hadrian’s Wall, for here, on this headland looking over Solway Firth to Scotland, are many relics of the big Roman station whose ramparts enclosing five acres can still be partly traced. Among these grey stone houses, buddled together in narrow winding streets, we are not surprised to see a fragment of Roman England round any corner.
Built into the village walls are relics and stones both from the Wall and from the Roman camp, one of them a tablet of the 3rd cohort of the 2nd Augustan Legion; and in a roadside bam wall near the King’s Arms Inn is a small inscribed altar. The Roman guard-room was near the school; though it has been exposed to view in our own time, it was covered when we called. We round two stones from it standing by the rectory.
The Roman ruins would be a wonderful quarry for the Norman builders who came this way in the course of time and it is not sur’ prising to be told that much Roman material was used in the raising of the modest church on the edge of Bowness. There is Norman work still to be seen in the leaning walls of the nave and chancel, in some of the windows, and in a simple nave doorway. Another doorway, now built-up. has Norman capitals carved with little trees; but the greatest Norman treasure is the fine font bowl rescued from a garden about a century ago. It has four sides tapering off to eight, and its carving is of elaborate lattice pattern and trees with quaint leaves.
We have heard that the pulpit and the eagle lectern are made of old roof timbers, but, however that may be. they are both attractive. the pulpit with traceried panels and the lectern with three lions at the foot and three saints holding books as they stand on pedestals. The best glass is in a peace memorial window showing Mary with a Wen soldier at the Cross, but there are also pictures from the life of Our Lord. St Michael with two saints. and a scene of St Columba landing at lona and blessing the men in a little boat.
Resting in the porch are two old bells. one of them made in the year Shakespeare died, and though their tongues are silent they have a tale to tell. They take us back to the days of a border raid, when the Scots came over the Firth and carried off the two church bells from Bowness. Pursued by the men of Cumberland. the raiders could only manage to reach their own shore by dropping their stolen trophies in the sea, at the place since called Bell Pool; and there they lie to this day. But the story did not end until the English had made an avenging raid into, Scotland, bringing back as hostages these two bells in the porch, which are waiting, we imagine. until the other two lying deep in the Firth are restored. We were told here that one of the Scotch bells came from Middlebie and the other from Dornock.
At Drumburgh, four miles from Bowness, is the site of the smallest Roman station on the Great Wall, a few mounds being left to mark it. Here too, amid the houses clustered on the hillside, rises a tall, gaunt farmhouse that was once a castle, with a fine flight of steps leading outside to the second storey where an ancient doorway bas kept its old studded door. Over the doorway is a coat-of-arms, and on a small parapet of the roof are two stone eagles keeping watch above the hamlet.
Deep in the sand of the beach at Bowness have been found early English coins; and beneath the peat in Bowness Flow men have come upon many of the old piles forming a palisade.
It has treasures of its own, and it is set in a captivating corner of the hills. It has the great Roman wall a mile or two away and hills about it clothed with trees; it has not far away the lovely lake called Talkin Tarn. and it is within half an hour’s walk of the romantic spot called the Written Rock, by the River Gelt. Here, about 50 feet above the water. is the rock with an inscription thought to have been carved by a Roman soldier in the first years of the third century. It may be that the stone for Hadrian’s wall was quarried here, and this was the inscription as it could be read when Tennyson drove over to see it about the middle of last century:
Tennyson thought the inscription very pathetic as the sale record of a. standard-bearer of the sacred legion. Today only a. few words can be made out of the letters, which come into Tennyson’s story of Gareth and Lynette as left “crag-carven o’er the streaming Gelt.”
Crowning a. steep hill known as the Mote, above a triangular green, Brampton has raised a bronze statue to the seventh Earl of Carlisle; it is by J. H. Foley who has another statue of the Earl in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Lord Carlisle was Irish Secretary in Lord Melbourne’s Government, sat in Lord John Russell’s first Cabinet, and was a man much beloved.
Not far away is a plain cross known as the Capon Tree which recalls a much less noble man, for it was set up in memory of the followers of the Young Pretender who were hanged from a tree on this spot. In a narrow street is a house where the Young Pretender stayed for a week, and it is said that here he wrote his terms for the surrender of Carlisle, receiving the keys from the mayor, who came with the corporation and gave up the keys on bended knee.
At a cross-roads is another monument, a marble pedestal with a bronze portrait of George Johnson, a quaint old man who won little fame beyond the borders of his county, but who, when he died in 1896 at 80 years old, had earned an epitaph which tells us that “plain patient work fulfilled that length of time.”
The town itself is clustered round the market square. It has an octagonal Moot Hall set up in 1817 with a clock tower, and two flights of stairs to an upper room, and standing by it are the iron stocks. By the marketplace is one of the finest modern churches for miles around, built on the site of an old hospital chapel It has a splendid west tower and a tiny lead spire, and has much beautifully carved oak in the sanctuary and the stalls.
But it is for its magnificent Burne-Jones windows that travellers come to Brampton from afar. They have a wealth of colour and a noble series of portraits. The great east window glows with red and purple, blue and gold, in the finest Burne-Jones style, with 14 dazzling figures against a rich background of flowers and leaves.
Our Lord himself is shown as an unconventional young man in a purple cloak, wearing sandals and carrying a lamb. St Martin in glowing amour is cutting his crimson cloak with a sword to give half of it to a beggar. St George is in flaming red, the Madonna is in blue, and St Dorothy in a purple cloak is carrying a plate of fruit.
In a charming series of little windows are scenes with children in them. The memorial chapel to Brampton soldiers has Our Lord on the way to Calvary, and Michael slaying the dragon. Other windows have a really beautiful Charity dressed in white with children hiding behind her gown. and a series of 12 lifesize portraits in which Adam is leaning on a spade, Abraham is shown as a man of war wearing Cromwellian armour, and John the Evangelist has an eagle over his shoulder.
Alone among its graves is the chancel of Brampton’s old church, a grey building a mile out of the town. For 150 years it bas stood s9litary, and we may hope it will endure, for it was largely built by the Normans with stones from the Roman wall. The light still pours into it through two Norman windows, and in a recess outside the south wall is an ancient gravestone with a cross. There is an inscription to Richard de Caldecote, a vicar who died 600 yean ago, and an old rhyme to an 18th century vicar, Richard Culceth, which tells us a sadly familiar truth in its own way:
Man’s life’s like cobwebs.
Be he ne’er so gay;
And death’s the broom
That sweeps us all away.
We remember that here it was very charming to find lovely beech hedges lining almost every road and lane.