Our provisional programme for 2020 Events for April and May and our AGM have had to be cancelled. We may have to cancel other activities. We will call our AGM with 28 days’ notice, and we hope to re- arrange some cancelled events for later in the year. 11 Jun 20 From Roundhouse to Sheiling: archaeological Peter Style surveys of early settlement sites in the Loweswater and Buttermere valleys

9 July 20 The Border Reivers –Romance and Reality Max Loth-Hill Contents May 2020 9,16, & 23 Historical walks: medieval Lorton, Loweswater Organiser Aug 20 & Embleton. Arrangements tbc. Derek Denman The Committee has had to postpone 10 Sep 20 The Pilgrimage of Grace in and Dick O’Brien Society News the Society’s Annual General Meeting Westmorland 1536 Message from the Chair 1 from the usual Thursday in June to a date The Wanderer 2 yet to be fixed. We will give 28 days’ 12 Nov 20 Who shot Percy Toplis – the Monocled Mutineer Dr Jim Cox notice when we are sure that it can be Talks are at the Yew Tree Hall at 7.30pm unless stated otherwise. Visitors £3. Please do not park to the left of the entrance (looking from outside) as the road is narrow. Future Programme held. The May meeting, when Professor Our Programme for 2020 2 Peter Roebuck was due to deliver a Talk Officers and Committee 2019/20 on cattle droving in has, with President, Professor Angus Winchester Financial examiner, Peter Hubbard Meeting Report regret had to be cancelled. Members’ Talk: German miners under the attention is drawn to the fact that they Charles Lambrick 01900 85710 Tim Stanley-Clamp 01900 336542 Derwent Fells 2 can read about the subject in his book Chairman Vice-chair Cattle Droving in Cumbria, 1600-1900, Dr Derek Denman 01900 829097 Christopher Thomas 01900 822171 Articles published by Bookcase. In the ongoing Secretary derekdenman@bt Treasurer uncertainty as to how long the internet.com They lie in foreign fields Emergency’s restrictions will continue it Lena Stanley-Clamp 01900 336542 Mike Bacon Richard Easton Robert Mounsey 3 remains to be seen whether it will be Membership [email protected] Fiona Lambrick Committee Thorstein of the Mere: the possible for the Talks scheduled for June, Hugh Thomson members Collingwoods and history 5 July and September to go ahead. Some boggles and ghosts of Lorton 11 Apart from the Talks, the planned

guided walk exploring the mining history The next Wanderer will be published on 1 August 2020. Please send items to Project in the led by Mark Hatton Derek Denman, by 1 July. A digital resource for the ‘New has been postponed, and currently the Domesday’ property survey of Committee hopes it will be possible for it Published by the Lorton & Derwent Fells Local History Society, 19 Low Road Close, our area, 1909-15 17 to take place in October. The intended Cockermouth CA13 0GU. outing to Allonby and Silloth has been http://www.derwentfells.com https://www.facebook.com/Lortonlocalhistorysociety Society News cancelled, but the Committee hopes that a relaxation of the rules will allow the The Wanderer Meeting Report Message from the Chair walks led by Derek Denman exploring the Due to the current restrictions, this edition history of Embleton, Lorton, and of the Wanderer has been produced with Loweswater to go ahead in August. Talk: German Miners under In the present Covid-19 Emergency, it the minimum people involved in Regrettably, as Members and other became inevitable that the Society’s production of the printed version, and with the Derwent Fells readers will appreciate, it is simply programme of events would be minimum travel. It also includes more 12 March 2020 impossible in the current Emergency to significantly disrupted. It was fortunate, material and of a broader range. be definite about any future dates. however, that it was possible for Society There are more pages this time, the Mark Hatton, who is a Trustee of Cumbria Committee members therefore ask for members and visitors to meet as planned printed Wanderer has no colour images, to Amenity Trust Mining History Society, your patience, and we shall ensure that on 12 March, and very pleasing amid the keep costs down. The email and website addressed members of the Society and you are kept informed about a revised uncertainty that not only was Mark version has colour where appropriate, plus visitors on the Thursday evening just programme and plans for the months Hatton able to deliver his Talk but also many hyperlinks to click on. before the Covid-19 emergency lockdown ahead. there was a large audience present. http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/wanderer/- was put in place. The large audience was Charles Lambrick wanderermay20.pdf 1 2 treated to a very well delivered and of the miners meant that people from John Peel. They married on 10 December illustrated Talk. 1,000 miles away had come to interact 1902 at the Independent Chapel in Mark began by making the point socially with them. They took up lodgings Workington. Robert then secured work that its mining and mineral wealth is a wherever they could in hamlets and as a domestic gardener, employed by largely hidden dimension of the Lake farmhouses. Lord Downe at Danby Lodge near District’s heritage and, while most of its Mark drew attention to the arms of Grosmont, and was employed there until mines are scheduled ancient monuments, the Company of Mines Royal which he enlisted. Robert and Sarah lived at they are inherently dangerous places. depicts miners as they may have looked, Park Hill, Danby, Grosmont. Although mining had taken place in alien-like, to the local population. Robert enlisted at Castleton, Cumberland from Neolithic times, the Mark drew attention to the rich originally in the 20th (1st Tyneside focus of Mark’s Talk was the mining which source of social information provided by Scottish) then in the 1st/4th began in the 16th century. He explained the parish registers of Crosthwaite Northumberland Fusiliers (Territorials) that, when she became Queen, Elizabeth Church, in which the German miners and at Castleton York, as private 31596. His I found a divided and bankrupt nation their families are referred to as regimental number indicates enlistment with a debased currency. She ‘Teutonics’ or ‘Dutch’. He cited examples between 8 and 13 November 1915. At immediately recognised the urgent need of inter-marriage, and he provided this time Sarah and their daughters, to reform her realm’s coinage. statistics about marriages and births. He Mary Louise and Winifred, returned to It was essential to find silver, also mentioned the tensions that arose Private Robert Mounsey. Photograph live at 1 Pilgrim Street in Workington. copper and gold deposits to mint new between the communities and the courtesy of Alan Thompson Sarah died 8 April 1948 and was buried coinage, and to produce bronze to make possible role that the Earl of in Salterbeck Cemetery. carding wire for the woollen industry and Northumberland, owner of Newlands There is however one Lorton born In January 1916 Robert embarked brass cannon for the Royal Navy. In the valley, played in fermenting trouble man, Robert Mounsey, who lost his life with his regiment for continued training absence of any English body of scientists, before he lost a court case, whereby he in WWI who is not listed on the local War in France before proceeding to the front let alone metallurgists, to look to the sought to gain an interest in the mining, Memorials. Assisted by Alan Thompson, line as a rifleman in number 9 section. Queen decided to seek assistance from which established that, due to the grandson of Robert’s brother Archibald, In April 1918 Robert received abroad. She called on the established precious metal content, the mines we have compiled the following. shrapnel wounds and was treated in No. expertise of miners and metallurgists belonged to the Crown. Robert Mounsey was born in Lorton 9 General Hospital at Rouen, France, and from southern Germany. To that end a The Talk concluded with on 2 October 1876, the son of John and died there on 9th April 1918 from the joint venture was set up between explanations of why, by reference to the Mary Mounsey nee Ritson. We have no wounds received in battle, aged 42. members of her Court and a German Goldscope mine in the Newlands valley baptism record yet. John was born at Robert was buried in St Sever trading company with large interests in and to the smelter established at Brigham Aspatria in 1829, and Mary in 1834 at Cemetery Extension at Rouen in grave mines in southern Germany. That by the river Greta, the German mining Oulton. They married on 26 January reference P.IX. F. 4B. Robert always company put up more than half the and metallurgical technology was so 1864 in St Michael’s Church, Burgh by said that “his thoughts ever turned home capital and the joint venture, the technically advanced. Sands, with the marriage registered at when his pals and he tramped many a Company of Mines Royal, was granted a After a lively question and answer Carlisle. Robert had seven siblings; Mary weary mile to the tune of John Peel”. monopoly for mining rights and for session Mark was warmly thanked by all Eleanor 1864, William 1865, Archibald Robert was awarded the British patents associated with the new present for a very stimulating and 1867, James 1868, Frances 1870, War Medal, the Victory Medal, and his technology of metallurgy. informative evening. William 1872, Joseph 1875 and Robert family received the bronze plaque After an initial survey carried out by Charles Lambrick 1876. All were born in Lorton and the awarded to each family of soldiers killed. Daniel Hechstetter in 1563, when he Articles first three were baptised in St Cuthbert’s (There is a collection of these plaques decided that the area of Cumberland with Church, Lorton, but the remainder were mounted on the wall in St John’s Church

Keswick at its centre showed most not baptised there. At various times the Workington but the one for Robert does promise for the new venture, German They Lie in Foreign Fields – family lived at Dovenby, Holme Farm in not appear to be one of them). Sarah, as miners and metallurgists from Augsburg Robert Mounsey Lorton, the Pack Horse Inn in Lorton, and a widow with children, received a in the Tyrol together with their families by Walter Head Crag Farm at Papcastle. pension of £9–18–3 paid on 17 June began to arrive in the following year. Not Robert attended Lorton School, 1918 and a war gratuity of £8–0–0 paid only an industrial and technological but In the booklet They Lie in Foreign Fields, starting there on 12 July 1881. He also on 25 November 1919. also a social revolution was brought to an Sheila and I researched the details of all attended the Sunday school and was a Robert is not listed on the War area which was suffering deep underlying the soldiers from the six local parishes member of the church choir. Robert gave Memorial at Lorton or Workington but is poverty. Whereas the social range of who are listed on the War Memorials of his occupation as farmer’s son, aged 26, on the Roll of Honour at St Hilda’s, indigenous people is estimated as having the respective parishes, see when he married Sarah Whitehouse, Danby and on the Castleton & Danby been little more than 10 miles, the arrival http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/foreignfields.pdf aged 23, a descendant of the huntsman War Memorial. 3 4

‘Thorstein of the Mere’: The scepticism about its value as history is Unlike the natural scientist Collingwoods and History clear enough. in the laboratory the historian is We habitually take works of dealing with past events which by Tim Stanley-Clamp imagination seriously as purveyors of have by definition no material

truth in other fields. No-one has ever reality, the evidence for which is In The Language of the Landscape Angus seen Crummock Water looking just as it often partial, or equivocal. Winchester reminds us of how prone we appears in Turner’s painting of it but it Instead of ‘gaping’ at them (as are to being deceived when it suits us. In seems true to us in important ways. he put it) we have to put our the chapter on stories and myth-making Novels which deal with the past are imaginations to work in attached to the Lakes, ‘Storied Ground’, works of imagination but Tolstoy in War analysing and re-constructing he contrasts the reality of Rannerdale’s and Peace and George Eliot in them so that they mean history with the account given of it by Middlemarch chose to put their something. We create mental Nicholas Size in The Hidden Valley. characters to work in a past which they pictures which fill in gaps based Literally thousands of visitors descend tried very hard to realize truthfully. They on what we already know. So, at on the slopes and fields under are asking us to think of them as some point after 850, Rannerdale Knotts every Spring to historians as well as novelists and it’s Scandinavians who came from marvel at the bluebells, most of those hard to imagine an attentive reader who Norway originally via the who have heard the story no doubt fully is not better informed about the northern isles travelled across aware that they do not represent the re- Sketch by W G Collingwood of son Robin Napoleonic Wars and provincial the Irish sea and settled in Cumbria. The florescence of the blood of Norman reading a review of ‘Thorstein’. Abbot Hall in the 1830s after reading them. imagination has ‘interpolated’ a soldiers defeated in battle there 900 Gallery necessary connection between the years ago, but quite content to enjoy documented presence of Norsemen in the suggestion for its romantic blend This might form part of Collingwood’s Ireland and the dense concentration of of the magical and the sanguinary. general defence of his novel as a work of Old Norse place names in Cumbria. The same chapter deals with genuine history, but if we take a line Based on the available factual evidence Rosemary Sutcliffe’s take on the through the testimony of his son, Robin, (if you just make things up you’re writing story in The Shield Ring, written for the matter goes more deeply than simply a novel and nothing else) this provides children thirty years later, and also stating the right of creative artists to our narrative with a basis for its ‘outside’ with W G Collingwood’s Thorstein of comment on the past intelligently. as Collingwood put it, with the aspects the Mere, published in 1895, still in According to family correspondence, which would have been accessible to our print but little read these days. All Robin was a very active collaborator in senses. It counts as knowledge even three are fiction (though Size’s the writing of Thorstein of the Mere. though we have no documentary publication, aided and abetted by Later in life he would describe working evidence of a single journey bringing a Hugh Walpole, who probably should with his father on Thorstein the book as Norwegian to Furness. But the real work have known better, pretends to be his ‘first experience of real history’. Much of the historian begins when they enter based in fact) but do they all fail of what he meant by this is evident in into the thoughts and motivations of the completely as history? Is it possible The Idea of History, published actors: to use his own term, when they to do ‘historical reality’ through the posthumously in 1946. Its arguments ‘re-enact’ them and uncover the medium of a work of fiction? Size are detailed and at times very complex narrative’s ‘inside’. Imagining the was simply making things up, while but the central idea is plain enough. If ‘outside’ of events is only really worth Rosemary Sutcliffe was making use History wants to be taken seriously as a doing - is only History – when it is of the fiction to entertain, though science, he says, it must devote itself to accompanied by a re-enactment of their perhaps she hoped there would be the study of the human intellect in ‘inside’. an element of instruction in her action. Narratives about the past are not Collingwood Senior’s practical novel too. Collingwood, though, in themselves History. For example, starting point for the writing of the novel believed himself to be doing real recounting the stages through which the was a map of Cumbria devised forty history, to be communicating human species evolved is not history and years earlier showing all the Old Norse important truths about the past. The neither are the narratives of the place names its author could find. chapter from The Language of the paleontologist and the geologist, though Collingwood was well aware of its many Landscape deals less harshly with they might be useful in describing the mistakes - many of our local place- Collingwood’s claims than with the context in which human beings act; not names were attributed to imagined others’, but Angus Winchester’s as natural organisms but as rational Scandinavian notables - but creatures capable of thought. 5 6 nevertheless, when he added those he with. His first draft did not have either The Vikings had been a source of knew to be accurate to the wealth of the central relationship between the controversy in British intellectual culture dialect words taken from Old Norse young Northman and the Celtic woman for well over a century before Thorstein which were still in use around him in he would marry or all but a few hints at was published. In the hands of Thomas Cumbria, Collingwood felt confident that the pagan newcomers’ progressive Gray, Coleridge and Southey, they he had enough concrete linguistic conversion to Christianity. In the represented an alternative way of evidence to make a start on re- finished version a family is forced to engaging with the past – their very constructing the historical setting. So, he leave the Isle of Man in the first quarter mysteriousness was the point to a great took the name of his hero from the old of the tenth century to escape the extent, providing a lens through which name for Coniston Water, Thurston unremitting bloodletting of the Danish the social world could be re-imagined. Mere. A letter of the time tells of his and Irish kings. It finds land in Furness Later, they would be taken up by ‘Old excitement at discovering a family in which will support livestock and Northeners’ and celebrated for their love nearby Nibthwaite with a name – cultivation, while still allowing for the of liberty and their courage in what Swainson – which he believed might be traditional sea trading used to bolster became a century-long dispute about traced back to the earliest Scandinavian income – often undisguised robbery, and how to define what is best in the national settlers. (Thorstein’s father was given slave-trading, in truth. The land between character. Until quite soon before he this name, Swein.) The same letter the fells and the coast is unoccupied, and started his work on Thorstein describes how, digging one day with a although there are tensions with Collingwood subscribed to the friend, he discovered the remains of an neighbouring peoples – English speakers ‘Germanist’ position: that the nation’s ancient dwelling on Peel Island in across the bay and Welsh and Gaelic character is defined by the Anglo-Saxon Coniston Water (the model for Wild Cat speakers living high on the moorland of virtues which consisted in their ‘love of Island which occupied Arthur Ransome’s the fell tops – there is only sporadic order, which gave us our constitution fictional children in Swallows and actual conflict. The Celts have no and its laws’ (Philosophy, p. 118). Amazons). His work on the geology of interest in contesting the possession of What changed Collingwood’s mind the region taught him the novel’s main agricultural land and the Northmen have seems to have come from a very Self-portrait of William Gershom Lakeland settings: the agricultural land no interest in the hunter gatherer Collingwood, as a sea captain strongly felt local patriotism, brought between the fells and the Solway, the economy of the Celts. into focus by his reading of Robert densely forested uninhabited valleys and The larger political world of Kings personal danger. All this takes place as Ferguson, a founder member of the the open moorland which made up most and their rivalries provides context - the part of a major change in the Northmen’s Cumberland and Westmorland of the higher ground. Meanwhile his novel’s characters are involved in three thinking. Living relatively peaceably Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. archaeological studies provided another major battles, including an imaginative alongside their Celtic and English Ferguson was the first English writer to layer of the evidence he was thinking of reconstruction of the climactic defeat of neighbours was a choice made initially note the very strong probability that when he wrote that he had ‘… tried to Domnhal at Dunmail Raise – but these for them by circumstance perhaps, but Cumbria was settled by Scandinavians stick as closely to ascertainable facts as ‘outside’ events are included mainly as a by degrees, in the person of Thorstein, who originated in Norway and Sweden, I can’. way of showing how people’s thinking they make a deliberate choice to join arriving from the west - not from The story itself changed several evolved. The same point can be made of their neighbours as fellow countrymen, Denmark and the east of England. He times in the course of its writing. For one the prolonged account of Thorstein’s signalled in their conversion to followed Jan Worsaae, a Danish thing, Collingwood seems not to have voyage round the British Isles, visiting Christianity. In the end, there is peace archaeologist who wrote extensively on started with a settled view of what had Ireland, Norway, York and London and optimism about the future, though it the impact of Scandinavian settlement happened. His researches were carried before returning home to the agricultural has been won at the cost of Thorstein’s on the British Isles, in claiming that the out alongside the writing of the novel so life his family has taken up. Journeys, life. We are left with a sense that Northmen enhanced the culture they that much of what he learned at this time battles, meetings with Kings, are all important changes have taken place in found here, that the ‘English virtues’ as a geologist, an archaeologist and a important elements in the historical the mentality as well as in the economic were in large part due to the merging of linguist was motivated by the search for ‘outside’ but the genuine history as security of the Northmen and their different cultures. Cumbria’s place historical accuracy. At a deeper level, his Robin Collingwood would later define it, neighbours. names are the most polyglot of any thinking about the Vikings themselves takes place in the thoughts and feelings Collingwood had not always taken region in the whole of Britain, with Old was evolving as he studied them and re- of the main characters, either in solitude so favourable a view of the Northmen. English, Danish, Gaelic, Welsh and Old imagined their lives as they made the or in family settings. There is sibling Ten years earlier he wrote: ‘The Norse all crowded together on the map difficult transition from ‘warriors and rivalry, thwarted ambition and personal decadence of the Norsemen was when he produced, the very same which rovers’ to ‘settlers and traders.’ This treachery of a very painful kind, along they left the plough for piracy, and inspired Collingwood: jostling each helped in the creation of a richer, more with examples of loyalty and through generations of rapacity, lost other, overlapping and merging into layered story than the one he started steadfastness in moments of great every virtue except that of courage … ‘. suggestive hybrids. All this spoke to a 7 8 kind of longing in Collingwood to claim A kind of moral choice was made in Thorstein knelt on the paved floor, nightmare vision of a degenerate future for Cumbria a fitting place in the nation’s the writing of this book too. As we have and beside him and around him knelt and Thomas Hardy gave us Jude the identity as a triumph of peacefully seen, the true nature and meaning of the the people, men and women, rich and Obscure in which the nightmare is evolved co-existence and unity, a place Vikings was contested throughout the poor; ……and in every church of already upon us. Collingwood’s optimism where the violence and rapacity of the Victorian period. They were put to use Christian folk from thence throughout is bound up in the view of history Northmen was abandoned as they variously by their advocates as the first the round world. Everywhere the Thorstein of the Mere embodies as much ‘returned to the plough’ and joined the creators of true political liberty, symbols same, and in every age…… as in the conclusions it arrives at. The larger nation we have inherited. The of racial purity, exemplars of a properly No prayer said Thorstein as he ‘outside’ meaning of Thorstein’s mystical association of these two findings – the functioning social Darwinism, and a knelt thus, while the voices from the experience in York Minster is Christian in distinctive identity of Cumbrian settlers warning that, if we did not seek to choir rolled forth like gathering its specifics, but behind the particular and their key role in creating the nation, emulate them, the human species would thunder, or murmured though the experience is a necessary confirmation was motivation enough to begin work on surely degenerate. Collingwood was aisles uncomprehended like the wind in that acknowledging our common identity the novel. having no truck with what he saw as a winter trees. ……Surely the Lord Christ is both reasonable and true, the ‘inside’ Thorstein of the Mere is not great kind of cultural theft in pursuit of a was there, somewhere in the dim meaning. The fact that by 950 practically literature. The concentrated sense of misguided political agenda. He saw the bewilderment of gold and gloom, amid the whole of the Scandinavian being involved in a coherent social world Vikings’ crimes as clearly as their virtues those cloudy odours and mysterious population settled here had converted is which gives Walter Scott’s stories their and wrote a history of their adaptation to answerings of music, surely He was an arresting piece of information, but it power is lacking. I think this is mainly new circumstances in which crime was looking forth. And what was the word? only becomes of any use to us as because the style of narration is so often not only morally wrong but also against The Lord looketh at the heart. Peace, historians once we have re-imagined the at odds with itself, one moment their best interests. The person of then. ways in which it happened. The sonorous and booming in the manner of Thorstein’s oldest brother, Orm, who Collingwood was a devout epiphany, intellectual and emotional, in a Nordic saga, the next didactic as a stole from his relatives, beat his slaves Churchman for all his life but I think it the above passage provides us with an lecturer would be, then poetic in the and sold Raineach, his brother’s best would be a mistake to think of this example of what would become Robin romantic manner, all the while with friend, and later his partner, into slavery passage as mere proselytising. Collingwood’s manifesto for a scientific characters speaking in a dialect largely does not survive. He meets the violent Collingwood is doing something far more way of doing History some forty years made up of an old Cumbrian vocabulary death – at the hands of his brother important by demonstrating thought in later. set in an approximation of Old Norse Thorstein - which suits our sense that action and its historical consequences. In syntax. the time for his kind is passing. And the this re-enactment of another mind on Booklist That said, there is a lot to respect novel avoids racial or eugenicist the cusp of changing the course of its The Language of the Landscape, Angus in the book, I think, and a lot which theorising in the portrayal of other owner’s life with new beliefs, and a new Winchester justifies R G Collingwood’s loyalty to it in peoples; on the contrary, the central purpose, he has given intellectual history The Hidden Valley, Nicholas Size his later thinking and writing on History. relationships bring together both Stein its proper place in the unfolding of The Sword Ring, Rosemary Sutcliffe After reading for a while the mind and Unna, the half-Irish daughter of a historical events. We have already Thorstein of the Mere, W G Collingwood becomes acclimatised to the many high-ranking Norwegian, and Thorstein learned earlier in the novel how State Full text northern British dialect words, most of and Raineach, the daughter of a Welsh and Church put economic pressure on www.allthingsransome.net/literary/thorhtm2.htm which refer to the material world, and chieftain. non-Christians to convert by making it Podcast reading adjusts gradually to the almost complete Perhaps a key test of how valuable harder for them to trade. But these https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id668447389 The idea of History, R G Collingwood absence of a Norman/French vocabulary the novel can be considered purely as inducements were far less important The Northmen in Cumberland, Robert anywhere in the text. The novel is set in history was provided by Collingwood than the changes in human behaviour Ferguson 925-50 so that makes perfect sense as a himself in a letter written just as it was which were brought about by the The Vikings and Victorian Lakeland: the strategy in the storytelling but there is a about to be published. It was written in exercise of the reason. In this case, Norse Medievalism of W G Collingwood strangeness to it as we are so used to part to show ‘… the meeting point of Thorstein is shown choosing the and his Contemporaries, Matthew using our Latinate and French lexicon to Christian and pagan thought’. If he were protections afforded by membership of a Townend describe the doings of the mental world to be successful in this it would be catholic community of shared interests, The Philosophy of Ornament, W G and it takes some getting used to. absolutely essential to re-enact the bonded by common values. Collingwood Collingwood’s hope, realized pretty thoughts and ideas of the Northmen and At root, Collingwood is optimistic An Account of the Danes and successfully for this reader at least, must the key moment in his portrayal of their about the human world and about the Norwegians in England, Scotland and have been that he was communicating gradual conversion takes place in York qualities in the human mind which Ireland, Jan Worsaae patterns of thought which, while Minster with Thorstein in the enable us to make sense of it and put our The Vikings and the Victorians, Andrew different from our own, nevertheless are congregation, outlawed and alone, but time in it to good use. While he was Wawn capable of being reconstructed and about to be given a reason for hope: writing Thorstein of the Mere, H G Wells brought to life in our own minds. was publishing The Time Machine with its 9 10

Some Boggles and Ghosts of who in his Lore of the lake country Lorton confirms the Cass How boggle as a suicide boggle, presumably where a man by Derek Denman deliberately cut off his own head with a

scythe – which would not be easy.3 Careful readers will have noticed that Unfortunately, the coroner’s inquest boggles made an entry into the February records do not identify this person and Wanderer, which included John Bolton’s event, leaving the contradictory claims of statement of 1891 that ‘Where Cass How suicide or accident. It does not take much sand pit is now was as far back as 1800 historical imagination to consider the the locale of boggles, & robbers’.1 The implications of the sand-pit location, if it non-material inhabitants of the valley was then a sand-pit, and to propose that have had little attention from the Society, he might have been a keen golfer, an omission of cultural history which this wishing to practice his bunker play and article hopes to correct. Naturally, these not having a proper sand wedge with entities are infrequently recorded and him. However, the presence of the therefore under-represented in primary restless boggle might itself be sources, or original records. So, this short confirmation of a sinful suicidal demise, study must rely on few reliable sources. rather than an accidentally fatal swing. Only three Lorton-based entities Accidental deaths were frequent, and have been found to have a sufficient boggles are few. presence in historiography to justify A boggle need not be a human inclusion here, the boggle of Cass How, ghost. In his dissertation for the the fellside skrati, and the Grey Lady of University of Uppsala, Sweden, in 1913, Lorton Hall. Therefore, this must be a on A grammar of the Dialect of Lorton qualitative and rather anecdotal (Cumberland), Borje Beilioth included the assessment, rather than quantitative. name of a boggle known to Lorton folk

only through fellside sounds heard at The Cass How boggle and other Lorton boggles. night. I repeat here the entry from the John Bolton was an excellent local appendix on Lorton dialect words with a historian, but he had no personal Scandinavian origin, without attempting knowledge of the boggle of Cass How, to interpret it, except to say that similar relying on the testimony of his boggles were also said to inhabit other grandmother-in-law. We are not told valleys:- whether she spoke from personal skrati (or skrat) the name of a experience of the boggle, or had been hobgoblin or boggle, a mysterious being, told of it by others, but the specificity of which used to haunt the fell-sides, the ‘sand pit’ as its locale adds credibility. emitting fearful sounds; cf. ME. skratt, According to a map locating the scratte * wizard, monster, hermaphro- Boggles of Cumbria, ‘West Cumb Times dite ', ON. skratti a wizard or hobgoblin, of May 1935 said it was a man who Swed. skratt(en) ^ a ghost, heard by 4 returned from market with a new scythe night '. and accidentally lopped his own head off. Headless ghost still wanders around Lorton’.2 Further information on this boggle comes from Frank Carruthers,

1 John Bolton, ‘Lorton and Loweswater 80 3 F J Carruthers, Lore of the Lake Country, years ago’, 1891, p.3, 1975, p.134 http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/JohnBolton.pdf, 4 Borje Beilioth, A grammar of the Dialect of 2 Alan Cleaver, The boggles of Cumbria, Lorton (Cumberland), www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1czimYru9s7E7u3dXQAZGxoSzU84&ll https://archive.org/details/grammarofdialect00brilrich 11 12

The Grey lady of Lorton Hall allowing two impressionable young girls, Much more is known of the ghost known from his Paddle School religious as the Grey Lady of Lorton Hall, from instruction class, to spend the night of the independent testimonies. The late Charlie full moon in the King’s Room, believed to Allison of Holme Cottage, a native of be the origin of the emanant spirit of the Lorton and a founder member of the Grey Lady. The interview which he gave Society, told me that in the 1930s, when to the nameless reporter provides by far he was young and when the hall was the most reliable and comprehensive unoccupied, it was in the charge of a analysis of her nature, and possible caretaker located in Lorton Hall Lodge. In origin. those days there was still a large wheel Many of his historical facts must outside the lodge, with which to open and have been gained through a process of close the gates. This caretaker had seen spontaneous knowledge, or perhaps the ghost and had been so scared that he revelation, and have only an approximate would no longer enter the hall after dark. relationship with the records, but often However, at this time the name and he was intuitively correct. For example, origin of the ghost had not been revealed. in dismissing, as ‘legend without proof’, We are fortunate to have testimony the identification of the Grey Lady with of personal experience from the late Rev. the spirit of a Winder whose husband James Addison Woodhead-Keith-Dixon, returned from the crusades in 1153, vicar of Lorton between 1958 and 1980, mortally wounded. We now know that the and a man of high spiritual sensitivity Winders did not own their third of Low combined with the interest and Lorton until after 1397.7 intellectual ability to identify and He is probably also more realistic in investigate the possible origins of the identifying the idea of the Grey Lady with Grey Lady. In 1961 he announced that the spirit of a lady who descended into ‘his prayers had been answered’ when he lunacy and died in the nineteenth had the opportunity to invest the century, though rather later than 1802. It proceeds of his marriage in the purchase is a common practice to ascribe of Lorton Hall, moving there from the unrecorded events in Lakeland to an vicarage, which was subsequently rented earlier date. Visitors expect the romance to various families.5 Later he opened the of antiquity, and no doubt that influenced hall to the credulous public, having Woodhead–Dixon to include the Lorton collected information and artefacts pele tower in his interview, and in his related to the history of the hall, and to later advertisement for visitors, as a its past owners and important visitors, place stayed at by Malcolm III and Queen creating a ‘house history’. While not a Margaret of Scotland, who both died in historian himself, he had the scholarly 1093. The later advertisement of the work on Lorton and its Church by Canon 1970s revealed that this hospitality Farrer, vicar from 1947 to 1954, to occurred circa 1089, at which date he provide some firm anchor points from now knew that there had been not just which to stretch his historical creativity.6 one but two towers. This is improbably early even for a real pele tower, rather Investigations in the 1960s than a folly tower built in the 1840s and rolled up in his Wolseley Hornet, between He was persuaded that the tower had Here we reprint an article of 1967 from converted in the 1890s. When the 1964 and 1966, for his Buildings of been converted from the medieval tower, the West Cumberland Times, praising architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, England, he relied not on research, but ‘originally with tunnel vaulting at ground Woodhead-Dixon’s wisdom in not on what he saw and what he was told.8 level and a spiral staircase’.9 Presumably

5 The quote is evidence from an undisclosed 7 Derek Denman, ‘A history of Lorton Hall’, witness http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/journal/Journal- 8 See Michael Baron, ‘Reflections on two 9 Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England, 6 [Farrer], Lorton and its Church, 1946, 59.pdf architectural guides to Cumbria’, Cumberland and Westmorland, 1967, p.158 http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/sources/Lorton- http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/journal/- ChurchFarrer1946.pdf Journal49.pdf 13 14

later discovered that he was also a Keith, Hall for a further ten years, as lunatics in and in fact chief of the clan, which the care of attendants. They both died in required a further addition to the name. 1875, while the officers of the Court of These lineages created complexity in his Chancery circled overhead. Sarah armorial bearings, with quartered arms, Lucock-Bragg, 1802-1875, was the last two crests, and three Latin mottoes, as female lunatic of Lorton Hall, and would given in Cumberland Families and clearly provide the best candidate for the Heraldry, unfortunately without any source of the ghost of the Grey Lady.14 space left for a pedigree.12 John Bolton, who was Lorton schoolmaster in 1875, said nothing Who was the Grey Lady, really? except that ‘the history of Lorton Hall Returning to the Grey Lady, and her over the past eighty years is a singularly corporal origins, it is the case that in 1800 sad one’. .15 There is no known written Eleanor Barnes, the widow of Thomas record of the Grey Lady before the 1960s, Peile-Barnes, died in Lorton Hall. after which she appeared more However, she was not known to be mad. frequently in guides to the area. Her death at a good age had a compensating benefit for her son, John Epilogue Peile-Barnes, in that her dower was When, in 1993, we converted the old hall- released and he could finally sell the pile, range into Winder Hall, as a country having mortgaged it for cash in 1797. guest house, the Grey Lady became The purchaser was Joshua Lucock, rather a problem, in that visitors often of Cockermouth, with wife Rebecca, nee asked, “do you have a ghost?” A difficult Wilkinson, and young son Raisbeck, the question to answer without causing survivor of three born at Castlegate in possible offence, or worse, loss of Cockermouth. Joshua Lucock settled in as business. A solution was found by the Squire of Lorton, and later as lord of considering the evidence of other the manor of Loweswater – having historical features which the hall become Joshua Lucock-Bragg. It is contained:- the priest hole behind the interesting that this hall owner also fireplace in the ‘King’s room’, constructed needed to extend his name after moving using authentic Carolinian chicken-wire in, and it is tempting, though scary, to and plaster, the ancestor-portrait left in consider whether that tendency might be the cellar which had been painted on he did not see the sketch of the hall, Lorton Hall from the Estate Plan, 1803 shown here, made on an estate plan of Missing a pele tower. just one dimension of the agency of the early-modern hardboard, the Winder coat 10 1803. This visit and publication created genius loci. of arms naively carved into the plaster of a reputable authority for a medieval far when he disclosed to them, in his The sad Lucock-Bragg family has a Victorian bedroom, and including some tower. parish magazine of February 1965, that been well recorded, including the death very dubious putti. Queen Margaret of Scotland was he was himself descended from Ranulf, of the father in 1809, who might be called The solution we found was to known as Saint Margaret, accredited as a through the female line.11 eccentric, to be polite, and including the embrace the Grey Lady and to give her moderating influence on the barbarous descent into lunacy of Raisbeck and three employment. Thereafter, the Grey Lady His pedigree evolved during his time 13 Malcolm III (Canmore or bighead), at the hall, as we found from the deeds of the five children born in Lorton Hall. Snacks menu was created, and they r.1058-1093. His domain included Lorton we acquired as successors-in-title to the These four lunatic siblings lived out their would be served by her between 2pm and until 1092, when taken by force by the hall-range. He came to Lorton as lives in Lorton Hall, at first in the care of 5pm – if you could find her to place an equally unpleasant William Rufus. The Woodhead, but on realising, without their mother and then their siblings, until order. Members in Lorton are warned of first Norman to be appointed overlord of formal evidence, that he was also of the 1865, when Elizabeth Bridge died, the the danger in trying to find employment proto-Cumberland was then Ranulf le Dixon family of Rheda, who rebuilt the last competent sibling. Thereafter, John for the Cass How boggle. Meschines, and perhaps Woodhead- Lorton Hall in the 1890s, he added Dixon and Sarah Lucock Bragg survived in the April 2020 Dixon teased his parishioners a little too by deed poll. By a similar process, he 12 C Roy Hudleston, Cumberland families and http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/journal/Journal- heraldry, 1978, p.94 52.pdf 10 ‘A plan of Lorton Hall Estate … 1803’ [copy] 11 Parish Magazine of St Cuthbert’s Church 13 Derek Denman, ‘Joshua Lucock Bragg 14 Sarah was buried 6 Jan 1875, while John http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/- Lorton, Feb 1965, L&DFLHS archive (1772-1809) of Lorton Hall: mad, bad or sad?’ lived longer, buried 22 May 1875 sources/LortonHallEstatePlan1803 15 Bolton, ‘Lorton and Loweswater’, p.14 15 16

Project material can be combined with other An example, the Scalehill Hotel, The expression YP on the insert may information, such as the 1911 census, to Brackenthwaite need explanation. The common measure give a more comprehensive set of data. The amount of information varies greatly, of value of property was the annual rental A digital resource of the according to the type of property. On this for which it could be let, and this was the ‘New Domesday’ property The records page and pages 19-23 are the records for basis of poor rates. YP is ‘years purchase’, There are three main records. Firstly the one of the most important properties in survey for our area, 1909-15 the number of years of rental which was Land Valuation Registers, or the ‘New our valley, the Scalehill Hotel in used to calculate the capital value, for by Derek Denman Domesday Books’, which contain a listing Brackenthwaite, which developed from a that type of property, at the prevailing

of all properties arranged by 1910 Civil roadside alehouse to become, by 1800, interest rates. The Liberal Government’s 1909 Finance Parish, giving owners and primary the principal inn for the Act introduced a new Land Tax, which tenants, together with acreages and visiting gentry in our area. was intended to create a tax liability for valuations. Each register has a set of Owned by the Marshall family all landowners, based on the increase in property reference numbers starting from in 1910, and since 1824, it the value of land held. This involved a 1, and going past 1600 in the case of continued to maintain its vast survey covering every property, to Cockermouth. These registers are held at trade and status, and was provide a baseline value for the land, Carlisle, but are now also held in full on maintained in good condition. after the value of buildings and timber, our digital resource. The general early history can etc had been deducted. Work continued For each of those properties there is be found in Journal 44, and its until 1915, though the tax was never an original survey and valuation in the ownership by a famous actor introduced, but all the survey work was Field Books, with a four-page sequence in the 1930s is covered by the retained, providing a valuable resource for each in these specially printed books. Wanderer, November 2019.17 for historians. Again these are organised by , In 2007, Dr Michael Winstanley but they are held at The National Archives Right: Part of the Valuation wrote an article for Journal 40 about this at Kew – as a national survey. Images of Plan showing the Scale Hill Hotel. tax and the records available, which is most of these field books are in the digital Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle well worth reading online for much more resource, except that Cockermouth, information than can be given here.16 He TIR4/Plans/Sheet LXIII-9 requiring over 3000 images, has not yet went on to give a Bernard Bradbury been collected, except for that part lecture on some of the material for contributed by Michael Winstanley. Below: An Extract from the Cockermouth. Thirdly, there are the valuation Valuation Register for The records for each property, farm, plans, which are simply the 25 inch Brackenthwaite and Loweswater, showing the cottage, mansion, shop, factory, castle sheets of the second series of ordnance entry for the Scale Hill Hotel. etc, are split between the Cumbria survey maps, with the land area divided Archive Centre at Carlisle and The Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, up into the properties which are surveyed TIR4/26 National Archives, making it inconvenient in the books and listed in the registers. to gather this material for a single These plans are based on one set of property. Recently I have compiled a maps, not separate maps for each civil digital resource of images for the area parish. Each property is marked with a covered by the Society, plus limited property reference number, which, with material for Cockermouth supplemented the civil parish, provides the key to the by the material given to our archive by other records. Michael Winstanley. This now forms a The finished set of plans is held at large digital resource which can be used The National Archives, but the working – though not directly online.-. for a copies are held at Carlisle. The Carlisle variety of purposes, from just finding out set of plans is contained in the digital about a property at the time, to more resource as images. All the relevant plans general historical studies covering a have been photographed, including larger area or, for example, changes over Cockermouth, but some sheets are time since the previous survey for the missing. Tithe Apportionment in the 1840s. The 17 Derek Denman, ‘Scale Hill and early Boat to the Scalehill Hotel’, tourism’, http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/wanderer/- 16 Michael Winstanley, ‘The New Domesday of http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/journal/- http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/journal/- wanderernov19.pdf c.1909-15 … ‘, Journal40.pdf Journal44.pdf , ‘Howett Worster, from Show 17 18

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Contents and access supply further information on the The coverage of the digital resource is property and its inhabitants. given in the table below, organised by To identify a property for which you civil parish. Some of these parishes were would like information, it is possible just combined or divided in 1934. to give an address or postcode, but better The digital resource is held by me on to locate it on a map. To assist this computer, and I expect that the first use process and project, our website has, or will be for people who wish to have will shortly have, a new page information on a particular property at http://www.derwentfells.com/NewDom- the time of the survey. I plan to take esday.html which you can access directly, requests by email and to send, by email, or by a link on the home page. images from the resource which relate to The website contains an extended the property of interest. Usually this will version of the table which will allow you be four images, one of the valuation plan, to link directly to map which show the one of the page in the register, and two detailed boundaries of the townships of double-page images of the field book, the 1860s, which preceded these civil plus references. There are no copyright parishes. restrictions on any of these records. I can

L&DFLHS ‘New Domesday’ digital resource – content Civil Parish Valuation Field Book(s) TIR4/Plans Held 1910 Register (OS Maps 1898*) Above Derwent TIR4/1 Not held LIV 12,15,16; LXIII 4,8,16 (, & Coledale Blindbothel TIR4/19 IR58/18769 LIV 11,12,15,16; LV 9,13 Brackenthwaite TIR4/26 IR58/18790 LXIII 2,5,6,9,10,13,14 Brigham TIR4/29 Not held LIV 2-4,6,7,8 Buttermere TIR4/32 IR58/18820 LXIX 2,6,7,11 Cockermouth TIR4/42 IR58/18993, 1-50 XLV 16; XLVI 13; only held LIV 4,8,12; LV 1,5 Dean TIR4/49 Not held LIV 13-16; LXII 1-3,6,7 Eaglesfield TIR4/19 IR58/19045, 1-100 LIV 7,8,10-12,14,15 IR58/19046, 101- Embleton TIR4/56 IR58/19062, 1-100 LIV 8,12; LV 1-3,5-7,9,10 IR58/19063, 101-200 IR58/19064, 201- Greysouthen TIR4/61 Not held LIV 5,6,9,10,13,14 Lorton TIR4/80 IR58/19199, 1-100 LV 9,10,13-16; LXIII 1-3 IR58/19200, 101- Loweswater TIR4/26 IR58/19201, 1-100 LXII 7, missing 8,12,16; LXIII IR58/19202, 101- 1,5,9,13; LXIX 6 Mosser TIR4/106 IR58/46652 LXII 3,7, missing 4,8 TIR4/56 With Embleton XLVI 9,13-15; LV 1-3 Whinfell TIR4/106 IR58/19232 LIV 16; LV 1: LXII 4; XIII 1 Wythop TIR4/56 With Embleton LV 3,4,6-8,10-12

*For a key to these map sheets and the 1900 parishes, see http://derwentfells.com/pdfs/sources/NewDomesdayOSMapKeyPar1900.pdf 23 24