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THE SEDBERGH HISTORIAN

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The Annual Journal of the SEDBERGH AND DISTRICT HISTORY SOCIETY

Vol. VII No. 3 ISSN 1356 - 8183 Summer 2020

Contents

The Carlisles of Sedbergh: An Odyssey to Africa John Carlisle 2

The role of the Rev. Professor Adam Sedgwick in Kendal Natural History Society. Judith Robinson 15

Some Willan Family Letters from Dent to Upper Canada, continued:

Who was James Mason? Maureen Street 23

Wartime Sedbergh – The Final Months 1945 Karen Bruce Lockhart 35

The Westmorland Society: A Northern Presence in London 1746 -1914 Diane Elphick 43

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The Carlisles of Sedbergh: An Odyssey to Africa John Carlisle

Background On July 19th in 1826, John Carlisle, an 1820 Settler to the Cape, South Africa, married Catherine Philipps, the daughter of Thomas Philipps, 1820 Settler. When John first asked for Catherine’s hand Thomas Philipps told John that, as the Philipps’ had a long and honourable lineage he would need to check the Carlisle’s. The Philipps origins were auspicious - on his father's side he was descended from the chieftains of one of the lost tribes of the ancient Welsh house of Cilsant. In the collection of Thomas Philipps’ letters [1] Philipps describes the moment when John Carlisle’s bona fides arrived from England. “Carlisle received the long wished for letters .... he wrote to me enclosing his letters, begging to know if he could see me.” The news was good, almost too good. Thomas Philipps discovered that the Carlisles were a very ancient family indeed, descending from Sir Hildred de Carliell, the first Sheriff of Cumberland in 1154, living in Kirkbampton just west of Carlisle. His great grandson, Adam, accompanied Lord de Brus to Annandale in South West Scotland in 1170 and there the Carlyle family took root. The first William Carlyle, Lord of Luce, married Margaret, sister of Robert the Bruce. He died in a battle against the English in 1333. But the family lived on, achieving at their pinnacle the elevation to the peerage by King James the Third: John, First Lord Carlyle of Totherwald, taking his seat in the Parliament at Edinburgh on the 6th of May, 1471. Thomas Philipps somewhat abashed, agreed with the wife of the magistrate, Major Dundas, writing in his letters that he indeed felt “truly happy that our Daughter was being united with so estimable a young man, so Superior a Marriage to any that had taken place here....” Scotland Carlyles to the Sedbergh Carlisles Patriarch John Carlyle arrived in Sedbergh in 1690 aged five from Scotland. His father, Adam, was probably escaping the political, social and environmental turbulence around Dumfries, especially the murderous cattle theft forays of the Border Reivers. They caused havoc with their stock raids across the border of England and Scotland, and the plunder of vulnerable homesteads, was accompanied by merciless killing. The Fourth Lord Carlyle was slain in a Reiver raid in 1579. To add to these vicissitudes, the Carlyles also suffered the misfortune of losing the material benefits of being a Carlyle to the Douglas family when Lord Michael Carlyle’s heir, Elizabeth Carlyle, married Sir James Douglas around 1581. Elizabeth, with her grandfather’s connivance, contested the line with her uncle, Michael, and ended up with the spoils, but not the title, in 1594. The Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth the First gave the following account to Lord Burghley (preserved in the British Museum): Howses decayed “Carlile, - Carlill – The male heirs are decayed. There is a daughter of Lord Carlile’s maryed to James Douglas, of the Parkhead, who has the living, but not the honors.”[2]

1 A. Keppel-Jones, Philipps, 1820 Settler, Pietermaritzburg:Shuter&Shooter, 1960

2 N. Carlisle, Collections for a History of the Ancient Family Carlisle, London, 1822

Page 2 The living was considerable! By a Charter from King James V in 1529 it included “the lands of Kynmund, with Tower and Fortalice of Kelhead, Locherwood, Muirhouse, Cummertrees, Bridekirk and Dalebank, with the fishings, Dornock with the fishings and the mill, part of the lands of Torduff, Middleby, Lus, Kirkconnel, Robbinhead, Kindalhead, Holmeschaw, Cogre, Todalmuir, Righeads, Marjoribank, Owlecotis and Belhorst with the mills .. and the place castle and fortalice of Torthorwald”, inter alia [3]. In other words, a sizeable portion of southwest Dumfriesshire from Dumfries to Locherbie and Gretna – and all the coast of the Solway coast below – was overseen by the family. However, within a hundred years these possessions were a mere remnant of what they had been fifty years before. The Carlyles appeared to have a penchant for profligacy and bad political choices, like many of the aristocracy, so the loss of this living was a big blow to their fortunes. Torthorwald, the prize, passed to the Douglas line when Sir James was murdered in 1608 (to the great relief of Elizabeth, to whom he had been abusive.) His son, James was awarded the estates and the title, Lord Tothorwald, by James VI in 1612. The honours remained with the Carlyle male heir, the second son, Michael, after this mighty tussle with his niece, Elizabeth. It can be assumed that many of the now-impoverished Carlyles became farmers or even tenant farmers to survive. The political upheavals and catastrophic weather in the second half of the century might have been the final spur to emigrate to England. There were the three, mainly weather-induced, famines that led to destitution and migration, especially the “Thirteen Drifty Days” in February and March 1674, when entire herds froze. Mortality levels more than doubled in Dumfries in 1675, ten years before the birth of John Carlyle. There are three mysteries about “Sedbergh” Carlisles. The first is, which family of Carlyles did Adam descend from? There are two possibilities, both from the parish of Annan in Dumfriesshire: the villages of Brydekirk and Limekilns are about three miles north of the town of Annan and about two miles apart. Limekilns, which now is only a farmhouse, is the most likely as it has succession directly from Michael, 4th Lord Carlisle, the instigator of Elizabeth Carlyle’s destructive challenge. The third son, Edward, was left with one and half acres of farmland, getting novo damus from his father, Adam, in 1637. This could not possibly support his great grandson, Adam, even though he was the eldest son in the family. Thus, it seems probable that an impoverished Adam and his eldest or only son, John, crossed the border to Sedbergh as there is an Adam Carlyle who was buried there in 1714 in his seventies However, the Scottish records are very muddled and it remains speculative, e.g. there is no sign of a wife. This brings us to the second mystery: why Sedbergh? Given that Annan was in the heart of the border region of England and Scotland, which by then had suffered 300 years of border skirmishes of one sort or another and Carlisle, another border city in England was just 15 miles away as the crow flies, why did Adam Carlyle go to Sedbergh? Sedbergh was 60 miles away in unknown country. That would have been a long trek, especially while driving livestock along the winding drover roads, as they most likely were doing. Although there is no further mention of Adam, John Carlyle was for ten years a tenant farmer at Ashbeckgill in Sedbergh from about 1709, by which time he had changed his name to the English version – Carlisle [4]. He then moved to Kilnbeck farm two miles to the south east where he spent the rest of his long life, dying at about 90 in

3 Douglas Peerage, vol 1. pp. 307, 464. Reg. Mag. Sig. L. Xxiii. No 106

4 K. J., Lancaster, Asshes, Ashbeckgill and Stonehall in Soolbank Part Two , Sedbergh Historian, Vol VI, No. 1, 2010

Page 3 1776 (see below). He married Elizabeth Lewis in 1709 and they had nine children, all of whom survived infancy, which was most unusual for that era. Their grandson, William, born in 1762 to son William, became the patriarch of the South African Carlisle line. He was the father of John and Frederick who emigrated to the Cape in 1820. A number of threads run through the history that follows. The first is the liberating impact of education at that time, exemplified by the Free Grammar School of King Edward VI in Sedbergh, which was originally founded as a chantry school in 1525 by Roger Lupton, the Provost of Eton College, who wished to match the high levels of scholarship found at Eton. The education was based on Latin grammar within a religious context. It has produced scholars and clerics over the 500 years of its existence, as well as politicians and a Lord Chief Justice, and a succession of international rugby players. The second thread is that of farming. Sedbergh is a small town in the centre of an ancient farming community, mainly sheep, and farming was the main occupation of the Carlisles in South Africa up to the 1930s. The third thread is that it lies along the path of the “drover roads” where in the 1600s thousands of cattle were driven to the rich markets of England from the less well cultivated pastures of Scotland. It was along one these that Adam Carlyle walked with his few head of cattle and a five year old boy, John, to arrive at Ashbeckgill farm. The fourth thread is the tremendous resilience of the migrants, both to England, and even more so in the Cape.

Ashbeckgill (now Ghyll Farm) as Adam Carlyle would have seen it from the drove road William was educated at the Free Grammar School of King Edward VI in Sedbergh, following in the footsteps of his elder stepbrother, John, in the period 1760-1770. This seems quite a leap for the sons of a tenant farmer. However records show that John Carlyle and family were literate and numerate, and son, John, in particular, who signed himself Carlile, was much called upon at weddings and to witness documents. This may have helped the boys get school bursaries, and proved an escape from the hard farming life for the boys who both became clergymen. In fact, the transformative role that the school played in the Carlisle family cannot be underestimated, as will be seen later on.

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Kilnbeck Farm, where John Carlyle lived as a tenant farmer until the end of his life. John went on to become the vicar at the tiny village of Chipping in Lancashire and William the vicar of Ipstones in Staffordshire in 1789. William was ordained deacon in Chester by the abolitionist bishop, Porteus Beilby in 1785. Both boys were accepted for ordination without the need for a degree. This is testament to the quality of education they had received from Sedbergh School. The school was a chantry school with Latin grammar, religion and morality as the basis for learning, and philosophy to encourage sound thinking. It therefore prepared pupils for the religious and intellectual life and provided scholarships to St John's, Cambridge.

St Leonards Church, Ipstones After his ordination as a deacon William Carlisle moved to Staffordshire to become assistant curate in Bucknall and Bagnall in 1787. He was ordained a priest in Eccleshall

Page 5 in 1787 and on the same day was made an assistant curate at Bagnall Chapel in Bucknall about 20 miles north, where his future father-in-law, Benjamin Woolfe, was vicar. When finally a dispute between the Littleton family and the freeholders of Ipstones as to who held the right to nominate a new vicar, which had raged on for four years, was resolved, William was offered the perpetual curacy of St Leonards at nearby Ipstones in 1789. Two years later he married Prudence Woolfe, daughter of the Rev Benjamin, in Dilhorne, and begat the large family of twelve children of whom two, John and Frederick, would make their way to Africa. William travelled, presumably by foot, 100 miles to Chester for his diaconate training because Sedbergh was in the Chester diocese. He then travelled another 50 miles south to take up a position as licensed curate in Staffordshire. These were very long distances for an impoverished village boy. In 1799 William obtained his Master’s degree at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is unusual for two reasons. The first was that Sedbergh School could award closed scholarships to St John’s, Cambridge. He was 38 when he was awarded his degree. The same records reveal William as having been accepted at Magdalen in 1791, aged 30. He was awarded his BA 7 years(!) later and his MA in 1799. Somehow he must have been sponsored as a student while a married priest. The assumption is that someone influential in Staffordshire helped him. A theme emerges. The Sedbergh School archivist also revealed printed records that show that three Carlisles attended the school. John and William were followed by William’s eldest son, William in about 1800, twenty years later. The archivist at Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr Charlotte Berry and her colleague, Ben Taylor, while researching William snr revealed that William jnr, was a supported scholar (admin sizar) at St John’s, Cambridge, matriculating in 1814 and leaving with an MA in 1821 – as one would expect from a student at Sedbergh School. The same information also revealed that at that time, his father, William, was a “clerk at Haye House in Staffordshire”, confirming his status as an ordained priest, living with his family just outside Ipstones on the Belmont road in this very large farmhouse.

Haye House, today called Hay House Farm William cultivated influential contacts. He had sound relations with the local, very wealthy, squire and magistrate, John Sneyd, who, as the Carlisle family expanded, gave him the occupancy of his sumptuous Belmont Hall (below), a few miles from Ipstones. It remains a puzzle why this son and grandson of tenant farmers should be

Page 6 of interest to the Sneyds. Possible reason could be that the Sneyds were an intellectually accomplished family with an unbroken line of Oxford education from 1600. William had the very good fortune to have attended Sedbergh Grammar when the Headmaster was Wynne Bateman (1746-82). Bateman was a highly skilled Classical scholar, and equally successful as a teacher of Mathematics. During Bateman’s time, Sedbergh School was noted at Cambridge for both Classics and Mathematics. William was mentioned in the Sneyd diaries as being a tutor to the young John Sneyd who was in ordination training, and his intellectual capital, especially Classics and Mathematics, may have found favour with the family [5]. William jnr was a contemporary of John, having entered St Johns three years earlier. William also cultivated Clement Kynnersley, Sneyd’s brother-in-law, who was the receiver of the rents and profits of the Clarke estates that stretched across Staffordshire into Derbyshire.

Belmont Hall Ipstones, Staffordshire – after which the Carlisle farm in the Cape was named Thorough investigations by Mrs Pamela Kettle T.D., FRSA, of the Derbyshire parishes revealed that William was awarded the curacy of St Mary’s, Sutton Scarsdale in Derbyshire in 1806, and that of nearby Sutton-cum-Duckmanton in 1806. He was an acquisitive vicar. Mrs Kettle dismisses him as “the best example of a pluralist parson [6]. He was the perpetual curate at St Leonard’s, Ipstones in Staffordshire and St Michael and all Angels in Earl Sterndale, Derbyshire at the time. Later on he acquired the parish of St Nicolas in Cranleigh, Surrey in 1810. However, it appears he over- reached himself and was forced to resign in 1811 to avoid canons against pluralities and content himself with just St Mary’s, St Leonards and St Michael. He added St Werburgh at Kingsley and All Saints at Grindon, both in Staffordshire, and Giles at Huntington in Derbyshire shortly after.

5 M. R. Sneyd, Never oppressed, never oppressor: the Sneyds of Staffordshire, a gentry family from 1600 to 1900, Huddersfield: Hilltop Press (2003)

6 P. Kettle, Parsons of Sutton-cum-Duckmanton, Sutton Scarsdale: Kettle (1995)

Page 7 William Carlisle’s living was valued at £300 per annum at Sutton of which £60 was paid to the curate and the Parish Clerk £3 and 14 shillings. The most highly household employee, senior cook, was paid about £14 pounds per annum at that time. A full time skilled farm labourer would have earned £30 per annum. At today’s value William would have had a salary of around £20,000, and this was just one of eight appointments. His contribution to the Sutton parish where he was ensconced at the behest of the local aristocracy, the Clarkes of Sutton Scarsdale Hall, was the miserly total of three baptisms and two funerals during his entire incumbency. He also had a living off the land terriers and tithes off Arkwright’s adjacent Glebe land. Again, this would have occurred in the other parishes, which would have made him a very wealthy man, earning the equivalent of well over £100,000 a year. Perhaps one reason for his “entrepreneurial” behaviour, about which Mrs Kettle was so exercised, was the upkeep of his family of twelve children, all of whom survived beyond early childhood. He also sent his eldest son, William, to Sedbergh School as a boarder. This again furthered William's career, allowing him to achieve a Cambridge Master’s degree and later to travel to the South African Cape in 1828 as a clergyman. Most importantly, William senior, paid for the application and passage of the Staffordshire Settlers party to South Africa put together by the two younger brothers, John and Frederick. This was a scheme sold to Earl Bathurst by Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape, as a method of both populating their colony, newly acquired from the Netherlands, and keeping the Bantu hordes, advancing from the east, at bay. The idea that was sold to the British pioneers was that of good farming land in a warm climate. The pressing issue of the advancing tribes was not mentioned. Of the 90,000 applications received 4,000 were finally accepted. The two brothers had chosen to make their own ways in an England economically depressed in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, but were not economic migrants as their ancestor John Carlyle had been. They were more like adventurers seeking a new life. John applied, at the last minute, to the Colonial Office to join the 1820 Settlers to the Cape on September 29th, 1819 as head of a party of fifteen, including four boys under fourteen years. An acceptance was received on October the 6th from Earl Bathurst, after a further endorsement from Nicholas Carlisle, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries and to the Education Commission, who also wrote the definitive Collections for a History of the Ancient Carlisle Family [2]. One of the most persuasive reasons for accepting John’s application was his experience of managing his father’s farmlands. The Colonial Office wanted farmers above all else and John was not only a farmer, but was under the supervision of the Sneyds, demanding landlords who insisted on the most modern mixed farming methods. This was ideal for the Eastern Cape terrain as described by Somerset. The Carlisle party was the smallest of the Settlers and was a proprietary party, notable for the youthfulness of its leader and nearly all its members, consisting entirely of males – another plus. There is no record of its being a parish party but from its composition it seems probable that some part at least of the deposits was paid by the parish. The settlers' baggage was forwarded by fly-boat (canal boat) from Ipstones, where the party was recruited, to Gravesend docks in London. Deposits were paid for the 11 men and 4 children. This would have been over £130, which was the equivalent of £10,000 today. A third of that would have been returned to them on landing at Algoa, approximately £40, a third when they were in situ on Belmont, and the last third after 3 months. William Carlisle further wrote to the Colonial Office to say he would accompany his sons to Gravesend in order to express his gratitude directly to the administrators and to guarantee payment for all the members of the party. The party sailed from Gravesend in the SS Chapman on 3rd December 1819 - a last minute arrangement resulting from the reduction of Bailie's party, which was to have occupied the whole ship - and arrived in Table Bay on 17th March 1820 and Algoa Bay on 10th April. These repayments were so that the settlers could purchase any implements, furniture, food, etc that they needed to get settled.

Page 8 However, Hockly [7] states "...the indebtedness of the settlers to the commissariat for rations, seed (which did not work), implements and other necessaries, equalled the balance of the deposit monies still in the hands of the government,". So, cash flow was a huge problem, and if acting Governor Donkin had not intervened, again, they would have been in more dire straits. They were also supposed to pay for their transportation from Algoa Bay to their allotted lands, but the Government acted on Donkin’s advice and relented on this. The estate was 1,342 acres, at a quit rent £2.00/100 acres for ten years, i.e. So, John Carlisle would have had to pay approximately £27 per year in rents for his 1,342 acres, i.e. just under £2,000 today. If they quit the land, it reverted to the Government. In some cases, though, the title deeds to the land were being given to the landowning settlers as early as 1832, and there was a proclamation in 1845 finalising the deeds. No doubt the Rev. William had to pay this amount as well. The assumption is that between October 1819 and June 1820 paid the Colonial Office a total close to £15,000 in today’s currency for his sons’ party to settle in the Cape. It is to be noted that in his will, William Carlisle left William, John and Frederick just £5.00 - “and pay to my three sons William, John and Frederick the sum of five pounds that they well knowing that layout of sums I have outpoured for them to outfit in the world and will I trust be satisfied with those small sums...” John Carlisle was never to see his father again.

The Voyage: 4000 Settlers aboard 21 sailing ships 1820 Voyage conditions (extracts with kind permission of Ralph Goldswain [8]) The emigrants were tightly packed, with no more than a few square feet of space per person. However, as the British class system operated as powerfully on ships as it did everywhere else in the Empire the ladies and gentlemen – the party leaders and their families, the professional class and the gentry - enjoyed privileges that shielded them from the worst effects of sea travel. But even so, they were generally as subject to the conditions on board the ships as everyone. All the passengers suffered from the overcrowding. There were no toilet facilities and no windows so sanitation was an issue. Conditions varied among the vessels, but a foul atmosphere, poor food and insufficient water were common to all of them. With the ships pitching and creaking, huge waves higher than the topmast breaking over them, decks awash, hatches battened down, people being sick, it was a dismal experience for everyone. Many died during the voyages, particularly women and very young children. During the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, before the advent of steam driven ships, every vessel sailing on legitimate business, unless it was a man of war, was in danger of attacks from pirates. In order to take advantage of the prevailing winds the settler fleet had to make for Brazil then turn and head for the southern tip of Africa, blown by favourable winds and calling in at islands off the African and Brazilian coasts to refresh their supplies. It was on those islands, where the sea was calmer and the weather more congenial, that pirates made their camps and villages, and they operated from there. The organisers of the settler project had tried to minimise the danger from pirates by arranging for the ships to sail in pairs. In the case of the Carlisles, their ship, the Chapman, sailed with the Nautilus.

7 H. E. Hockly, The Story of the British Settlers of 1820 in South Africa, Cape Town: Juta (1957)

8 R. Goldswain, Roughing It. 1820 settlers in their own words, Cape Town:Tafelberg (2016)

Page 9 The voyage from Cape Town to Algoa Bay gave the voyagers ‘an excellent opportunity of surveying the coast scenery of the Western Cape’ wrote Thomas Pringle. He goes on to describe the ‘massive mountain ridges clothed with forests of large timber,’ and the rocky peaks. He watched the emigrants ‘who now crowded the deck or leaned along the gangway; some silently musing, like myself, on the scene before us, others conversing in scattered groups, and pointing with eager gestures to the country they had come so far to inhabit.’ They were all eager to place their feet on firm ground, ‘highly exhilarated by the prospect of speedily disembarking.’ The newcomers scanned the shore with mixed emotions, though, and most of them were apprehensive in spite of their impatience to arrive. ‘The sublimely stern aspect of the country, so different from the rich tameness of ordinary English scenery, seemed to strike many of the Southron with a degree of awe approaching to consternation. The Scotch, on the contrary, as the stirring recollections of their native land were vividly called up by the rugged peaks and shaggy declivities of this wild coast, were strongly affected….. Some were excited to extravagant spirits; others silently shed tears.’ But as the ship sailed on eastwards towards Algoa Bay the country changed again: as they neared their destination the imposing green landscape disappeared and was replaced by flat, scrubby plains. As the ships entered the bay there were tears again - tears of disappointment this time. Lifting their eyes above the violent surf that pounded the beach in foaming splendour, they had a misty view of a desolate, windswept landscape banked by sand dunes. The hills beyond the beach were covered with scraggly bushes stunted by the wind, and leaning sideways by its blast, and beyond them a dreary flat wasteland with the faint outline of mountains in the far distance. Expecting there to be a town there was nothing but a long curved beach and a small fort on the top of one of the hillocks, with the tents of military officers pitched around it; three cottages; some wooden pre- fabricated huts brought from England to protect supplies and equipment from the elements, and rows of white tents on the beach. This was not a port, not a harbour, not a town, not even a village – just a bay where the ships could gather and a large beach where the settlers would camp while the authorities processed them before sending them off to their new homes. The first ship at Algoa Bay was the Chapman, carrying the large Bailie party of 256 and the Carlisle party of 15 – 11 mainly young adults and 4 youths. One of the Bailie party, Notary John Centlivres Chase, a future member of the legislative council, wrote: ‘Our first impression of the country at which we had at length arrived was anything but cheerful. From the deck of our vessel we observed a coast lashed by a broad belt of angry breakers, threatening, as we feared, death to a large proportion of our numbers. The shore was girt with an array of barren sand hills, behind and close to which appeared a series of rugged and stony acclivities and, in the distance behind these, the dark and gloomy range of the Winterhoek mountains frowned upon us.’ ‘As soon as the day dawned, most of the people came on deck to view the land of their future residence. As the sun rose over the wide expanse of ocean towards the east and gilded with its light on the hills and shores of the Bay towards the west and north, a gloom spread gradually over the countenance of the people. As far as the eye could see, from the south-west to the north-east, the margin of sea appeared to be one continued range of white sand hills; wherever any breach in these hills afforded a peep into the country behind, the ground appeared sterile and the bushes stunted.’ And then he gave in to his own feelings: ‘Can this be the fine country, the land of promise, to which we have been allured by highly coloured descriptions, and by pictures drawn in our imagination?’

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Going ashore at Algoa Bay – oil painting by Thomas Baines, 1850, Tate Gallery 1948 Arriving Major General Donkin who was in overall charge was an effective organiser and a committed public servant. He managed to make everything ready for the settlers: to plan the landing, to make arrangements for their accommodation at Algoa Bay and for their departure for their allocated sites. He was assisted by a team of experienced officers, a regiment of soldiers and the crew of a British man of war, and in their hands the transfer from sea to land was done efficiently and safely: there were no accidents and no injuries. This is astonishing, given the risks involved, due mainly to the fact that it was the army and not the colonial civil servants in charge. The task was formidable and the preparation for the arrival began long before the moment arrived. Food and transport had to be arranged; agents had to buy cattle and sheep from farms to provide fresh meat for the newcomers, and those animals had to be fed and tended. The landdrosts (magistrates) of Uitenhage and Graaf-Reinet – the nearest towns – had scoured their districts and commissioned ox-wagons, with their drivers and leaders. They were able to acquire only two hundred wagons, which meant long stays on the beach for some settlers as they waited for their transport to become available. The organisers had imported seeds and agricultural implements so that the settlers could plant crops and reap them as soon as possible. These had to be stored in sheds to be protected from weather and theft. Consequently, prefabricated warehouses, shipped out from England, were erected. They had also put tents up on the beach to accommodate the newcomers, and the large campsite became known as Canvas Town. It was from here on April 19th, 1820, that John Carlisle’s party set off by oxwagon to the interior. Their destination was Grahamstown, a fort about 100 miles away in heart of the Zuurveld (sour grassland with shrubs and occasional small trees), which then became known as Albany. Given the terrain, the journey would take 8-10 days to get to the farmland that would be called Belmont on the edge of the fort. One can imagine the excitement of these young men as they journeyed to the north east, swaying on creaking wagons behind sixteen trudging oxen, spotting tropical birds like the Knysna lourie and the swooping hornbills. And then there would the game: antelope like the duiker, oribi and perhaps even a gnu. Baboons would sprawl alongside the tracks barking at the intruders.

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Ox-wagons used to commemorate the centenary of Great Trek of 1837. Exact replicas of those used to transport the Settlers to their farms using the same routes. Note the rough terrain, not suited for agriculture. This would have been the Africa they were expecting. They would then pass through Grahamstown and turn south for a couple of miles past Fort England towards the Blaauwkranz (Blue Cliffs) river, where they would outspan to begin their lives as settlers in the Albany colony.

The allocation certificate for John Carlisle apportionment, on which he built a stone cottage, Belmont

Page 12 Pioneers The 4,000 Settlers doubled the number of the English in the Cape, such was their impact. It was also estimated that by the end of World War II over half a million of the English population of the Union of South Africa could trace their heritage to the 1820 Settlers. But, by no means, was it easy. It did not take long before the settlers discovered that they had been duped by Lord Charles Somerset and that he had lied to them and the Colonial Office about the nature of the land, i.e. “the Zuurveld (is) the most beautiful part of this settlement.... it resembles a succession of parks from the Bushman’s River to the Great Fish River in which upon the most verdant carpet, Nature has planted in endless variety; the soil well adapted to cultivation is peculiarly fitted for cattle and pasturage.” The extravagant lies continued, “When primary needs are supplied, no country yields finer wool...the corn of this Colony has been bought on the London market at the highest price...” [7] In fact, little of the ground was cultivable and the rainfall intermittent, nothing like the beautiful dales of Staffordshire, with its thick nutritious grass, streams and forests where wood was plentiful and easy to work with. They were not given building materials or oxen for ploughing. It was then that the resilience of the British began to show itself: they created vegetable gardens instead as quickly as possible, as they had arrived in what was late autumn in the southern hemisphere. They also put up wattle and daub shacks immediately, and later on built cottages made of bricks or Devonshire cob (a mixture of clay and straw). On Belmont, despite the fact that all the Carlisle party were a mixture of experienced farm managers and labourers, and included a miller, times were also hard, especially as the wheat crop failed three years running. It was not suited to the Zuurveld and developed rust mildew at the onset of harvest. To make matters worse locusts and other pests ravaged the vegetable crops. They were fortunate, however, as they were all young men and had no infants or women to care for. But they did find that 1,342 acres simply could not support 15 people. The Boer neighbours had farms of 6,000 acres and were pastoral, as the veld was tick free. The final straw for many were the floods of October 1823 when a week of torrential rain swept away the houses and fences and destroyed gardens and orchards. The settlers became destitute, reverting to wattle and daub shacks and wearing rags for clothing. Many left farming for the village life and commerce; but the Carlisle party soldiered on, eking out an existence thanks to their knowledge of farming and the great practical help from their Boer neighbours. The Carlisle party was typical of the Settler mentality; practical, optimistic endurance. But their greatest enemy was the Colonial Office in the person of Lord Charles Somerset, which had beset them with all sorts of petty regulations that restricted their travel, insisted they only exported goods through Cape Town, hundreds of miles away and withheld the repayment of the balance of the deposit money. And this brings to the fore the greatest betrayal by the Colonial Office; that Albany was meant to be a buffer between the black tribes coming from the east, mainly Xhosas, and the farmers and settlers occupying the Zuurveld. They had, in fact arrived in the middle of a hundred year war between the colonists in the Cape and the Xhosas et al. Albany truly was a case of perfidious Albion. These circumstances eerily took the Carlisles back full circle to the situation in Scotland that had caused Adam Carlyle to depart Dumfriesshire for England 130 years before – the Border reivers. The main issue was, like the reivers, stock theft. The black tribes, as opposed to the Bushmen and Hottentots, were cattlemen and always growing their herds and thus their need for land. Consequently, the settlers had also to become militia. The magistrate of Grahamstown had warned one of the earliest parties he settled: “Gentleman, when you go out to plough never leave your guns at home.”

Page 13 By 1823 over 5,000 horses and cattle had been stolen, and over 1,000 head recovered by the armed settler parties. Skirmishes were common; but deaths were mercifully few. But the “Kaffir Wars” were more serious. Between the sixth, seventh and eighth wars (1834-1853) over a hundred settlers had been killed – and thousands of tribal warriors. Frederick Carlisle lost his leg in the “Seventh Kaffir War”. But, strangely enough, they were never regarded as the enemy. The Colonial Office was, and its Governor in the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, was reviled. Eventually after an official enquiry, he resigned in 1827. The colony, and Belmont, prospered from that moment on.

Belmont farmhouse, Eastern Cape, South Africa built by John Carlisle 1820 - Ivor Markman, Eastern Province Herald (circa 1955). Now a celebrated golf course.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Richard Cann, Elspeth Griffiths and Kevin Lancaster in Sedbergh and to the archivists, Katy de la Rivière and Dr Steph Carter of Sedbergh School, and Dr Charlotte Berry and Ben Taylor, archivists at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Page 14

The role of the Rev. Professor Adam Sedgwick in Kendal Natural History Society. Judith Robinson

From 1836 until the end of the nineteenth century, the intellectual life of educated Kendalians was dominated by the Kendal Natural History and Scientific Institution, which was often referred to as the Kendal Natural History Society, until it changed its name in 1855 to Kendal Literary and Scientific Society. Over its life of nearly 80 years, the Institution had only 6 Presidents: 1835 - 1838 Edward Wilson, Esq., of Abbot Hall (founder-member) 1838 - 1873 Rev. Professor Adam Sedgwick, F.R.S., Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge. 1873 - 1880 Dr. Thomas Gough (co-founder) 1880 - ?1896 Professor Thomas McKenny Hughes who succeeded the Rev. Adam Sedgwick as Professor of Geology at Cambridge. He had lived in Sedbergh while doing geological survey work and had been enthused by Adam Sedgwick’s lectures when an undergraduate at Cambridge[1]. 1896 - 1909 Professor Adam Sedgwick, great-nephew of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick. He was a zoologist who was a lecturer at Cambridge and subsequently a professor at Imperial College, London. 1909 - 1918 Canon George Crewdson, vicar of Kendal. In the late C18th and early C19th many cities and major towns set up Literary and Philosophical Societies. That such a small town as Kendal did so in the 1790s was probably the result of the influence of two remarkable men, both sons of weavers. The young John Dalton, having come to Kendal from Cumberland, received tuition from the even more remarkable John Gough, known as the blind philosopher. Despite having lost this sight at an early age, he was renowned as a mathematician and botanist. In return for tuition, Dalton helped Gough by scribing for him and doing calculations. During his time as master of the Friends School in Kendal, John Dalton made a herbarium collection, published a book on his meteorological research and gave some lectures on natural history[2]. But Kendal Literary and Philosophical Society existed for only about 20 years before it fell victim to party political divisions in 1818, when there were riots on the streets of Kendal during the General Election of that year. It was 15 years later, after John Gough had died and John Dalton had long been pursuing his illustrious scientific career in Manchester, that another well known Kendalian, Cornelius Nicholson, suggested to John Gough’s son that they should form a Natural History Society. By that time there was a similar society established in

1 O'Connor, A. (2005) 'The competition for the Woodwardian Chair of Geology, Cambridge 1873.', British journal for the history of science., 38 (4). pp. 437- 461. 2 Notes accompanying an exhibition to celebrate the Bicentenary of Dalton’s Atomic Theory at the University of Manchester 2003 - 2004.

Page 15 Lancaster although Carlisle’s came later. Thomas Gough was a medical doctor in Kendal. The two men resolved to start a new Society, declaring that the first had had an inherent weakness, the lack of a museum to collect specimens, that being the only practical way of making records and identifications in those days. There was already a museum in Kendal, set up in 1796 as a private commercial venture by William Todhunter.[3] He died in 1832 and the contents of his museum were sold at auction in 1835[4]. Shortly afterwards, Nicholson and Gough called a meeting, at which Kendal Natural History and Scientific Institution was founded. Some of the founders had purchased items at the auction sale of Todhunter’s museum and donated these to form the basis of their museum. Possibly the only items from Todhunter’s museum still in Kendal Museum are the tuned lithophones. Among those present at the inaugural meeting, as well as Nicholson and Gough, were Edward Wilson of Abbot Hall, who became the 1st President, and Samuel Marshall, who had succeeded John Dalton as Master of the Friends’ School. At the founding meeting, they resolved to invite John Dalton to be an honorary member and within a year the founders invited several more eminent men to be honorary members, including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Professor John Wilson, Dr. George Birkbeck, and The Rev. Professor Adam Sedgwick. While most of these remained as members in name only, Adam Sedgwick, father of modern geology, took a real interest in the society for the rest of his life. William Wordsworth is said to have attended some early meetings[5] but he never played any significant part. Later honorary members included: Professor Richard Owen, founder of the Natural History Museum in London, Dr. John Davy (brother of Sir Humphrey Davy), Professor Sir John Richardson, Scottish naturalist and arctic explorer, and the second Professor Adam Sedgwick. The earlier Adam Sedgwick, although resident in Cambridge, made occasional visits to his family home in Dent, sometimes travelling via Kendal. He recalled later that he had visited the Society’s museum very early in its existence and had a conversation with an intelligent young man there on the subject of a fossil shell. He recollected saying, "that if Mr. Gough were here, how he would rejoice with me on the advance of the science of geology". He was then surprised to find that the intelligent young man was none other than John Gough’s son, Thomas. When visiting the area again in 1838, Prof. Sedgwick was asked at short notice to give an address to the Society. He had not prepared a geological lecture, and so he spoke (for 2 hours) about Kendal and the Institution. He assured them of his willingness to be there “for he was native of the north, almost he might say of Westmorland, whose hills he saw from his own door, and he loved the north with its mountains and its valleys and its streams.” Professor Sedgwick predicted excellent prospects for the Kendal Society, on the grounds of the influence of John Gough and John Dalton and the local position of Kendal, at a convenient distance from the fermenting intellect of the manufacturing districts and so near to the scenery of the Lake District, which excited both poetical emotion and intellectual emotion and facilities for meteorological observations. Such societies, he said, had the advantage that physical science demanded an appeal to matters of fact which was not the case with political and religious associations and therefore they united a larger number of individuals, and afforded scope for the removal of party feeling. “I hope that party rancour will never blast this society, as it did a similar society some 20 years ago.” Within two years, Professor Sedgwick was invited to become President of the Institution and remained so until his death in 1873.

3 John F. Curwen: Kirkbie-Kendall, 1900 4 The Lancaster Gazette, 11 July 1835 5 Pearson Anne (editor), The Letters, Papers and Journals of William Pearson

Page 16 Natural History in the nineteenth century was famously the preserve of Anglican Churchmen and several of these were prominent in the Kendal Institution, including the last President, the Rev. George Crewdson. But among the founders there were also Quakers and a Unitarian. Later a non-conformist minister, the Rev. John Inglis played a prominent role. The Rev. Adam Sedgwick’s attitude to geology was not fundamentalist. He spoke of the folly of testing geological speculations by the letter of scripture. “It was an injury to science, and derogation from the omnipotence of truth, to cramp investigation, by stamping any one who indulged in it, with the brand of irreverence”. In the great evolution controversy, both Professor Sedgwick and the Kendal society were firmly on the side of the anti-Darwinian, Richard Owen, the founder of the Natural History Museum in Kensington. Owen was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School [6], so would not have regarded Kendal as the back of beyond. Indeed, he acceded to the invitation to become an honorary member and in 1858 travelled to Kendal to give an address to the Society. Dr. Thomas Gough later expressed the opinion that there seemed to be no evidence of transmutation, or origin of species by natural selection. In 1843, Adam Sedgwick spent some time in the Lake District examining rocks, in the company of John Ruthven, a member of Kendal Natural History and Scientific Institution and, while in the north, he fulfilled the promise he had made in his 1838 address to give a talk to the Society on Geology. The Westmorland Gazette recorded that the hall of the Society was crowded to excess with the elite of the town and neighbourhood . . amongst others, the Rev. Sedgwick of Dent, Rev. J. H. Fisher of Kirkby Lonsdale, Dr. Davy of Ambleside, Dr. Fell from Ambleside, several gentlemen from Bowness, as well as the families of Wakefield, Fothergill, and Wilson of Abbot Hall. Professor Sedgwick explained the general principles of geology and said that he “had been exploring the characteristics of the rocks in Long Sleddale, attended by Mr. Ruthven, the great purveyor of fossils in this neighbourhood, and who, with Messrs. Gough, Danby, and Nicholson, had much enriched the collection in the Society's Museum, now one of the best he knew. Mr. Ruthven seemed to have a sixth sense - that of fossil smelling, for he discovered them in a most remarkable manner.” John Ruthven had been a shoe-maker with no formal education, but by 1851 he was able to state his occupation as ‘geologist’.[7] He was a collector and seller of fossils, sometimes called ‘the Mary Anning of the north’. Ruthven’s advice was sought by the Railway companies prospecting for the best routes and by the Borough Council about the stone for paving the streets of Kendal.[8] He was declared an honorary member of the Society in 1849, and continued for many years to donate specimens to the Museum and to assist in the curation of its geological specimens. The following year (1844), Adam Sedgwick was again in the district and he took the chair at the Annual General Meeting of the Society. “The Professor adduced in neat and playful manner some objections which said he entertained against the nomination of the gentleman as President whose name stood on the list for that office. He knew the gentleman well and though he could answer for him that his heart was with them, and that he wished them well, there was one ground in particular on which he objected to his appointment, namely, his non-residence with them, as it could not be well that the turning pivot should far away from the machine. He felt it his duty to lay this objection before them, but at the same time he could not refuse again to fill the office with which they had honoured him for two years.” He was of course duly re-elected.

6 plaque on the main building of Lancaster Royal Grammar School 7 Census records for Kendal, 1841 and 1851 8 references in the Westmorland Gazette, 17 January 1852, 15 January 1853, 8 October 1853, 10 December 1853, 17 January 1857, 6 December 1862

Page 17 The President again chaired the Annual General Meeting in 1845. On this occasion, he gave a talk, aiming “to give a general notion the formation of the rocks of what are commonly called the lake mountains and then to explain in a little more detail a portion the same ground.” When he came to that portion of ground he had recently examined, he said that “he was not aware that any one had previously attempted to make out the sequence of the rocks in Cautley Fells and the hills around Sedbergh; the detail therefore was a fresh discovery . . . The formation had turned out rather different from what he had hitherto suspected it would be. Many years ago he had gathered fossils from one of the gills of precisely identical species with those found in the band of limestone . . . generally called Coniston limestone, . . . very different from those which were found in such prodigious quantities in the limestone of Kendal Fell. When he first found these fossils near Sedbergh . . . he considered their occurrence a mere accidental circumstance; he thought a portion of the limestone rock containing them had been brought by some tremendous disturbance or dislocation. Such, however, was not the case, for his late researches had proved that the same system which he had described as occurring in Longsleddale, was repeated in the Cautley Fells and in the neighbourhood of Sedbergh and Dent. But the beds were not in the same quiet order of succession as in Longsleddale. On the contrary, they had been most strangely twisted, troubled, and broken up, and the masses of harder rock had been protruded through the slate.” In the course of his observations, the Professor paid a handsome compliment to the industry of Mr. John Ruthven and other members of the Kendal society. In his introduction he had said that he was not going to deal with controversies relating to “certain absurd theories”, mentioning a book (The Vestiges of Creation) which was then circulating “among the ladies of London, but which he hoped the ladies of the north of England had too much good sense to led away with.” Despite this, he added a lengthy and vehement denunciation of that book and its (pre-Darwinian) atheistic theory of evolution. The Professor concluded by expressing the great pleasure he should always feel to meet them again, whenever his avocations brought him to his native hills, which he always revisited with increasing delight. But it was five years before Professor Sedgwick returned to Kendal. In between, he had employed John Ruthven to explore the Skiddaw slates for fossils, the successful results being mentioned in an address which Professor Sedgwick gave to the Geological Society in London in 1848.[9] His visit in August 1850 did not coincide with the Annual General Meeting but he delivered another lecture on Geology. Despite short notice, the meeting room was so full that people had to be turned away. It happened that the Geological Society of London had recently commissioned a bust of Sedgwick and he had presented a copy of this bust to Kendal Natural History Society. When he gave his talk, this bust was placed at the front of the hall, together with a bust of John Dalton. (Both busts are now in Kendal Museum.) The chairman thanked him for the gift of the bust at which he joked that he was in danger of meeting the fate of Narcissus and then went on to pay tribute to John Dalton, “that distinguished man, with whom I am proud to have been on terms of intimacy”. His lecture ranged over the subjects of volcanoes and glaciers and the occurrence of fossil sea shells at high altitudes. He remarked that the existence of organic remains must be obvious to all who used their eyes, but unfortunately the great mass of mankind never did use their eyes in the contemplation of nature, and might as well for that purpose have been born blind. He again concluded with a denunciation of the Lamarck theory of evolution, dismissing as folly the idea that an animal by longing for fruit the top of a tree, should produce progeny capable climbing that tree. In 1855 Kendal Natural History Society moved its museum from its premises in Stramongate to Stricklandgate House, which it occupied for the next 60 years. They invited Adam Sedgwick to come to Kendal for the formal opening of the new Museum in March but he declined on the grounds of ill-health. Later the same year, however, he notified them that he would be in the area and would give them an address. Having

9 reported in the Westmorland Gazette, 4 March 1848

Page 18 more notice this time, the Society arranged to hold a Public Breakfast in Kendal Town Hall in his honour. This was attended by all the local gentry and professional men. The Westmorland Gazette reported the occasion in great detail: “On Tuesday morning shortly before eleven o'clock a public breakfast was held the Assembly Room, in honour of the distinguished Professor. The dejeuner was . . . of the very choicest kind, and set out in a style of great elegance. About 130 ladies and gentlemen sat down to it. John Whitwell, Esq., Mayor Kendal presided . . . W. E. Wakefield, Esq., Secretary of the Natural History Society, gave the following address: “The council the Kendal Literary and Scientific Institution . . desire to express to you their sense of the obligation under which you place them by the interest which you have ever shewn in their society. They desire to express their consciousness of the honour they receive in being presided over by one whose brilliant talents and indefatigable labours in the cause of science have won for him a world-wide reputation and (lasting) fame . . . When your geological career commenced geology could scarcely be called a science; it was little more than an appendage to . . mineralogy. It is by your labours . . . that this appendage has expanded, by accurate observation and faithful registration of facts, into a science so vast as to enlist all other sciences, physical and organic, to aid in interpreting its mysterious phenomena. . . To your researches we are indebted for a faithful history of the granitic axis of Wastdale crag and its igneous action upon the metamorphic rocks in its neighbourhood. You tracked the devious wanderings of the granite boulders from this axis through all the bye- paths and along the mountain slopes of our own county down into the plains and wolds of Yorkshire. . . . and, lastly, to you is due the re-arrangement the palaeozoic rocks of Westmorland and Cumberland, and their identity and comparison with the same series Wales. In proof of these your latest labours, we point, with pride, to the volumes, so graciously presented by you to this Society, in which work are figured and described a vast number of new species of corals, crustaceans, and shells from the neighbourhood of Kendal. . . But all the advantage of your presidency is on one side, and the members of this institution can only offer you in return their best thanks for your services.” The Professor rose to reply, evidently labouring under strong emotion. He begged to return them his most cordial thanks for the kindness . . . He was aware when he came among them that he should be called upon to talk to them, but the presentation of this address was something for which he was altogether unprepared. He could not respond to it in formal language, but he uttered the language his heart when he said how grateful to them he felt . . . but in regard to his connection with the Society he would only say it had been to him a source not only of happiness but of sorrow, sorrow from the thought that, being an absent member, could not be of that use to it that he would have wished. . . His heart had ever been wedded north. . . Kendal, in particular was endeared to him by the remembrance of early life. He remembered coming to the town when he was very little boy, before he had put on the garb which was the outward semblance of manhood. . . . He went when a mere child to see their noble church, and heard played on their organ Handel's glorious Hallelujah chorus and when, eight years afterwards, he was sent to Cambridge, and the same anthem was struck up in the College Chapel, he assured them it stirred within him strange recollections, which he would not attempt to describe. The story . . . would not, perhaps, have been brought to his remembrance that but that his friend and schoolfellow, Mr. Wakefield, at whose house at Sedgwick had been staying, invited him the last Sunday to go with him to the church which he was in the habit attending. But he (the Rev. Professor) said no, he must go to the church at Kendal, and to his great delight the same glorious anthem was struck which had twice before so much impressed his mind. They might say, what had this do with the subject of the address, or with geology? It had not much to do with them, but it afforded proof of how much he was wedded, heart and soul, to the place his birth. Of what he had done for geology, God forbid he should boast. . . . Once more he congratulated them on the flourishing state their society, and hoped that blessing would rest upon it.

Page 19 The proceedings then went on to include an address in praise of Dr. Thomas Gough, who had recently recovered from illness and in the more light-hearted exchanges which followed, Adam Sedgwick recounted an incident in Ennerdale when the landlady of a country inn had been amazed to find that he had been all day on the hillside getting ste-ans, as she called them, and perhaps thought he was out his senses. “Ste- ans, there's plenty o' ste-ans here. . .” Adam Sedgwick’s support for the Society extended to its museum, to which he donated various geological specimens. These included specimens of the coral, Pentamerus knightii, and a series of trilobites, Asapiuis birchi, &c, from Silurian formations of Wales. In 1857, he presented the museum with a slab of Graptolites ludensis from Kirkby Ireleth Moor. As mentioned by Mr. Wakefield in his address at the Breakfast, he had also donated copies of his published works. In praising the Kendal society’s museum as one of the best he knew, Adam Sedgwick would have had the opportunity to compare it with other provincial museums, for example in 1847, he was invited to open new premises built to house the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, founded in 1835 [10]. It was probably through his influence that several notable scientists travelled to Kendal to visit the museum. In 1842, it was visited by the President of the Geological Society, Mr. (later Sir) Roderick Murchinson from London, accompanied by a Russian geologist, Count Alexander von Keyserling, with whom he had collaborated in publishing geological papers. They were highly complementary both of the collections and of the work of John Ruthven. Later the name of the Scottish geologist and writer, Sir Charles Lyell, appears in a list of notable visitors. In July 1857, the Gazette reported that Professor Sedgwick was at present pursuing his geological researches among the old rocks of this interesting locality, in company with Dr. Gough, Mr. John Ruthven, and Mr. John Bolton. The same three men accompanied him in field work around Ulverston in 1859. On these occasions, there is no record of a lecture to the Society. Sedgwick’s last recorded visit to the Kendal Society, in 1858, was on the occasion of an address given by Professor Richard Owen, founder of the Natural History Museum in London. Professor Sedgwick chaired the meeting and Professor Owen gave a talk on the classification of mammals. On Adam Sedgwick’s death in January 1873, Dr. Thomas Gough became president of Kendal Literary and Scientific Institution, He had been active in the Society from the start, giving lectures, collecting and donating items to the Museum and acting as honorary curator there when his medical duties permitted. In 1875, he gave an address in which he described the history of the Institution, with tributes to its illustrious members, especially Adam Sedgwick, John Ruthven, William Pearson and the Rev John Inglis. He recalled that, at the formation of the society, it was resolved that, at the ordinary meetings, lectures should be delivered, or papers on literary, scientific, or antiquarian subjects should be heard, and discussions take place. The early lists of lecture titles cover a wide variety of subjects including astronomy, geology, gardening, physics and archeology. Over the years there was a prevalence of geological subjects, perhaps because that was a special interest of Dr. Gough and because of the roles of Adam Sedgwick and John Ruthven. Natural History subjects mostly came from Dr Gough or from William Pearson. William Pearson of Crosthwaite wrote about his observations in letters in the manner of Gilbert White of Selborne. After his death his papers and letters were collected by his wife and published privately in book form.[11] In its heyday Kendal Literary and Scientific Society held Converzationes or Soirees in the museum, which the members attended in evening dress. The one held in 1864 attracted about 400 ladies and gentlemen, a figure considerably higher than the number of members. The proceedings, which began at six o'clock, comprised

10 E. Charles Nelson: Note on Wisbech and Fenland Museum in the Newsletter of the Society for the History of Natural History, January 2019 11 Pearson, Anne (editor), The Letters, Papers and Journals of William Pearson

Page 20 inspection of objects of interest throughout the museum, including models of Davy's lamp and of George Stephenson’s first locomotive and a Telegraphic apparatus set up in the library for sending messages, having a terminus in the Lecture Hall. There was an explanation of the solar spectrum and optical instruments; a description of an ancient camp at Cunswick, readings from Shakespeare; and a paper in the Westmorland dialect. These occupied the company till about nine o'clock, and were followed by a concert of amateur music. Before these evenings became quite so ambitious, they were more like modern ‘members’ nights’. In April 1850, the Gazette reported: “Instead of a single paper … the evening consisted of sort of pic-nic, comprising five short contributions of a miscellaneous character. The first . . was (read) from . . a lady in Norfolk, Miss Gurney, … the result of the writer's observations, while on a tour in Portugal, on the evergreen oak whence the cork bark derives.” This reference is unique, being the only record of a paper or lecture by a lady. Anna Gurney was a remarkable person, who had to use a wheelchair for most of her life but did not let that prevent her from travelling, studying, writing and collecting. She was the first female member of the British Archeological Society and contributed papers to its journal and her a collection of fossils was praised by Richard Owen.[12] Her name appears several times in the Kendal Society records as a donor of specimens and books to Kendal Museum. The Gurneys were Quakers and had family connections to some Kendal Quakers. There were lady members from the beginning of the Kendal Society but none ever appears on the lists of officers or committee members, nor honorary curators of the Museum. They employed ladies in the position of sub-curator, a role which was somewhere between cleaner and receptionist. But certainly many ladies attended the meetings. And one of them occasioned an unprecedented occurrence in Cambridge as a result of having met Adam Sedgwick at a meeting of the Kendal society. She was Fanny Wakefield who married James Cropper in 1845. Sedgwick recounted this incident: “To the ladies of Kendal I owe much. I have sitting at my right hand Mrs. James Cropper, who, on her excursion during the honeymoon, called upon me, radiant with joy and beauty, at Cambridge. . . But I was just on the point of going out to lecture, and it was of course impossible for me to suspend my lecture, even to do honour to a lady visiting me during her honeymoon. So I proposed to her that she should go with me and become one of my class; but when it was once known that a lady had been present among my hearers, there arose a rebellion; other ladies insisted on being also admitted and I have never since kept them out. I thought it highly honourable to Kendal to have organised a society like that, and I trust it will tend to the public good, and the advancement of those great studies in which they have felt so much interest.” In the early 1860s the Kendal Society, by then called the Kendal Literary and Scientific Society, arranged archeological outings during which Cornelius Nicholson or some other expert gave lectures on site. In 1862 an outing to Shap Abbey attracted over 150 people, most of whom travelled there by train, while the gentry came in carriages. Before they left, the then chairman of the Society, Mr. John Whitwell, “expressed the hope that Cumberland and Westmorland would, ere long, unite in the formation of an archaeological society making Kendal its nucleus, and this, we (The Westmorland Gazette) understand, is an object the Kendal Literary and Scientific Institution is endeavouring to accomplish”. The Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archeological Society was founded in 1866, with Cornelius Nicholson being a leading light in its early days, so that it could be said that that illustrious institution was an offspring of the Kendal Society. As years passed and the Institution concentrated increasingly on literary subjects, some members attempted to revive the interest in Natural History. In 1885, three

12 Gurney, Anna, Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Page 21 sections (debating, photographic & natural history) were formed and these held monthly meetings in addition to the main programme, over the next few years. But Kendal Literary and Scientific Institution seemed to have lost its preeminent place in the intellectual life of the district, ceding it perhaps to its own offspring, Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archeological Society. The Kendal society ran into debt at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Its membership declined and the last recorded lecture took place in 1913. By then a new Natural History Association had been formed but this too disappeared a few years afterwards. Meanwhile, the remaining committee of the old Institution was negotiating with Kendal Borough Council for the transfer of the Museum contents. They sold enough museum items to clear the debts and the rest was moved to the current Museum premises, under the supervision of the president, Canon George Crewdson.[13] The new museum was opened in April 1918, but the pursuit of Natural History by means of a Society remained in abeyance until the formation of the current Kendal Natural History Society in 1946.

Note on Sources The writer has in the past consulted the archives of the Kendal Natural History and Scientific Institution and its successor held at Kendal Archives and has referred to the notes then made but the archives were unavailable for much of period of this piece of research. Therefore, except where other sources are mentioned in footnotes, the quotations and references are from the detailed reports of society meetings in the Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Mercury.

Cleaning the Adam Sedgwick Memorial Fountain 1914

13 Kendal Museum archives

Page 22

Some Willan Family Letters from Dent to Upper Canada, continued: Who was James Mason? Maureen Street

In my earlier Sedbergh Historian article (Summer 2017), I passed on information about Dent and local Methodism from a set of letters sent in the early 19th century from there to Joseph Alderson (from Gawthrop, who had emigrated to Ontario, then called ‘Upper Canada’). Most of them were written by one James Mason. He had been left the job of trustee of the will of Thomas Willan of Millbeck farm in Dent, Joseph’s father-in- law. Thomas had died in 1811 but the instructions in his will (made that year) were being implemented after the death of his widow, Margaret, in March 1826. By that time, the family was made up of five daughters and their families. The two eldest families – those of Frances (Fanny) Alderson and Mary Robinson – had emigrated to carve out farms from the forests of Upper Canada. That left three daughters: Margaret (Peggy), who had some ‘defect of understanding’ according to her father’s will; Elizabeth (Betty) and her husband John Wildman, who were farming at Millbeck, and their children; and Isabella, in her mid-20s and unmarried. The two sons of Thomas and Margaret had died as toddlers, so the farm was to be sold and the proceeds distributed among the girls. James Mason, described in Thomas Betty and John Wildman Willan’s will as his friend and as a ‘husbandman’ at Outrake Foot farm in Deepdale, comes across in his letters as decent, honest and meticulous, as well as a committed Methodist (though he confessed to being not as ‘alive to God’ as he had sometimes been). He admitted to his friend Joseph Alderson that he found the work as trustee ‘very unpleasant’ and onerous, since he had been left to do it on his own after the death of another trustee, Richard Greenbank, and the debility of the third, Thomas Willan’s brother-in-law George Hayton. [1 ] I was intrigued to find out more about James Mason, so set out to do some sleuthing in the Sedbergh archives room (SAR) and elsewhere. Frustratingly, my researches led to the emergence of not one but two candidates as the conscientious executor/trustee of the Willans’ part of the farm called Millbeck, both of whom are recorded at Outrake Foot farm in the relevant period, and subsequently at later addresses. This article is about my search for the ‘real’ James – and how it turned into an object-lesson in the difficulties of interpreting fragmentary data from the past, perhaps especially in family-history / genealogical research. The search for James Mason: an exercise in sleuthing from the archives We have land-tax correlation records for Outrake Foot farm in the period 1781–1831, which clarify some things about any ‘James Mason’ living there. I was puzzled by the farm’s odd-sounding name, but learned that ‘outrake’ was a term used by shepherds

1 ‘The position of a trustee differs from that of an executor of a deceased person … trustees have an underlying duty to hold onto property for the benefit of beneficiaries [once] the estate has been fully administered the executor has completed their duty’ (HMRC manual). Thomas Willan’s will is registered in Lonsdale Deanery probate files, S-Z 1810–1820 [in Kendal index of wills, Lonsdale deanery, R635, no.100].

Page 23 to mean a free passage for sheep from enclosed pasture into open grounds or common lands. In Dent, coming from the old hill track now known as the Occupation (‘Occy’) Road down the northeastern slope of Little Coum, walkers pass a ruined cottage called Nun-House (or High Nun House), hence the path is called ‘Nun-House Outrake’. This descends to meet Deepdale Lane near Outrake Foot – at the foot of the outrake. The SAR file on Outrake Foot (or Outrakefoot) shows that in the 17th and 18th centuries the proprietors were Burtons, Greenbanks and Hodgsons (all good Dent surnames). From 1802 John Sill, of the dale’s richest family, became Outrake Foot’s Proprietor, followed by his brother James and after their deaths by their spinster sister, Ann, in 1807. However, the Occupier (tenant) from 1802 to 1814 was a William Mason; the parish registers record the burial from there on 3 May 1816 of a William Mason aged 89 (so born 1727). From 1815 to 1823 the next Occupier is named as James Mason; it seems he was there till some time into 1824, when a different Occupier took over.

Outrake Foot Farm, c2000 The James Mason named in Thomas Willan’s 1811 will was at that time a ‘husbandman’ at Outrake Foot. In England in the medieval and early-modern period a husbandman was a free tenant farmer or small landowner. The social status of a ‘husbandman’ was below that of a ‘yeoman’ (Wikipedia), but the Oxford Companion to Family and Local History notes that there was no ‘legal precision’ for this term or ‘yeoman’, and by the late C18/early C19 both were being replaced by ‘farmer’. We might assume that this James was called ‘husbandman’ while William Mason was the official ‘Occupier’, i.e. tenant, of the farm, and that he became officially ‘Occupier’ by 1815 because of William’s advanced age (unless a son or other relative called William had taken over the tenancy previously). By 1819 at the birth of James’s son at Outrake Foot he is called ‘Farmer’. If the Occupier was the son of the elderly William he could be the father of the James who may have written the letters, as I suggest below. Nevertheless, if his father was a William, Dent naming tradition would suggest this James should have named his first son William, not another James. (This has some significance later.) From 1824 to 1831 the listed Occupier is a John Willan (from the Deepdale Willans, not closely connected to the Millbeck Willans, my ancestors); the land-tax records end at this point. So by the time of his letters to Alderson, which were written between April 1826 to April 1837, James Mason was no longer the ‘Occupier’ at Outrake Foot. Unhelpfully for us, he dated all of the letters we have just from ‘Dent’.

Page 24 Another source of information about who was living at Outrake Foot in the years of the Willan letters is the baptism records of children registered as born there, or at least as living there when christened.[2] The parish registers of St Andrew’s in Dent show that on 26 September 1819 a James, son of James Mason, ‘Farmer’ at Outrake Foot, and his wife Alice was baptised by J. Sedgwick. This young James was followed by a brother, George Mason, born about March 1820 but not christened from Outrake Foot till 8 September 1821 (the register says he was 14 months old), then Thomas Waddington Mason, born in November 1822 and christened from there on 17 January 1824.[3] James and Alice’s next child, Margaret, was christened from ‘White-Acre’, Dent on 6 March 1825. We know that from some point in 1824 the Occupier at Outrake Foot was no longer a Mason, so presumably he had moved to work elsewhere, possibly White Acre. (White Acre was higher up Deepdale than Outrake Foot.) It seemed to me that this James Mason, husband of Alice and sometime farmer at Outrake Foot, was likely to have been the writer of the Willan letters, but a few questions arose. How old was James Mason the letter-writer? It seems probable that Thomas Willan’s ‘friend’ James Mason, named as trustee in his 1811 will and described as ‘husbandman’ at Outrake Foot, would have been of similar age to himself. Thomas was baptised on 14 April 1747, making him about 64 when he died in March 1811. Yet letter-writer James wrote on 22 April 1826 that he had six children who were apparently still living with him from the context that they are rather a burden: ‘I am at present well off for this world considering the times, though I have six children.’ This age discrepancy may be explained by the injunction in Thomas’s will (a standard formula) that the duty of trusteeship would extend to the trustees’ descendants with the inclusion, after their names and addresses, ‘or their heirs’. Since the first aforementioned trustee, George Hayton (Thomas’s brother-in-law) was described as ‘too ‘feeble’ and the second Richard Greenbank, had been ‘dead near a year’ in a letter of 22 April1826, the James Mason who took the occupancy of Outrake Foot in 1815 could have taken on his father’s trustee duties out of family friendship if the father, also James, had died. The father was baptised on 21 March 1764, making him about 47 when Willan died; no certain record of his burial has been found, which complicates matters.[4]

2 There is scope for error in confusing birth and baptism; parish records may record when an older child was baptised. The Methodist records for Dent (see below) often include both dates, which is helpful. 3 A side-note: both a brother and a son of this James Mason were named Thomas Waddington Mason. Was this a tribute to the larger-than-life personality of the merchant Thomas Waddington so vividly described in Adam Sedgwick’s memoir of Dent (ed. David Boulton, 1984), who rode to London to bring back hats, clothes and drugs to sell? With his ‘dark curly wig and old-fashioned broad- brimmed hat’, ‘glowing face’ and ‘good cheer’, he was a ‘great favourite with the public’, despite having at times a ‘singularly crusty and irritable manner’. He kept open house in his shop for the ‘leading statesmen’ of the dale to discuss politics and parish affairs. He could have been the Thomas Waddington who was a witness at the 1761 marriage of James Mason and Elizabeth Middleton, grandparents of the James who I first thought might have written the letters. A witness at the wedding of their grandson James Mason to Alice Burton in 1818 was also a Thomas Waddington, though by then the ‘original’ had died, aged 81, in 1805, according to his monument in St Andrew’s, leaving no offspring. 4 I have been helped by a James Mason genealogy compiled for Jane Curry, a New Zealander whose husband is a Dent Mason descendant. Jane passed this on to me, adding – rightly – that ‘the Masons are a minefield’ (email 19 May 2014). The genealogy takes this Mason branch back to a James Mason christened 16 September 1698, who married Agnes Dawson, died in Cowdub and was buried

Page 25 That the younger James was a good friend of Joseph Alderson, Thomas Willan’s son-in- law, is clear from the letters; he addressed him as ‘Dear Friend’, signed as ‘Your Broth’ and wrote in his first letter (22 April 1826): I often think of you and wonder what you are doing. When you went away I could truly prove the feelings of the Disciple[s] of Paul when they accompanied him to the shore and sorrow[ed] most of all that they should see his face no more. On 27 October 1827 he says he often thinks of the ‘happy union we had together in the Lord in the years that are past’. (From another letter written in 1837, by Mason to Alderson, at the dictation of the latter’s nephews, reporting their news.) Joseph Alderson was christened on 9 April 1780 in Dent. A James Mason was a witness when he married Frances Willan on 29 April 1805. However, this witness must have been the letter-writer’s father (or other relative) also a James Mason, tenant at Outrake Foot from at least 1819 to 1824, since the younger James was only about 10 in 1805. His baptism was on 4 September 1795, a year before the baptism of Thomas Willan’s second-youngest daughter. Joseph Alderson was about 15 years older than this younger James Mason, then – no absolute barrier to friendship, but it appears they were less than close contemporaries. Since the Aldersons emigrated sometime after 1819 (baptism of daughter Hester in Dent) and before January 1824 (son Joseph’s baptism in Upper Canada), James Mason the younger would have been only 16–19 when they were separated, which seems inconsistent with the depth of their friendship evidenced in the letters. Thomas Willan’s friend and trustee James was about 41 when he witnessed the Aldersons’ wedding, when Joseph was 25, so there was something of a generation gap between them too. However, since I was at first aware only of those two documented James Masons of Outrake Foot, I didn’t think the dates completely ruled the younger one out, although the older James would surely not have had six children at home in the 1820s. I thought perhaps this younger James Mason might have taken over the Willan will’s trusteeship from the older James who had died in hopes of ‘from time to time mak[ing] a reasonable charge for their and his trouble in the execution of this my Will and also retain[ing] their respective necessary expences [sic] relative thereto’ (as the will allows), but there is no mention of any such recompense in the accounts of the Willan inheritance that Mason sends to Alderson. It seems therefore that a sense of duty, as well as friendship, drove James to fulfil the role of the Willans’ ‘trustee’, administering the sale of the farm at Millbeck and distributing the proceeds among the heirs. Which James Mason was the father of six children in 1826? Did this younger James Mason have six children in April 1826, as the writer of the Willan letters claimed? The parish records show that three children were born to him and his wife there and baptised between (at least) September 1819 and November 1822, as noted above. James had married Alice Burton, born in 1799 at Gibbs Hall in Dent (to George, ‘yeoman’, and Isabel Burton), though she was married from her home at Banks in Garsdale. However, there is some uncertainty about the total number of children born to James and Alice before she died in 1826 is unhelpful in the attempt to identify him as Joseph Alderson’s correspondent.

27 May 1753, all in Dent. The genealogy’s information was supplied by Brian Davey, Jack Handley and Francis J. Stacey, with additions from Kevin J. Lancaster, all of SDHS. I have checked their information in transcripts at Sedbergh and/or on microfilm at the Local Studies Library at Kendal. (When I refer to any biographical information in this article, unless otherwise noted, I have checked it in one or other of these places.) Davey et al. seem not to have found a death record for this James.

Page 26 Some of the online genealogy websites (including ancestry.com) list as Alice’s firstborn a ‘John Burton’, born 4 March 1817 in Dent (well before Alice married James). The Dent registers do record the birth of a ‘natural son’, John, to spinster Alice Burton (no father), whose ‘abode’ at the time is unfortunately very difficult to read; it looks like ‘Staininn’ but I haven’t found out what that might refer to. There’s no reason to assume, as genealogy websites did, that this was the Alice Burton who later married James Mason. (This is a reminder that these online genealogies must be approached with caution, with their ‘information’ corroborated from written records). In fact, there is an early baptism entry, 18 January 1813, in the parish register for Matthew, an illegitimate son of an Alice Burton, now spinster of ‘Borrowhead’ (sic) (on the fell above Cowgill church), which implies a repeat offender. Local tradition obliged a first son to be given his paternal grandfather’s name, so ‘John’ would in any case be an aberration for the Alice who married Mason: her father was George and her husband’s father was also James. George was the name duly given to the next son after a surviving James born to Alice and James. A James is registered as being born to James and Alice Mason on 21 July 1818 in Garsdale, 17 days after their marriage, which was not solemnised after banns read out over three weeks in church, but by license. This would have been costlier, but it would have speeded things up to beat the stork.[5] This baby soon died, aged 5 weeks (premature?) and was buried in Dent on 22 August that year. While this first son James was born at Banks in Garsdale, for the 1819 arrival of the second baby called James his father, James, is recorded as ‘Farmer’ at Outrake Foot. This was also the case for the baptisms of George and Thomas Waddington Mason in 1821 and 1824 (see above). In the 1841 census, James – now a widower – and three remaining children were living at Tofts (under Combe Scar, north of Gawthrop; until recently a ruin, now restored).[6] This does not amount to ‘six children’ alive in 1826, clearly. Mason never mentions a wife in the letters, only the ‘six children’. The wife of my first candidate as letter-writer (hereafter called ‘James Mason I’), Alice Mason from Garsdale, was buried on 20 December 1825, aged 26, according to Dent parish registers. If this James wrote the letters, her recent loss might account for his melancholy air in them, even the cooling of his faith: ‘But as for religion I have a measure of the fear of God but I think little or no love …’. This does not constitute any kind of historical ‘proof’, of course, but it is suggestive. At her death Alice’s abode is recorded as Garsdale, not Outrake Foot. Perhaps she had returned to her own family house to die, and be taken care of beforehand. Be that as it may, if her husband was our letter-writer, their having had dependent children in the 1820s does suggest that he was either the son (or other younger relative) of Thomas Willan’s friend and trustee, as their ages imply. On the other hand it could have been another James Mason altogether. A surprise in the will … Another clue suggests that the James Mason in Thomas Willan’s will would not have been the letter-writer of the 1820s–30s. Poignantly, Willan’s very first concern in his will had been to provide a guaranteed annuity of £14 a year for his daughter

5 Both signed the register, she as ‘Allis Burton’. 6 i.e. James, George and Margaret; I don’t know where the younger Thomas Waddington Mason was then (not in Dent 1841 census). He and George later emigrated to Iowa, USA, the latter leaving a wife and children behind and bigamously acquiring another family there, but that’s another story. Other Masons are recorded at Tofts around this time: baptism 1828 of William, son of James and Peggy Mason, ‘Farmer’; baptism 1831 of Margaret, ‘illegitimate daughter’ of Betty Mason, Spinster (who could be the Elizabeth, daughter of the James in Thomas Willan’s will, born at Hill Top in 1807; her mother was a Margaret); baptism 1834 of James, son of William (‘Weaver’) and Alice Mason; 1828, burial of John Mason, aged 24 … and so on. It’s clear these small Dent ‘estates’ often housed several families at this time.

Page 27 Margaret/Peggy, with her ‘defect of understanding’. This provision is stressed and repeated in the will, yet it obviously came as news to letter-writer James Mason. In his letter to James Alderson written 22nd April 1826, he wrote You [Joseph Alderson] will perhaps be surprised when I tell you that Peggy had according to the will £14 a year from the death of her father and I did not know till I saw the will now and I believe or think you did not know but no matter she has been kept and wanted for nothing. Thomas’s trustee James Mason could hardly have failed to know about the provision for Peggy, given that it takes up such a large proportion of the will, yet it was a surprise to letter-writer James. Why the stipulation was not implemented cannot be known, though Mason reported in the same letter to Alderson that Margaret Willan had had to borrow £3 from her brother before she died and had ‘several other debts to the amount of £9. 6s. 6d and she had no money left’. The family’s financial situation was shaky after the father’s death. Both this surprise about a major feature of Thomas Willan’s will and the mention by the author of the letters that he had ‘six children’ in 1826 are reasons for assuming that the writer was not the older James Mason, baptised in 1764, friend of Thomas Willan, who would have been distinctly on the elderly side for parenthood, but more probably his namesake son (or another candidate, should one appear …). Next question: who was Nanny Mason? Another problem in this search for James the letter writer concerns the identity of ‘Nanny’ who is named as James 1’s sister in the wardjc online genealogy. She was baptised from Hill Top in Dent on 19 March 1794. At first this seemed like a corroboration of our letter-writer being her brother James, since Margaret Willan wrote to the Aldersons in 1823 that ‘Nancy Mason’ sent her love to them. The transcriber of the lost original, a 20th century Canadian, plausibly misread the name as Nancy: ‘Nanny’ would imply a grandmother to her. Several other ‘Nannys’ appear in contemporary Dent records. The name was used as a variation on Ann/Anne or on Agnes. The John Sedgwick who bought High Hall in 1826 had several children there with his wife, who is usually recorded as ‘Nanny’ but once as ‘Agnes’. If James Mason I had a sister who was close to the Willans, that would link him to their letters. But then – checking up on the website details, as one should – I could find neither a Nanny nor a Nancy born to James and Margaret (née Bainbridge) Mason in the SAR baptism transcriptions. There is a record of their daughter Elizabeth, baptised in March 1793 from Hill Top and buried in October 1801; my ‘James I’ was baptised from there in 1795. His brother Thomas Waddington Mason was baptised from ‘Gibbs Hall, Banklands, Dent’ in 1796 (uncle of the Thomas Waddington Mason born to James and Alice Mason at Outrake Foot in 1824. [7]) However, the next child, Richard, seems to have been born back at Hill Top in 1799, as well as George in 1802 and John in 1803. In the SAR ‘Hill Top’ file are also listed, for 14 October 1810, the baptisms of a second Elizabeth, ‘aged 3 years last 15 July’, and Margaret, ‘children of Margaret and James Mason of Hilltop’. There is no ‘Nanny’ Mason recorded in the transcription as having been baptised from there,[8] but something curious happens in the transcribed list of baptisms in the SAR Dent ‘Hill Top’ file. There is a ‘Nanny’ reported as baptised from there on 19 March 1794, daughter of a Margaret and a James (who is described as ‘Yeoman’ of Hill Top), but

7 Actually, the parish register notes that he was 14 months old when baptised on 17 January 1824, so he would have been born in 1822. 8 There were at least two other Nanny Masons elsewhere in Dent, though: one died aged 42 in Flintergill, buried on 25 May 1827, and Nanny, wife of James Mason, weaver of Flintergill, had a son christened on 24 January 1830. As ever, care is needed to sort these name-repetitions out, if possible, or at least to acknowledge their existence.

Page 28 her surname is not Mason: it is ALLEN! No other Allens are listed at Hill Top at this time; I wondered if this could be a mistranscription and she was actually Nanny Mason? The Dent parish burial records include, for 1825, ‘11 May, Nanny Mason, of Tofts, age 31’, which suggested this was such an error. By the 1841 census both this James Mason (I) and his brother Thomas Waddington Mason were farming at Tofts. Nanny, baptised in 1794,[9] would indeed have been 31 in 1825 – and having not married was likely to have lived with her brothers, so this would tend to confirm that Willan- family link to our ‘James Mason I’. In addition, the brother of this James, Thomas Waddington Mason, named his third daughter ‘Nanny’ (after naming the first Margaret, for his mother, and the second Betty, for his wife’s mother – following tradition), possibly as a namesake for her aunt Nanny. With these hints, and suspecting a transcription error in the SAR file, I contacted the Kendal Archive Centre which confirmed there was no ‘Nanny Allen’: she was Nanny Mason all along in the parish registers. Sometimes there is no substitute for consulting original documents following a hunch that something seems not quite right. (It’s ridiculously satisfying to be able to put a tiny record right, and return to a person from the past her real existence.) In the 1841 census James Mason was a 45-year-old ‘Farmer’ living at Tofts with no wife but children James (20), George (18) and Margaret (16); born in 1795. He was in his mid-40s in 1841. Also at Tofts were his brother [Thomas] Waddington Mason (‘44, Farmer’), his wife and seven children. In 1851 both Mason brothers and their households were still there, ‘Farmers of 20 acres’, but James now lived only with son James (30) and ‘nephew’ Moses Lindsay (8), ‘scholar’. Moses was still there and still a ‘scholar’ at 19 in 1861, which must have been unusual. Moses was the son of James’s sister Elizabeth (born 1807). She appears in the 1841 census as ‘Betty Mason’, a knitter aged 30, [10] born in Dent, living in Dent Town in the same household as Margaret Mason (25) and her daughter Margaret Mason (10), and William Lindsay, a stonemason of 25. Betty and William were married on 25 October 1841; Moses Lindsay was christened the following 3 April. [11] Both his parents then disappear from Dent records; was Moses taken in by his uncle because they had died or abandoned him? It would be an illustration of our letter-writer’s conscientiousness if so – but would also cause also further speculation. James Mason I, my original candidate as the Willan-will trustee and letter-writer, died on 15 April 1873 at Tofts, of ‘cancer of the lip’ (which can’t have been nice), aged 78, in the presence of his son James, and was buried on 19 April 1873 at Dent (from St Andrew’s church).[12] Summarising the situation so far, what supports this James as being the letter-writer is his presence at Outrake Foot as early as 1819 (when the James Mason named in Thomas Willan’s will, probably his father, was a husbandman there in 1811) until at least January 1824, and the possible existence of his sister Nanny, linked with the Willans in a letter. However, in that 1823 letter to her daughter and son-in-law Margaret Willan wrote not only that ‘Nancy [sic] Mason sends love’ but also that ‘her mother is dead Happy in the Lord’. The parish records show that Margaret Mason (née Bainbridge) of Tofts was buried on 3 November 1828, ‘aged 61’; there’s no doubt she was James I’s and Nanny’s mother, baptised in Dent 19 July 1767. If the mother of the Nanny in the letter, friend of the Willans, didn’t die until

9 Assuming she was born the same year. 10 In the 1841 census ‘The ages of those under 16 were recorded precisely and the ages of those over 16 were rounded down to the nearest round five years’ (Anthony Adolf, Tracing your family history (2005), p.68). 11 Moses Lindsay became a certificated schoolmaster teaching in Cumberland. He died in 1916. Ancestry, Census and Burial records. (Ed) 12 Death certificate Registration District Sedbergh, sub-district of Dent, County of York: 19 April 1873, burial of James Mason of Tofts, aged 78.

Page 29 1828, therefore, the case for her to be the Nanny who was sister of James I is undermined. [13]. Just when you think you have nailed down a person who appears in the letters (good historical evidence), more good historical evidence (archival) comes along to reintroduce some question! Enter ANOTHER James Mason of Outrake Foot … So we saw from the letters that their writer was a good friend of Joseph Alderson, and that a James Mason was a witness at his April 1805 wedding to Fanny Willan – though at that date our James I was a boy of about 10 and he was only a teenager when the Aldersons left for Canada. He doesn’t seem to have had six children in 1826, as the letter-writer claimed, either, and doubt has been cast on the Nanny Mason in Margaret Willan’s letter being his sister. It’s been getting more conceivable that he could have been a different James Mason altogether … The first concrete anomaly arose for me from the parish records relating to Outrake Foot: they include the burial on 25 March 1818 of a William Mason, aged 5, of Outrake Foot. The baptism records of the ‘Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Dent’ confirm that this little William was indeed born on 7 January 1813 (baptised 26 February), son of James and Isabella Mason, not Alice, of Outrake Foot.[14] Not only that, but in these Methodist registers I found the baptisms of other children of ‘James and Isabella Mason’, several of them then living at Outrake Foot, as follows (together with the father’s occupation and location at the time): – 1814: George, born 19 September, baptised 5 November, father still at Outrake Foot, ‘Farmer’ – 1816: Jane, born 12 August, baptised 27 October, father still at Outrake Foot, ‘Farmer’ – 1819: Isabella, born 1818 (no date), baptised 1 March, father now said to be at Outrake Foot, ‘Labourer’ [italics mine] – 1821: Margaret, born 29 June, baptised 21 October, father now at Slack, ‘Laberer’ (Slack is in Deepdale, nearer Dent Town than Outrake Foot.) – 1823: Mary, born 30 August, baptised 22 November, father now at ‘Hallbank’, ‘Labourer’ (Hall Bank is north of the Dee, not far to the northeast of Dent Town.) – 1828: Elizabeth, born 12 April, baptised 15 June, father at ‘Hallbank in Dent, Labourer’ – 1831: Hannah, born 2 November 1830, baptised 9 January, father now just of Dent, ‘Husbandman’ – 1833: Miles, born 7 April, baptised 4 June, father now of ‘Helks in Dent, Husbandman’. (Helks is at the lowest end of Deepdale, below Slack.) (Here I encountered another potential cause of error in compiling genealogies: on ‘TheGenealogist’ website is an entry for the baptism of a William Mason, son of James and Isabella of Outrake Foot, on 16 February 1811, rather than the 1813 in the Tebay transcription. So I obtained a scan of the document (National Archives RG4/3337): there William’s birth and baptism are clearly recorded for 1813: it’s just that the first entries on the page are dated 1811, so some transcriber assumed that date applied to

13 Though I believe the term ‘mother’ could be used more widely at this time to refer to a mother-in-law or godmother. 14 ‘Wesleyan Methodists, 1806–1836’, a transcription made by Shirley Tebay ‘from Registers in the PRO [now the National Archives], Ref. RG4/3687’: ‘Register of Births and Burials at the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel at Dent Town in the Dale of Dent in the Parish of Sedbergh, Yorkshire from 1806 to 1837’. While marriages had by law to take place in the parish church at this time, Nonconformists could perform and record baptisms and burials.

Page 30 the whole page. [I notified the website of this error; they say it’s been corrected.] Hence it is only from 1813, not 1811, that we can be fairly sure James Mason II was at Outrake Foot: this matters because if he had been at that farm in 1811, he would be more clearly linked to Thomas Willan’s 1811 will naming a James Mason of Outrake Foot as trustee.) Curiously, as well as these Methodist baptisms there is also an entry in the Dent parish registers for the baptism on April 7 1826 of William, son of James and Isabella Mason (noted as born 13 February that year), of Hall Bank, where his father is described as ‘Husbandman’. A further parish entry records the burial from Slack on 15 November 1828 of a William Mason, at ‘age 1’. I initially assumed this was the second son called William of James II and Isabella (in the list above), and that the age and location were errors/misreadings, because that boy would have been around 2½ in November 1828, not 1. Also James II had been a labourer at Slack in 1821, but he was at Hall Bank when daughters Mary and Elizabeth were born in 1823 and 1828. The details seemed close but see below, and watch out for those words ‘seemed’ and ‘assumed’ in your own researches![15] So this second James Mason (hereafter James II) was living at Outrake Foot at least between January 1813 and March 1819 and by October 1821 he was at Slack, though the land-tax records show a James Mason as ‘Occupier’ at Outrake Foot till 1823/24, as we saw earlier. James II’s birth has not been found in the Dent records; in the Mason genealogy drawn up for Jane Curry (see note 4 above) this line of James Masons begins only with his marriage on 19 March 1812, by banns, at Sedbergh, to Bella Metcalfe, spinster, where he is described as ‘bachelor of Dent’. Diane Elphick has made a suggestion about the background of this James. He could have been the son or grandson of William Mason (born Dent1727) and his wife Ann (or Hannah, names then interchangeable). A younger William was born in 1761 at a time when this Mason family had left Dent and were living at Rydal Hall, Grasmere. They later returned to Dent and either William the elder was the William Mason who occupied Outrake Foot and died there at 89 in 1816 or it was a younger William as Occupier for at least part of this time, with the older William living there in retirement (see above). These Masons had links to the Sill family and the property called Westhouses: see Francis Stacey, Westhouses: the Masons and Westhouses: the Sills, Sedbergh Historian (2003), and Elphick’s Plantations, Patriotism and Profit: the Involvement of Local Families in the West Indies (ibid., 2007). They have been caught up in a controversy concerning some doubtful links of their story with the plots of the Brontës’ Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre,[16] but that has no relevance here. Any relation to Miles Mason the potter? In researching Mason families in Dent in the late-18th and 19th centuries the question always arises whether they might they be related to Miles Mason who founded the famous Mason’s Ironstone pottery company and who, after Adam Sedgwick the geologist, is the dale’s most famous son. Miles Mason’s memorial at Barlaston, Staffordshire, states that he was of ‘West Houses’, Dent and died in February 1822, aged 70. (See the website of Janice Paull, ‘Mason’s: a family of potters, 1796–1856, and the origin of Masons Patent Ironstone China’ [accessed 12 January 2020]; see also SDHS Newsletter, Sept 2012, The Ironstone Man, by Denis Sanderson.) Diane Elphick has researched Miles and his family and has revised some inaccuracies accumulated by his biographers. She has compiled a family tree that positions the potter as a son of the William Mason (1727–1816) who was the Occupier at Outrake Foot at least part of the time between 1802 and 1814, whom we’ve met earlier. Miles was baptised in Dent on 5 January 1753, before his parents moved to Grasmere, around 1759, returning to Outrake Foot at some point before William became its official ‘Occupier’ in 1802, when it became a Sill family property. William and Anne had several children

15 It remains a mystery to me who that one-year-old William who died in 1828 was. 16 Its latest manifestation appears in the 2019 number of the Sedbergh Historian.

Page 31 while at Rydal Hall in Grasmere, including a William who was born on 7 September 1761. Miles the potter went to London as apprentice to a relation of his mother, married the heiress to a China-importing business and went on to find fortune in the pottery industry, producing the famous Ironstone. The James Mason (II) who married Isabella in 1812 was buried in Dent, from Gawthrop, on 27 January 1840 at ‘age 58’ (parish register), so he’d have been born about 1782, according to his will, which was administered by Isabella in 1847 (Administration Bond and Certificate, 13 April 1847, goods under £20).[17] I’ve noted earlier the absence of his birth record, but we can suggest that his father was a William, from his sons’ names. At 29 in 1811 James II might still seem not old enough to have been the contemporary ‘friend’ of Thomas Willan named in his will of that date, though his age makes him a better fit than James I as close friend of Joseph Alderson, born in 1780. But the Mason who was the 1811 will trustee was a James, not William – it’s less clear than for James I why he would take on the duty of trustee for Thomas Willan after the death of a trustee who was not his father – but was perhaps his uncle? The local naming pattern is evident in that James II called two of his sons William, including the first (who died); he and his wife Bella/Isabella also named their youngest son Miles, in 1833. So it may be that our James II had a genuine Mason’s Ironstone family connection, as the son of Miles’s brother William. An Elizabeth Mason was a witness at James II’s marriage in 1812; Miles and William had a sister of that name, born c.1754. James II and Bella didn’t name their first daughter Ann (after the older William’s wife), but rather Jane; the name of the wife of any younger William at Outrake Foot, probably James II’s mother, is not known. On the other hand, James II did not remain at Outrake Foot as long after his father or grandfather died as did James I, who seems to have been the Occupier 1815–1824, according to the land-tax register and a family baptism. James II’s first son (William) was born there in January 1813 – when his father William, if actually the ‘Occupier’ in the years 1802–1814, was still there: his and Miles’s father William was 89 at his death in 1816, after all. James II was a labourer at Slack by October 1821 and in after years labourer or husbandman at Hall Bank and Helks (see above). By his death in 1840 he had also become a stonemason, according to his will. (the small size of the ‘estates’ [farms] in Dent meant that other sources of income were usually necessary for a family, such as knitting or cutting stone, and the 1830s was a time of particular hardship in Dent.) Might there have been some personal reason that James I took over as Outrake Foot’s ‘Occupier’ after William Mason (the one who died at 89 in 1816 and/or his son) and stayed there till early 1824, rather than William’s (putative) son or grandson, James II? By ‘personal’, I mean things like a clash of personalities or that James I was considered a better farmer than James II. Is it significant that at the births of three of his children at Outrake Foot, James II was labelled ‘Farmer’ (1813–1816) but for the fourth, in 1819, he was only a ‘Labourer’? The next we hear of him he was a labourer at Slack (October 1821), and again at Hall Bank (1823–1828), though called ‘Husbandman’ at Helks in 1833 (see above). James I was called ‘Farmer’ at Outrake Foot from September 1819 to January 1824, as we saw. The two James Masons, I and II, seem therefore to have overlapped at Outrake Foot at least in 1819–1821 [18] and it’s possible that the older James who was Thomas Willan’s friend and trustee in 1811 was still alive there then too – remember no record of his death is found – making at least three James Masons at one address!

17 One of the witnesses was Richard Sutton, which links this branch of the Masons to the Sills and Outrakefoot, as Diane Elphick has pointed out to me. 18 Of course, it is just conceivable that there were two successive James Masons as Occupiers between 1815 and early 1824, not just the one, as I’m suggesting was the case with the William Masons there, on the basis of the elder one being in his 80s for much of the time a William Mason was official Occupant there.

Page 32 Did James II have six children in 1826, as in the letter of that date? In fact, it seems he did. There are the five in the baptism records of Dent’s Methodist chapel (George, Jane, Isabella, Margaret and Mary) and then in the parish register that second son called William born to him and Isabella at Hall Bank (where he is ‘Husbandman’) and baptised on 7 April 1826, the very month of the letter mentioning the six children. However, after James II’s death in 1840, we find his widow Bella (aged 45) in the 1841 census, a hose-knitter living at Gawthrop with her children George (stone mason, 25), Bella (cotton weaver, 20), Mary (cotton weaver, 15), Betty (cotton weaver, 13), Hannah (female servant, 11), ‘Myles’ (8) – and William (cotton weaver, 15), who was therefore still alive: born in 1826 he was 15 in 1841. These all correlate to those children of James II listed earlier, except for the absence of Margaret, born 1821, who could have died, moved elsewhere or married by 1841. In addition, there’s a Jane Mason, aged 16 months, in this family in the census – at the 1851 census we find her an 11-year-old knitter, granddaughter of Isabella Mason, knitter aged 60;[19] Dent parish records show the baptism of Jane Mason, 5 April 1840, illegitimate daughter of Bella Mason, spinster of Gawthrop. In 1851 James II’s widow Isabella was living at Hinga Bank in Deepdale (across Deepdale Beck from Outrake Foot), head of household, with Jane and another granddaughter, Margaret Mason, 4 – another illegitimate child of her daughter Isabella; her own children have left home. The 1851 census shows George as a 36- year-old farmer of 25 acres at Slack (age correct, plus names of children), and an Isabella Mason, aged 31, a servant in Dent Town (probably the mother of Jane and Margaret); the other girls may have married and changed names, but William and Miles are not found.) By 1861 Isabella was living alone at Flintergill, at 70, a woollen- jacket knitter and ‘former WH [workhouse] mistress’. Dent’s workhouse was at Hall Bank, and from at least November 1823 to at least June 1828 James II and Bella were living there, where he was a labourer: might she might have been its mistress then, or went back later? 1871 found her in Dent Town at 80, still knitting; she was buried in Dent in 1875, aged 84. The 1841 census records her as having been born in Yorkshire the later ones say Garsdale. I haven’t found a baptism reference for her; otherwise the census information seems to tally. James II’s wife Bella was evidently still alive, then, in 1826 when our letter-writer told Joseph Alderson that he had six children at home. She is not mentioned in the letters, which you might expect of someone writing to an old friend living far away – but then if the writer was James I, he had failed to mention his wife Alice’s recent demise. What do you think? The upshot is that we have two more or less plausible James Masons associated with Outrake Foot – one of whom (James II) had six children at home in 1826 and may have been a close relative – a nephew or (more likely) great-nephew – of the Miles Mason of Ironware fame, but who was clearly not the ‘Occupier’ of Outrake Foot until 1824; the other (James I) was without the six children but was likely to have remained at Outrake Foot up to that date, and who had a possible connection to the Willan family through the mention in a letter of ‘Nanny Mason’. So the mystery of the identity of the sympathetic author of our letters remains. I invite readers to decide on the basis of the evidence here – or to submit more information! It was just my idle curiosity about that letter-writer – who was such a sympathetic personality I thought I’d find out more about him – that led to this enquiry, but it turned out to be a healthy reminder that, even with some fairly full birth, marriage and death registers and land-tax correlation and other records, and information from surviving correspondence, caution must be always be the watchword in researching individuals in the past! AN EPILOGUE In the collection of letters that are the basis of my two articles there is only one written by my great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth/Betty Wildman (née Willan). It

19 Isabella was noted as ‘45’ in the 1841 census, but in that census the ages of those over 16 were rounded down to the nearest round five years.

Page 33 was sent to her brother-in-law Joseph Alderson from the Wildmans’ farm in Asphodel, Upper Canada, dated 12 June 1837; regrettably, we have only the transcript, not the original. It reveals her to have been a practical-minded person, reporting on the good prices they could get for wheat, oats, barley and potatoes on their Canadian farm. Betty and her husband John had eight children, the last three born on the farm in Asphodel Township, near the town of Norwood, in Northumberland County, Upper Canada (all survived to adulthood). The first school in the area was built on their land, and was known as ‘Wildman’s School’. John Wildman was called up in the militia to help the Crown put down the abortive ‘Rebellion’ of 1837 in Toronto, but his regiment was not required to go into action. He died in 1872 and Betty in 1877; they lie in Norwood Cemetery. Their great-great-grandson was my father, Bert Andrew Logan, who farmed in Lambton County, near the city of Sarnia, some 300 miles to the west of Norwood. He too grew wheat, oats and potatoes. AND A POSTSCRIPT: MORE ON THOMAS ROBINSON In my 2017 article I cast some speculative aspersions on one of the correspondents in the Willan/Alderson letters collection, Betty’s brother-in-law Thomas Robinson, whose photo was used to illustrate it. Since then I’ve learned more about him and his wife Mary (née Willan), from Edwin C. Guillet’s The Valley of the Trent (Toronto, 1957), pp.580-1: ‘A result of isolation in the early days was the growth of revivalist sects and camp-meetings. Well-known at these were Thomas Robinson and his wife, who hewed out a home in the wilderness in 1820, settling on lot 15, Concession VIII of Smith Township. They were old-time Methodists, widely recognized as fine singers, and, we are informed, were the leaders in prayer and song at the good old-fashioned orthodox backwoods meetings. Mrs Robinson was also a celebrated physician and midwife, doing all, however, without remuneration or reward save what a clear conscience and delight in doing good to her fellows ever carried to her heart. It was quite a common thing for her to go distances of thirty miles on horseback in the night, through storms and forbidding forests, across rivers and morasses, to render aid to the sick; and many of the most sturdy yeomanry of Peterborough and Victoria Counties were ushered into being under Mrs. Robinson’s care.’ Perhaps I should revise my opinion of old Thomas … researching family history keeps throwing up these challenges! A footnote, and another warning: a confusing error in online genealogies The father of James Mason I, another James (as above), was ‘Yeoman’ at Hilltop, Dent on 17 April 1792 when he married Margaret Bainbridge. Yet I became confused about him when I consulted a couple of online genealogy sites when I began looking into my Dent forebears –of a Ward family (wardjc.com/people) and of a Johnson family (worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgibin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=johnson415&id=l1 3089). Possibly relying on these,[20] the websites of both genealogy.com (‘Genealogy Report: descendants of Thomas Mason’) and ancestry.com, say the younger James’s father was a ‘James Horby Mason’, for whom the biographical information is otherwise correct. Googling ‘James Horby Mason’ I found information that he was born at Louth in Lincolnshire in 1841, son of Thomas andJane Mason (née Horby). This James’s family became pioneers in America and he died in Utah in 1926. Moral: put not your faith in online genealogies! They can be helpful as a starting point, but we always need to check the records.

20 I believe neither of these is still available to view online at those addresses, at the time of writing.

Page 34

Wartime Sedbergh – The Final Months 1945 Karen Bruce Lockhart

After New Year it was foggy and damp but the second half of January was cold and snowy enough for bold spirits to ski with about four inches of snow, and to skate at Jackdaw Bridge and Lilymere. On 16th January the chimney at School House caught fire for the second time in the war. At the end of January the pipes in School House froze and there was no central heating. There were a lot of frozen pipes in the area. The boys made skating rinks in the House yards, and the matrons had the inevitable crop of accidents to cope with. Even with an “extra half” holiday skating on Lilymere involved walking seven miles (including the climb up Scotch Jeans) there and back for two hours skating. Not all boys thought it worth it. My mother came up from London (with me aged two) specifically to enjoy the snow and ice, but had a horrid journey: the train was six and a half hours late at Oxenholme. The skating on Lilymere was a bit rough with frozen snow, but the ice was nine inches thick, there having been 23º Fahrenheit of frost (approx. -13ºC). “It was fun - frosted snow that crunched under our feet & sun.” She skied down the Pepperpot hill for two days - “the snow was jolly nice but there wasn’t enough of it” - and skated on the river at Jackdaw bridge with my grandfather, though that was cut short as he had to be back in school teaching. Then it rained. The SRDC received a complaint from the National Association of Government Officers that Sedbergh was the only District Council not a member of the association. The Council pointed out that the association was for full time government officers, and Sedbergh had none. The Council supported the local NFU request to Ribble Buses for a service to Kirby Stephen on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. They supported Kendal’s view that the National Fire Service should be retained, and complained to the County Council about failure to clear the streets of snow. Mr Dewbury had carried out his threat to complain to the Ministry of Health. It was decided that the main at Pedgecroft would be connected to the main from Millthrop to Hallbank with asbestos pipes, and a balance tank would be constructed. The mains to Birks would also be re- layed with asbestos pipes as the present pipes were encrusted. The new mains connecting Pinfold with Hall Bank would cost £235, and those from School House to Milnthrop £318. A Balancing reservoir might be necessary at a cost of £150. All this would mean an increase in the water rate, which in fact had always been very low. A meeting of Sedbergh traders was attended by large numbers. The concern was the growth and expansion of cooperative societies, combines and chain stores, and their effect on private traders. Large buyers were often able to press advantages and enjoy privileges denied to some others. It was agreed to form a Chamber of Trade to link with the National Council of Retailers. Bulls had had to be licensed since 1934, but were now to be divided into three categories for licensing: those that had a pedigree, those that had an ancestral good record of milk production, and thirdly those that simply had good looks. Concerns were being expressed as all livestock still had to be sold to the Ministry of Agriculture at fixed prices, and this had led to closure of slaughter houses: would there be enough slaughterhouses after the war? Because of the shortage of potatoes nationally only potatoes unfit for human consumption and licensed could be used as feed. The hill subsidy would be increased from 6s (shillings) in 1943/44 to 7/6 from 4th December 1944. People were becoming careless about lights, and perhaps a little oddly were forgetting they had now to have lights. The Police Court fined Roger Gibson, factory hand £1, Clara Cornthwaite canteen worker 10s and Edgar Peacham machine hand 5s. for riding

Page 35 their bicycles without lights. Elizabeth Costello was fined for having a wireless without a licence – it turned out she had been given it in 1936 and thought it was licensed. Although the magistrates were prepared to accept it was an oversight, they fined her £8, which was twice the amount due plus 11s 11d witness fees. Sedbergh Methodist Church held a devotional evening when the Garsdale Singers provided an excellent programme. The Dentdale Young Farmers Club held a dance in the National School with Bradley’s band playing again. The Methodist Guild in Sedbergh had a literary evening when Mrs Laidman gave an address on Francis of Assisi. The Parochial Church Council held a meeting to discuss a report by a sub- committee on what could be done for the men returning from the Forces, and considered a welcome home should be given and a place in church activities for those who wished to take it up. At Cautley Methodist Church Mrs Isherwood distributed the prizes at the Sunday school, and spoke on the Life of William Booth. A whist drive at Dent raised £9. A Home Missionary meeting was held by the Methodist Guild and Mrs Leigh spoke on the Messengers of Christ. The meeting was informed that the collections had not been as good as the previous year. A sale of work at the Congregational schoolroom at Flintergill raised more than £87 for the local Forces Fund. Although the war was nearing its end, the casualty list continued to grow. On 5th January Pilot Officer William Bainbridge, son of William and Margaret Bainbridge who lived on the Fairholme estate and then Low Langstaffe, and husband of Constance, died on a bombing raid to Hanover when his Halifax was shot down near Lemgo. He was aged about 44 and at the beginning of the war had been considered too old for active service and he had a pronounced limp. Happier news came that Douglas and Leslie Haygarth, cousins in the RAF, met for the first time in three years in Calcutta. They were the sons of the late Mr Haygarth and Mrs L Haygarth of The Hill, Dent, and Mr and Mrs EH Haygarth of Main Street, Dent In January the fears that had been expressed in regard to Foot and Mouth came home to roost. Four pigs were found to have the disease at Robert Scarr’s Bramhaw Farm, and 63 head of cattle, 43 pigs and 15 sheep were destroyed. At Mr LL Nelson’s Dalesview Farm 32 cattle, 11 pigs and 15 sheep were destroyed. A Stand Still Order was put in place for a 15 miles radius of Sedbergh. Because of the very cold weather at the end of January mechanical excavators had to be brought in to break the earth so that the slaughtered animals could be buried. In February Killington WI were shown how to make the most of flour bags (cotton bags in which flour was sold) including making them into tea towels and tablecloths. The annual dance in the Dent Reading Room had a good attendance with Bradley’s Band. A weekly meeting of the Wesley Guild had readings, recitation and a musical item, together with a sketch The Lady Help. The Parochial Church annual meeting was told that they had a balance of £7 18s 3d at St Gregory’s. The Parish Church roof was in reasonable condition but that at St Gregory’s was not so good with structural difficulties. The Town had had letters from men serving in the Forces saying how much they appreciated the Tuesday night intercessions and knowing that they were in the thoughts of Sedbergh on that night. The Home Guard in Dent held a dance for the Red Cross and raised £6 net of expenses. A quilt made by Mrs Carter from 1,700 pieces of material contributed by friends was exhibited and raised £1 6s 6d for Lady Ramsden’s Prisoner of War Fund. The Methodist Guild held a debate on “Which is most powerful, pulpit or press”, and the ensuing vote was equal. A Brains Trust was held in the National Schoolroom by the Welfare Committee and the Sedbergh Youth Council. My grandfather was question master, and the panel was Mrs Cowan, the Rev GW Ellison, Captain Longhurst and Mr EG Hogg and Mr JW Shepherd. There were many young people in the audience listening to such questions as “Can Germany be re- educated after the War” and “Should Cats be licensed”. The AYPA held a party in the National School for its fourth anniversary, and 60 people attended with Jacobs Join refreshments. Mr EG Martin lost two fingers in a factory accident. A sale of toys made of pieces of material given by friends enabled Miss E Park to send £20 to the Red Cross. At the Methodist Guild Mr Hammer lectured on the “Novels of Thomas Mann”.

Page 36 At a Methodist Christian Service evening Mr J Sanger Davies spoke on The Service of Christ. A Mr Dobson Chapman, planning consultant to Skipton & District Joint Planning Committee, visited to discuss the problems of Sedbergh including the auction mart, Maryfell and Pinfold, and the proposed erection of a gasholder in the field adjoining Thorns Hall Cottage, and the store at the corner of Bainbridge Road and Howgill Lane. He suggested that the auction mart should not be sanctioned for more than 5 years. He thought there were considerable difficulties in acquiring the site until more settled times. He felt Maryfell was suitable for housing, but the Town should defer all decisions until their powers were more definitely defined. News came that Signaller A Stanley and Pt T Bainbridge from Dent had met in Athens. But the bad news was that on or about 11th February at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Sergeant Thomas Edward Handley of the Special Operations Executive, son of Frank and Mary Handley of 15 Back Lane, was executed aged 30, despite having been captured in uniform on an operation in Greece in 1943. On 18th April 1946 he was awarded the Military Medal “for gallant and distinguished services while a Prisoner of War” (there is a considerable amount of interesting information about his activities in the Sedbergh & District History Society archives). Concern was being expressed that because of the bad weather in January there would be starving foxes looking for the lambs. By mid-February the Foot and Mouth restrictions had been reduced to an area taking in Barbon, Killington, Middleton, Firbank, New Hutton, Sedbergh, Garsdale and Dent. The Foot and Mouth restrictions were holding up the marketing of dairy and store cattle. However, the Order was revoked on 14th February. There was general concern that the bad weather was making inroads into the available feed. Turnips were not keeping well, and there was the serious shortage of potatoes, many of which were still in the ground. The bad weather was affecting the milk yield as well. The rivers swollen with melting ice and snow were no good for fishing to supplement the people’s rations. It was pointed out that double summer time was not only making difficulties for the men working on farms, it was also very hard on their wives. The men would be coming in late at night for their meals, but the wives had to be up early in the morning to get their breakfasts before the milking, and poultry cannot be persuaded to roost in broad daylight. Two hundred farmers and members of the Young Farmers Club from Westmorland, Lunesdale and the Sedbergh District attended at the Institute Hall in Kirkby Lonsdale to hear Professor Wheldon of Kings College, Newcastle, speak on Livestock Problems, Present and Future. On 22nd February a small boy from one of the cottages on Loftus Hill scalded himself badly, and the next day my grandmother took him to Lancaster to the hospital with his grandmother and mother. They had no telephone and she relayed information to them. He did not seem to make much progress, and she visited him on 3rd March and spoke to the Matron, but she does not mention him after this so it is to be hoped he recovered. Ribble Buses replied to the request for a service to Kirby Stephen that they doubted such a service was justified, but in any event they had neither the vehicles nor the men to run such a service. At the end of February the domestic crisis in the Sedbergh School Houses eased as Armstrong Siddeley began to turn off workers. My grandmother remarked that they were afraid of being sent away from Sedbergh. Many of the girls, those who had not meantime married, were sent to Earby. Many of them remained very fond of Sedbergh and the friends they had made, and continued to return for visits up till the present. On 6th March a maid actually came and knocked on my grandmother’s door looking for work. “Changed days”. The furniture etc. from the Social Club was auctioned, and the British Legion took the opportunity to bid for a table and chairs. The Lent term produced the usual crop of disease in Sedbergh School. There had been 33 cases of measles. Father Horner of the Community of the Resurrection at

Page 37 Mirfield again gave the Lenten addresses to the School, he usually only spoke for about five minutes. His talks were voluntary but usually about two thirds of the School would turn up to hear them. In March Betty Sedgwick, aged sixteen, appeared on the front cover of the Children’s Newspaper with her “two friends” - two huge horses with whom she had won three first prizes at a Yorkshire competition. In the same month her photograph again appeared when she won the open ploughing competition at Marthwaite with an almost perfect display, the youngest competitor in any event. Another youngster, JW Robinson aged 19 of Holme, was second in the hedge laying. Several hundred spectators watched the event, and 120 were given dinner in the National School in the evening.

In March the SRDC was busy considering whether special rates should be abolished. They were in favour of this but Garsdale was concerned and a meeting was arranged to discuss the matter. Members of the SRDC attended a Garsdale Parish meeting. It was pointed out that there were not many in Garsdale with values of £7 and the proposals would add 2d in the pound per half year. The Parish Council passed a motion saying they were not in favour of paying for benefits they were not likely to receive and for which there was no call. They were told that this new system was now the law. Scavenging was still causing problems, and rubbish was not being put in proper containers. Orange peel, something seldom seen throughout the war, was beginning to litter the streets. The pipes for the Birks water supply had arrived but matters were further delayed by getting easements and the Ministry licence. The Rivers Board had inspected the sewage works and reported that the effluent was good and the works in better condition. The end of the war was in sight and the Ministry of Aircraft Production asked the council to consider taking over the management of the Pinfold and Maryfell estates as Armstrong Siddley were closing down their factories. The council agreed to do so but there were many details which needed discussing before doing so. The Chamber of Trade was approaching the Ministry, having discussed improved services with the LMS Railway Company and Ribble Buses.

Page 38 The public were warned that there would be no let-up in the food rations, as it was considered that starving Europe would need to have first call on any world surpluses of food. The sowing programmes for farmers were behind due to the very wet weather in the autumn, but the warm weather in March enabled farmers to catch up. The Government seemed to have laid aside the programme for heat treatment of milk. The Wilson Run again took place on a Saturday in ideal conditions, exceptionally firm underfoot. JM Moore led at Cautley but had the misfortune to turn his ankle coming down Taythes Gill. He managed to keep up until Danny Bridge but could not maintain the speed when he hit the road. Riley, McLaren and Pick crossed New Bridge together, but Pick finished first, 5 yards ahead of JSD McLaren. It was the fastest time since 1931, a fast race overall as the last runner came in in 1hr 42½ min. The British Legion discussed giving a social evening with darts and dominos for the returned prisoners of war. The Home Guard decided to form a rifle club, and the Sedbergh Territorial Association gave assistance with weapons, and Sedbergh School allowed them the use of their ranges. They decided to use the miniature range and the open range, and to be affiliated to the SNRC and NRA. The subscription would be 5s. At a Dentdale Women’s Institute meeting Mrs Lewarne VCO was present and it was stated that the year’s savings amounted to £4850 10s (£192,000). In Dent a film show of MOI films was given in the Church of England School, and films were also shown in the evening with a very good attendance. Mr and Mrs Haygarth organised a whist drive for the War Memorial Hall Fund and raised £10. There was also a whist drive in Sedbergh for the After the War Fund when there were 13 tables and £9 7s 3d was raised after expenses. At the Methodist Anniversary service in Sedbergh the Rev John Carter from Carlisle spoke on the Needs of Modern Youth. The Methodist Guild held its last social of the season with a charade and games in Sedbergh. The Children’s 14th Sale of Work in the National Schoolroom brought in just over £15 for the Parish Church and Medical Missions. In Dent Mr William Bentham of Gawthorp went to visit his neighbour Mr Philip Bateman and found him dead on the floor. The next evening Mr Bentham collapsed in his home and died immediately. They were buried later in the month on succeeding days. In the same month Lieut. Thomas Cyril Fawcett the son of Mr and Mrs GT Fawcett of East View, Dent was awarded a DSO. He had already won a DFC. On foot and under heavy fire, after his tank was put out of action, he went to evacuate men who had been wounded in two other disabled tanks. Maurice Briggs, a former van driver at Sedbergh Laundry wrote to say he and Bryan Campbell, a former warehouseman at the Café, had met in Burma. Messrs Wm Scarr & Sons appeared in the Magistrates’ Court charged with failing to give notice with all practical speed of the suspected existence of Foot and Mouth disease on their farm. They pled Not Guilty. The prosecution said that Mr Nelson of Dales View took his sow to the boar at Scarr’s farm in January and noticed that the boar was lame. All was well for two days and then he noticed that his sow was lame. In the days following other pigs were going lame, and he mentioned it to the vet who happened to be carrying out tuberculin testing. He advised Mr Nelson to report the position. The Bramhaw sows and the boar were found to be lame and had been so for at least eight days, and the Dales View animals had not been ill as long as that, so any suggestion that the disease had come from Mr Nelson’s sow was without foundation. However, the defence was that Messrs Scarrs had put down any lameness to the frosty weather, and they handled 200 to 300 pigs a year, and on previous occasions when they had reported suspicions it had been found nothing was wrong. No other animals were affected and the pigs never missed a meal. There was no sign of saliva when they were examined with a torch. The magistrates found them not guilty on payment of costs. Easter Day fell on 1st April and after the good weather in March there were high hopes for a fine Easter and plenty of tourists. However, hopes were dashed and the weekend was wild and wet, but the fishing had improved and my grandfather caught 11 trout.

Page 39 In April the SRDC approved the abolition of special rates, except for lighting. To pay for the water supply to Birks and Hallbank they would have to add 1s 6d to the rates. They agreed to meet with Kendal to discuss arrangements following the abolition of the National Fire service. They agreed to take over the management of Pinfold and Maryfell estates, except for the hostel where Pinfold caravan site is now. They were concerned about the future of Millthrop and Farfield mills and were in discussion with the Board of Trade. They received requests to lay on lighting to 35 and 37 Fairholme as neither gas nor electricity was laid on, and agreed to this. On 23rd April the Blackout (or Dim-out as it was now) came finally to an end. On 24th April the news of the concentration camps and their horrors arrived. Prisoners of War were arriving home, many having had hideous marches across Germany, but they were mostly in the surrounding areas rather than Sedbergh. Private Airey from Kendal was one who reported having seen John Carruthers from Sedbergh among the thousands on the forced march of 500 miles from Silesia to West Germany. Marine JB Carruthers returned home and had his photo in the Gazette. Dent and Sedbergh Young Farmers held two football matches, Dent winning both 7-1 and 8-1. The Rev E Bywater was inducted in the Congregational Church. Double Summer Time was again imposed from 2nd April, but the Government had listened to some of the farmer’s complaints and it would last only until 15th July. It was hoped that Greenwich Mean Time would be restored in October. The ploughing grants of £2 were extended to 31st March 1946. Growth over recent weeks had been phenomenal. The government made gassing powder available at half price as there was concern that rabbits and rats were consuming previous food. There was no prospect of an improvement in diet. The government increased the ration for poultry, and the increase in the pig rations from January was continued. Dent Mothers Union held their annual service. Another whist drive took place for St Johns Cowgill. The Garsdale Singers attracted an audience of over 300 in Dent National School and raised over £30 (£1,190). A play called The Distant Drum was performed in Powell Hall bringing in over £30 for the Sedbergh and Dent Nursing Association. Another entertainment consisted of a short play, five songs by the Sedbergh Ladies Choir, and a second play The Prince and the Piper, which was part musical comedy, part panto, part comic opera and all fantasy. Blood was collected, and the blood was flown straight out to the battlefields of Western Europe. A sale of work was held in the National School by the AYPA to raise funds for building a Christian school in the Diocese of Gambia. Sedbergh Youth Council made plans for a Musical Competition Festival in June. Among other events there would be choral classes, three different age groups for solos, six age groups for piano, two for piano duets and two percussion band, as well as a competition for one act plays. Mrs Hodgson of Beechwood aged 86 got herself into the Gazette having collected £116 (£4,950) of rural pennies for the Red Cross. She had also knitted an average of one pair of socks a week from the beginning of the war as well as helmets, gloves and pullovers, and had made numerous garments for evacuees and mended socks for local soldiers. A dance for the Dent Memorial Hall was held in the Dent National School. A dance in Powell Hall with the band of the Kings Own Royal Regiment raised £37 (£1,464) for the Prisoners of War Fund. By this time in the war the rations were per week: 4 oz (113g) bacon and ham, 2 oz (57g) butter, 2 oz cheese - cheddar only - (vegetarians got 3 oz extra), 2 oz lard, and 2 oz loose tea. This was approximately half of what the ration had been earlier. In addition, per month there was 2 lb (910g) marmalade or 1 lb (450g) jam or 1 lb sugar, and 12 oz (340g) sweets. Bread – the hated national loaf - was still unrationed (and would remain so until 1946 when bread rationing was caused partly by the need to feed Europe). At the beginning of rationing the points, which could be used for any of the items rationed, had been 16. They did go up to 24 but in May were reduced again to 20. The Government could alter what the points would buy. For instance, originally a 1lb (450 g) tin of salmon or Spam or salmon cost 16 points, but the public would not buy the Spam. So the Government raised the points for salmon to 24 and reduced the number for Spam to 8 to encourage people to eat it.

Page 40 By May the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Cunard White Star Line had held talks and were proposing that the two mills should be used by Cunard as a reconditioning depot for their ships’ furniture, and it was hoped this plan would materialise. Each member of the fire service now had a bell connected to their residence, and the siren would be connected to the exchange. This no longer required a man to be in charge of contacting each man in the case of a fire. Plans were in hand for a letter to the public to raise funds for a public hall. An example of the cost of building at the time was an application for Stockdale House to allow the putting in of new floors and partitions, a new range with H&C water supply, bathroom, sink and new drains, which would not cost more than £200 (£7,900). A bridge at Howgill had collapsed and was in need of repair as it was on a footpath, but it was decided that as there was another footpath and bridge only 75 yards away this was not urgent. The Gas Company complained to the SRDC that they had only received £1 compensation for the loss of business due to the blackout, but agreed to accept £75 (£3,051). Several good films were seen in the Cinema – as had been the case throughout the war. Among others Mark Twain, Wuthering Heights, The Nelson Touch, Fanny by Gaslight, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Prisoner of Zenda. On 5th May the news came that hostilities would cease at 8 am. My grandmother and the Headmaster’s secretary went to Church and were rather surprised to find themselves the only people there. “It is quite bewildering in all it means.” She retired back to the House to string flags. The School Houses were decked with flags, there was a concert in the evening and the boys had a holiday on the fells. On 6th May my grandmother noted: – “Saw the horror photos of Belsen, there are no words.” On 7th May there was a bonfire on Winder. My grandmother wrote: “Fire on Winder great feeling of wonder, expectation, almost disbelief that it has come at last”. She and the boys hung up all the flags in the morning and there was a concert in Powell Hall in the evening. During the night the Sedbergh School “kicked over the traces a bit”. Churchill announced the German surrender a 3pm on 8th May (VE Day) saying that the ceasefire had actually sounded at 2am the previous night although officially it was not to happen until midnight. Killington WI had to put off their meeting to enable members to hear the speech. It rained all day and although it was a whole day holiday it passed quietly in Sedbergh School except for a light hearted concert and the King’s speech. On 9th May the School organised a “Fun Fair” – which my grandmother said she had been urging should be done for days! – and it was a huge success with the whole Town joining in. There were about “15 booths at which to lose your pennies.” There was an Aunt Sally, bottles to break, model trains, a 1d over 6d in a bucket, rolling pennies, pony rides, darts, hidden treasure, a greased pole, electric ring, balls into buckets, golf game, fortune teller, dancing and a band. In the evening there were fireworks by the Battle School in the rugby field, and the Sedbergh School boys were allowed to go up Winder to watch, lighting the gorse as they went (not that that was allowed). The School Houses had bonfires. At midnight the entire population of Sedbergh met in the market place. The Church was floodlit and the bells were rung. The celebrations ceased about 1.15 am. The boys were allowed to get up half an hour later than usual the next morning. The SRDC later thanked the Headmaster and the Commanding Officer of the Divisional Battle School for their contributions, and was pleased to note that these celebrations had cost the ratepayers less than £10 (£395) On Sunday 13th May there was a thanksgiving service in the church, and a similar one in the School chapel. Aircraftsman First Class James Armistead, whose parents farmed at Borret Farm, died aged 20 just after the end of the war on 25th May when his aircraft crashed in South Africa on take-off or landing. The School was in good heart at the end of the War. The Local Boys Fund was able to support one day boy and a boarder. The capital fund had about £35,000 (just under £1.4 million in inflation terms but considerably more in spending terms) to spend on

Page 41 improvements, many of which were much needed. The School was full with a waiting list, and there were no arrears of fees. The Town on the other hand was not in such good shape. The Council had been unable to spend capital except in emergencies for many years. Many plans had been put on hold “for the duration”. The services were poor with a large proportion of the housing without mains sewerage, let alone bathrooms. The fields on the farms had been over used, and used for purposes for which they were not fit. The mills had closed down. A large number of men and women would return looking for work. But all was not gloom: they had two new modern housing estates and the Town was still a thriving little market town capable of supplying all the needs of the district. There was no sign of the contraction which would start to come with the end of food and petrol rationing, the advent of universal use of fridges and freezers, and people being able to travel further afield as a matter of course to shop. And the School was thriving, with the employment and economic benefit that that provided for the Town. The truly remarkable impression one gets of Sedbergh during these 5 years is the immense generosity of the community, which was by no means well off, and the huge sums of money raised both in large amounts on special occasions, and constantly in comparatively small sums. To modern eyes the figures seem tiny and worth very little, but inflation has such that the buying power of these sums is immensely greater than they look, and they have to be multiplied by 60 in 1939 and in 1945 by 40. One thing I have not mentioned is taxation. In September 1939 the standard tax rate was raised to 7/6 (37.5p) in the pound, with surtax of 1/6 (8.5p) on incomes over £2,000, rising to 9/6 (49p) on incomes over £30,000. Later in the war the highest rate peaked at 19/6 (99.5%). By 1942 the standard rate was 10s (50%) in the pound. In 1940 a new tax was introduced called Purchase Tax (replaced in 1973 by VAT). Goods, particularly “luxury” goods, were taxed at manufacture not on sale, and the rate in 1940 was 33½ %, but it rose by 1942 to 662/ %. Beer and cigarettes were 3 heavily taxed. A private in the army was paid 2/- a day but paid no tax. My mother told me my father in the 8th Army as a Captain earned 16/- a day. The rate for becoming a tax payer was about the average income over all in the 1930s but had dropped to half of that by the end of the war.

Sources The diaries of Mrs JH Bruce Lockhart Letters of Mrs Rab Bruce Lockhart The Westmorland Gazette The Minutes of the Sedbergh RDC The Minutes of Sedbergh Parish Council NF Berry, The Wilson Run The Minutes of Sedbergh School Governors The Sedberghian Magazines of the School Houses The Minutes of the British Legion Club John Stacpoole, Sedbergh School 1900-2000 A Celebration The Wartime Diaries and Letters of John Staniland, when at Sedbergh School The Sedbergh & District Men of Honour kept by SDHS Logie Bruce Lockhart Stuff and Nonsense, Now and Then, This and That Richard Cann Sedbergh War Effort, M Fishwick Sedbergh Wartime Defences Memories of Robert Baker A Family Memoir by Richard Dorman Colin Weir, Sedbergh School Cricket Michael Roux Thread of Gold The oral histories of Kenneth Crag, Ingram Cleesby, Jenny Dawson, Helga Frankland, Peter Iveson, Betty Mason held by the Dent & Sedbergh Oral History Society Ben King and George Head Sedbergh School: A Boarding Life Denis Sanderson Air Raid on Dentdale 1941 Sedbergh Historian 2003 Dunford & Wilson Heritage of the Hills – Craven Medical Reports This is Money inflation calculator Wikipedi

Page 42

The Westmorland Society A Northern Presence in London 1746 -1914

Diane Elphick

What was the Westmorland Society? Why was there a Westmorland Society School in London? The questions arose and intrigued me when, many years ago, I saw a sketch of the Westmorland Society School in a book about Victorian suburban growth.[1] This was before internet searches and access to documents online and the questions remained unanswered, despite recurring occasionally, as life went on. Research can now be conducted using the internet to access many varied resources, like the British Newspaper Archive and CWAAS Transactions.[2] Looking in an historical newspaper, in the course of other research, there was a notice for the annual meeting of the Westmorland Society which was to be held in London. This suggested that the questions might at last be answered and were not imagined.

Illustration in both the Westmorland Gazette and the Kendal Mercury, May 1852

1 H J Dyos and Michael Wolff (Eds) The Victorian City Images and Realities: Routledge, 1973. (from memory). The same illustration appeared in the Westmorland Gazette and the Kendal Mercury in May 1852 when the foundation stone of the school was laid. 2 British Newspaper Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ and CWAAS Transactions http://cumbriapast.com

Page 43 Local patriotic societies began to appear in London at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Regions far from the capital were among the first; The Cumberland Society appeared in about 1734 and the Westmorland Society in 1746.[3] The Westmorland Society “was established (with monthly meetings) to relieve poor newcomers to the capital and to repatriate others; it also developed an educational function.” [4] It was suggested that the more formal county societies involved more distant counties where there was a greater need for contact among long distance immigrants to the capital. Sedbergh bordered Westmorland and in daily life had more in common with its local neighbours than with the expanding urban areas in its administrative county, the West Riding. It was not unusual for people to travel, locally and over long distances for trade, religious and social activities. Migration to promote career prospects was not unusual and wills show local people in London, for example Henry Crowther (1575) Citizen and Saddler; Henry Heblethwaite (1587) Citizen and Draper who also named John Guy Hatmaker; Raphe Lynsey (1597) Vintner; William Thompson (1642) of Dent an Oastler; Richard Hodgson (1720) of Dent seems to be a Greenwich pensioner.[5] Relatives in London and the Dales were named in wills, also bequests to the poor and schools in the Dales. In numerous wills there were charitable bequests to hospitals, prisons and the poor in parishes in London. In 1634, Thomas Dawson, hosier of London, and of the family at Smorthwaite gave two closes, ‘the school fields’, for “the maintenance of a schoolmaster in Garsdale for ever”. Networks between London and the Dales were sustained, for example in the Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters – London, Apprentices' Entry Books 1654- 1694. John Fothergill of Ravenstonedale took his nephew William Adamthwaite, and Philip Rogerson as apprentices, while Henry Wharton took Richard Wilson and John Shaw. It seems likely that they also helped find apprenticeships for others from ‘home’. Twelve young men from Westmorland became apprentices between 1654 and 1690. Philip Rogerson who was apprenticed in 1668 took John Harrison of Soulby as an apprentice in 1690.[6] Migration to London and other cities was not a sudden phenomenon but numbers increased in the eighteenth century, “much of the basic social history of our region must be concerned with its emigrants!”[7] To some extent migration may have become more evident due to the existence of additional records, such as notices and reports in newspapers. Younger sons, who were unlikely to inherit farms or tenancies, sought employment and some family enterprises expanded, for instance hosiers, who collected stockings to supply the army and the London market. The hosiers left few records but the scale of the industry at local markets has been recorded. “In 1801, 2,400 pairs of stockings was the average weekly supply in Kendal market, of which 1,000 pairs would come from Ravenstonedale”, [8] The discovery, in the 1950s, of some of the business records Abraham Dent of Kirkby Stephen revealed that, among

3 J D Marshall, Cumberland and Westmorland Societies in London 1734-1912, CWAAS Transactions, 1984. The History Bye-laws and Constitution of the Westmorland Society, 1927, which in 1984 was in Kendal Library. It stated that the Lake Counties societies were the “oldest among the fifty county societies which are such popular institutions in London today.” The Manchester Courier 21 March 1914 stated that Richard Rigg recently placed on record the history of the Westmorland Society. 4 Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800, Oxford, 2002 5 Wills and many more in SDHS Archive 6 Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters – London, Apprentices' Entry Books 1654-1694 7 J D Marshall, Some aspects of the social history of 19th-century Cumbria, CWAAS, 1969 8 Frank W Garnett Westmorland Agriculture 1800-1900, Titus Wilson, 1912

Page 44 his many business activities, he supplied stockings to the army. “Dent’s friends in London were the army contractors” and in 1767 he supplied 420 pairs of marching regiments hose at 12/- a dozen and 22 dozen pairs of sergeants hose at 31/- a dozen.[9] Eighteenth century wars exposed inadequacies in military supply chains and new procurement procedures developed creating openings for men to contract to meet national and local military needs. “For many contractors business competence and ability outweighed political considerations of patronage and place.”[10] John Willan (1711-1792) born in Casterton, built a considerable fortune as a contractor, primarily supplying horses and fodder for the artillery. Stories of success and employment prospects would be a temptation for others. The Westmorland Society was founded by men who had gone from Westmorland to seek their fortunes in London. They thought it would be good for all of them to meet together socially, they expected to find agreeable company, and to be helpful to one another. The eleven founders of the Society were recorded as Messrs. Henry Dennison, John Fawcett, Nathaniel Highmoor, Jonathan Coulston, Thomas Barnard, Thomas Toulmin, Samuel Toulmin, Roger Pindar, J Monkhouse, George Yeates, and Robert Toulmin. These are all familiar local family names. The three brothers Toulmin, however, suggest a connection with the Ravenstonedale area; Robert (1717) Thomas (1720) and Samuel (1725) were the sons of Rev Thomas Toulmin, vicar of Ravenstonedale, the eldest son, John (1712), stayed at home. All three brothers became successful; Robert became a soap maker, Thomas a chandler and Samuel, the most well-known of the brothers, was apprenticed to a joiner in 1740 and became a watch and clockmaker.[11] His clocks and watches were also sold in America, are now in museums and command considerable amounts in modern auctions. Newspaper reports of the 56th annual meeting of the Society in 1802 recorded the toasts, including one to “The three Mr Toulmins, the founders of this society”, presumably they were present. The first meeting of the Society took place on December 2nd, 1746. It was “open to gentlemen who were natives of the county or possessed estates therein.” It met on the first Tuesday in each month at the Half Moon Tavern in Cheapside “each member paying the chairman the sum of eighteenpence for his ‘reckoning’ (eating excluded).” All members paid a half crown fine on admission to the society and they were entitled to introduce a friend as a visitor not more than three times a year. The Chairman was elected every three months and there was an average attendance of twenty members at each meeting. The annual dinner was first held on May 5th 1747 and six stewards were appointed for each dinner. The invitation to and the account for the first dinner show the tastes (spelling as in original) of Westmerians in London.

Sir,—You are desired to dine with ye Gentlemen of the Westmorland Society at the Half-Moon Tavern in Cheapside on the 5th day of May, 1747, being their annual meeting. Stewards—Mr. Henry Dennison, Mr. John Fawcett, Mr. John Martindale, Mr. Jonathan Coulston. Mr. Robert Coulston, Mr Edward Highmoor Dinner upon Table at 2 o'clock Pray, pay the bearer 5d.

9 T S Willan, Abraham Dent of Kirkby Stephen, Manchester University Press, 1970 10 Gordon E Bannerman, Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth Century Britain, London, 2008 11 Apprenticeship records and many other 18th century London records are searchable at www.londonlives.org

Page 45 The Gentlemen Stewards of the Westmorland Society Dr to Mich. Martindale. 1747, May 6th. £ s d

For bread and beer, butter 0 16 0 and chees Wine 10 2 0 6 dishes of salmon, soals, and 4 10 0 eels with shrimps sauce 4 hams and greens 2 8 0 8 dishes of fowles 3 6 0 4 pidgeon pyes 1 10 0 6 dishes of asparraguss 1 10 0 3 marrow puddings 0 15 0 2 tanseys 0 10 0 Oranges and lemons 0 3 6 Strong Beer 0 2 0 Tobacco 0 4 0 25 16 6 Servants 0 10 6 26 7 0

Another item that appeared on dinner bills in the eighteenth century: For glasses broken by gentlemen in a state of intoxication

In 1785 the society moved to the Paul’s House Tavern in Cateaton Street (Gresham Street) and in 1800 to the City of London Tavern. The date of the annual dinner changed from March to May and the meeting time gradually became later, which may reflect changes in city life. Membership of the society increased, in 1802 “upwards of 320 sat down to a most elegant dinner” and during the evening “a number of excellent songs were sung.” Nathaniel Side sang a Provincial Song, in dialect, to “the greatest applause.”[12] At a time when the Lake District was attracting attention these meetings gave time for Northerners to relish their language and customs rather than to imitate fashionable London manners. William Hogarth, (1697-1764) the son of Richard Hogarth of Bampton, Westmorland, showed, in a scene in The Rake’s Progress, how northerners might disregard the hangers on that beset a young man new to London society, the French dancing master, the music master, the fashionable tailor and many others. “In the personal character of William Hogarth the statesman’s sturdiness and self-sufficiency are extremely well marked.”[13] Richard Hogarth did not build a prosperous career but his son successfully developed a new art market creating social satires in engravings that were accessible to the increasing number of ‘middling men’ in the developing city.

12 Lancaster Guardian 20 March 1802, Carlisle Journal, 13 March 1802 13 Charles Frederick Hardy, The Hardy’s of Barbon, Constable, London, 1913

Page 46 The Society was principally regional and charitable, not party-political, although meetings would provide opportunities to build allegiances. In the hard fought 1818 election campaign some of the Westmorland Freeholders in London expressed their satisfaction “with the Parliamentary Conduct of Lord Viscount LOWTHER, and the Honourable H. CECIL LOWTHER, are determined to use every Constitutional Means in our power to ensure their return to Parliament, at the next General Election”.[14] The opposition candidate was Henry Brougham, also a member of the society, who thought that hardship, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, would favour the Whig opposition. The Lowthers were elected. At the dinner in 1819 Lord Lowther reflected that “this was an occasion when all past-feeling was forgotten, on which there were no trivial animosities to impede the progress of the general sentiment.” [15] In 1834 the Cumberland Paquet, by its tone a pro Lowther paper, referred to members being of the “higher orders” and that “the Earl of Lonsdale is the beneficent Patron and President of this noble institution; and his two sons, Lord Lowther and the Hon. H. C Lowther, Vice-Presidents” and they rarely missed a meeting. From its inception the Westmorland Society was concerned with charitable deeds. In consequence, an administrative organisation developed with officers and monthly and quarterly meetings. During the first years of the society help was given “to worthy and necessitous county-men, and in some cases small sums of money were given to defray the expenses of poor persons wishing to return home.”[16] It would be interesting to see if any women applied for or were given help. The opening scene in Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress, 1732, depicted the pitfalls awaiting a young countrywoman who had arrived in London on a wagon from York. That Westmorland born women were living in London is demonstrated in the applications made for children to be educated by the society, many qualified by their mothers being born in the county. The existence of its charitable function acknowledged the social range of the migrants that included a fair number of the ‘deserving poor’, some who were once prosperous but had fallen on hard times. Westmorland was among the most literate counties in England, and many men that later became successful received their education in a village school. Yet some ‘village schools’, like Ravenstonedale and Bampton, were Endowed Free Grammar Schools and educated many distinguished men, even the smallest endowed schools enabled boys to progress. The local economy based on family farms, trades and businesses developed habits of independence and industry. Tradesmen went to their customers; farmers went to markets and fairs; men and women stood at the six-monthly hirings; news and ideas were spread by drovers and other travellers passing through on the main roads to Scotland. In 1796, Tom Rumney, a migrant, wrote from London to state that the north of England had “become quite a manufactory for Bankers' and Merchants' clerks".[17] News from the network of connections in London perhaps tempted friends and family members to embark on an adventure to join them. The Hewetson families of Ravenstonedale, who were often in dispute, provide examples of the connections between ‘home’, London and many other places world- wide. [18] A 1795 London Directory has John and Robert Hewetson, corn-factors and Richard and Henry Hewetson, Lacemen. John and Robert were from Lockholme Foot, their sons continued the business. Henry joined his successful uncle Richard of

14 Carlisle Patriot, 7 March 1818 15 Carlisle Patriot, 22 May 1819 16 Marshall, op cit 17 Marshall, op cit 18 Keith Lovat Watson, The Hewetsons of Ravenstonedale A detailed history of Hewetsons from early times, 1991

Page 47 Ellergill. They were appointed Gold Lacemen to the King. Henry (Gold Lace Harry) retired in 1809 and died in 1838 leaving almost £1,000,000 to family members. John Hewetson (1806-1876) of Street, Fell End, went to London in 1823, at the age of 17. He was recommended by Isaac Rowlandson of Crosby Garret to become an apprentice to Messrs Shaw & Beckwith, a firm with local connections, which traded in Carpets and Upholstery. John wrote "About 10 or 12 Years ago there were only 3 or 4 Shops in London in this line whereas there is now between 20 & 30 and most of them out of Westmorland." John progressed and set up his own upholstery business then he encouraged and assisted his brothers, William, Thomas and Humphrey, to join him at his shop in Tottenham Court Road, to learn the trade, and then to enter into successful partnerships. They all missed ‘home’, corresponded and visited. Before William (1801-1864) went to London in 1834 he and Henry suggested local lads to be taken on as apprentices, “Indeed there appears quite a Mania amongst people at present for sending their Sons to London.” Robert Thexton, William Milner, Thomas Bradbery, Joseph Shaw, Michael Milner, Henry Fothergill and Stephen Dent went to London. John wrote to Henry “We hope he may prove himself like our other R.Dale youths worthy of the good opinion we have formed of him.” Robert Thexton and William Milner advanced to become partners giving John and Thomas the opportunity to retire and build houses in Ravenstonedale. Unfortunately both brothers died before they could enjoy them. William had died earlier, however his wife and son John, who suffered ill health, retired to Crosshall, Cautley, in December 1866, but young John Hewetson had just two months in his beloved home before he died on the 21st March, 1867, at the age of 27. Soon after his arrival in London, in 1825, John Hewetson caught smallpox. He was fortunate to be well cared for and to recover. It illustrates that many migrants to the city may have encountered and succumbed to urban diseases, leaving families in straitened circumstances and needing charity. The Hewetson brothers, Henry Fothergill and William Milner of Tottenham Court Road were on the Westmorland Society subscription list in 1846, [19] but the children of Thomas Bradbery and Joseph Shaw, who had died, were elected to become pupils of the Westmorland School.[20] On arrival men were able to make contact with fellow-Cumbrians in London at wrestling matches, which were held on Good Friday, organised by the Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling Society in London. The date of its first meeting is uncertain but from later reports it seems to be in the mid-eighteenth-century. The original society, which claimed to be the oldest athletic club in London, collapsed and most of its funds were given to Westmorland Society and the Cumberland Benevolent Society. A new wrestling society was formed and annual meetings continued and the society made donations annually to both the charitable societies. [21] The events were similar to a local sports day; wrestling was the main attraction but there was also pole leaping and footraces. Large crowds attended and the report in 1822 estimated “at least 12,000 people”… [22]. The same report stressed that it was a “highly respectable, company” including “a number of the most respectable people in London, who, with Lord and Colonel Lowther ....will give it their support as long as there is neither riot nor confusion." The Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling Society was dissolved in 1888 but a similar society, stressing its amateur nature, was then formed. In 1889 the financial report of the Westmorland Society said “the good balance was partly accounted for by the fact that a large donation had been received from the Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling Society on its dissolution.” A network of

19 Westmorland Gazette, 16 May 1846 20 Census 1881 21 Walter Armstrong, Wrestliana: a Chronicle of the Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestlings in London, London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1870. 22 Westmorland Gazette, 20 April 1822

Page 48 recommendations and connections existed in the metropolis to help new arrivals at various periods. The education of Westmerian children in London and to establish a school there became the purpose of The Westmorland Society. In 1786 it was resolved at a monthly meeting that a sum of £50 Consols which had been collected by means of the half-crown fines, payable on the admission of members, should be taken to establish a fund for the maintenance and education of poor children born in London of Westmorland parents. Events moved slowly but in 1810 support came at a meeting presided over by William, second Earl of Lonsdale and in 1811 a report stated [23] We are happy to learn that the Westmorland Society, in London, is not solely occupied in social mirth and conviviality, but that their meetings are employed in endeavouring to establish a respectable place of education for such of the children of their indigent countrymen, as have been, or shall be, born in London ; and we feel peculiar pleasure in the knowledge, that this infant Institution has experienced from an individual of fortune in our immediate neighbourhood, the greatest attention In every way which his well-known benevolence and liberality could suggest, and whose example, we consider, does honour to the county in which he resides. Notices in the press, about three months before the election at the annual dinner, set out the application procedures for children “to be clothed, maintained and educated by the Society”. “Persons desirous that their children should become candidates must apply to the Secretary in the form of a Petition, ….One of the Parents of the children must be a native of Westmorland. The children must have been born within 12 miles of the Royal Exchange, London, and must on 3rd May next be more than 8 and less than 11 years of age; and continue under the care of the Society, until they attain 14 years of age. There were small modifications over the years, the district was enlarged, the Westmorland School opened in 1854. Initially only boys were admitted to the school but in 1857 there were some modifications to the building so that girls could be admitted. A building plan was prepared and in 1860, “with greatly increased accommodation”, a greater number of children, including a larger proportion of girls, should be admitted. The school building fund received its first donation of £100, in 1818, from an anonymous gentleman. By 1846 with further contributions and investment the fund consisted of £825. The opinion was that a building where the education was under a competent master and matron would be beneficial and more efficient. In the drive to build and maintain a school Fund Raising Balls were organised. In April 1819 The Kendal Advertiser reported We are informed that a ball for the benefit of the Institution of the Westmorland Society (tickets of admission to which were 12s for a lady and gentleman, or 2 ladies) was held ….. Nearly 400 persons attended ─ “The company were elegantly attired, and the coup d’oeuil extremely pleasing”. In the report of 1833 there was some concern that donations and subscriptions had decreased and that without the profits derived from a ball the expenditure would have exceeded the receipts. It aimed to increase knowledge of the practical benefits spread by the Society and to encourage donations by listing the help that had been provided to 65 children, together with a list of previously unprinted donations and annual subscriptions, most of which came from London based Westmerians but there were a few from Westmorland. The report of the ball promoted its success and also commended the purpose of the Society.

23 Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle - Saturday 03 August 1811

Page 49 A most respectable company, in number more than three hundred, was present; the music was delightful and the refreshments delicious. Dancing was kept up to a late, rather early, hour; and everyone appeared leave, the room fully satisfied with evening’s entertainment. …. a larger sum will now be added to the funds of the charity than has ever been realized upon any similar occasion. … It may be scarcely necessary to add, that the object of this society is to maintain and educate the children of poor Westmorland parents —thus enabling them to become in after life better members in the community. Balls were held annually but there had been a lapse of 12 years when, in 1854, the Society achieved its aim of opening a school and a celebratory ball was held. There was a long list of aristocratic and wealthy attendees. Nearly 500 persons attended. Dancing commenced at halfpast 9 o'clock, and the ball did not break up until 5 in the morning. (it was) the means of bringing together many Westmorland people in a social and agreeable manner, who would otherwise have few opportunities of meeting each other in so large a society as that of London. … The clear proceeds of the ball to be applied in aid of the Society's funds exceed £100, independent of several donations presented to the Institution upon this occasion. Ballots took place to elect the children to be supported by the Society. In 1815 the notice for the Society’s Annual Dinner stated that a ballot would take place for the admission of four boys and four girls to be supported. The ballot would commence at half past three and close at half past four. Dinner was at half past five. In the early days it was customary for county gentlemen unable to attend to appoint someone to act as their deputy. The Charities of London, 1850,[24] recorded the eligibility of children and that “on leaving £5 was applied for their benefit. Twenty-six are wholly provided for at an annual expense of £500.” The number who had been maintained was 269. “Ten guineas in one sum (donation) or one guinea annual subscription constitutes a governor, with one vote for every such subscription.” Similar statistics were in the Address by the Stewards, circulated in the county in 1846, that endeavoured to boost the school building fund. It stressed the usefulness of the Society and the advantages that a building would present. Encouragement to contribute came “an additional Vote for every additional Ten Guineas, or One Guinea, annually, contributed.” In 1819 there were thirteen children supported by the fund and they were presented at the dinner. This became an annual custom. “Their neat and orderly appearance gave convincing proof of the utility of the Society, and drew forth the approbation of everyone present.” [25]Three more children had been elected and the speeches were effusive in praising the children and the work of the Society. During the evening £350 was added to the fund. In 1838 there were 13 applicants and six children, four girls and two boys, were elected. They were William Gaskell, Kendal; Margaret Fothergill, Mallerstang; Sarah Gibson Bushby, Eamontbridge; Edith Martindale, Selside; Margaret Graham, Asby and James Thomas Fawcett, Ravenstonedale. The report of the hundredth anniversary meeting in 1846 stated that 128 children had been clothed maintained and educated and listed the various parts of the county in which their parents had been born, including Kendal 17; Appleby 13; Kirkby Stephen 13; Brough 13; Kirkby Lonsdale; Orton 5; Ravenstonedale 4; Warcop 2; Mallerstang 1. Children remained living with their parents until a school was established and each received £25 a year.[26] The difficulties in monitoring the efficiency of the outlay made it seem advisable to build the school.

24 Sampson Low, The Charities of London , London 1850. A regular publication covering benevolent, educational and religious institutions. 25 Carlisle Patriot, 22 May 1819 26 Penrith Observer 12 May 1896, report of annual meeting of the Society

Page 50 The children are permitted to reside with their parents who send them to schools which they select. The children are examined quarterly by the chaplain, and every effort is made, …. on their being properly educated in useful knowledge and sound religious and moral principles. The building fund for a school had reached £3,712 in 1850 and in 1852 a building scheme was undertaken. The Foundation Stone of the new school was laid on 4th May 1852. The committee had been looking for a site for several years and “had visited sites offered to them in almost every suburb of the metropolis … their efforts had been unavailing.” This continued until Mrs Edwards, the owner of a large estate at Tulse Hill, Norwood, offered an acre of land at a “very low price.”[27] The report of the event included an illustration taken from the drawings of the architect George Smith Esq. “The building has been laid out to accommodate fifty children, but the funds of the society are not at present sufficient to provide for one-half of that number.” The inscription read that it was laid by the Earl of Lonsdale, however he was indisposed on the day and so was represented by his brother Colonel Lowther, also present were officers of the society and the architect and builder. At the annual dinner later that evening Lord Lonsdale spoke of the benefits derived from Westmorland schools demonstrated by “the number of persons from their county who were known to be partners in banking and mercantile establishments, and holding other responsible positions in all parts of that metropolis.” The financial statement showed £9,320 in hand and it was hoped that during the evening it would be possible to announce that there would be the £10,000 in hand needed to complete the project. A list of contributions and annual subscriptions were read out and almost certainly additional donations were encouraged. The school opened for the reception of children under the society’s care on 17th January 1854. After defraying the costs of building the school “the society will still possess about the sum of £10,000 Consols, the interest of which is of course quite inadequate for the maintenance of the establishment”. On their first day the children and their parents had dined together and Mr Passingham the master had assured parents “that they might rely upon the kind and affectionate treatment of them (the children) by Mrs Passingham and himself.” In 1855 four girls were elected and three boys without a poll. The Earl of Bective said he had visited the school and had the pleasure of hearing the children examined “the intelligence displayed by the children was most surprising.” It was established that the children had made more progress at the school in past year than they had made in previous years. The boys and girls walked round the room with their master. It seems that the long campaign to build a school in order to increase the effectiveness of education for the children was seen to be justified. More money was needed, expenditure exceeded income. “It was a matter of regret that they could not educate girls as well as boys, but their funds were limited, …..They, therefore, built the school for one sex, .… hoped that by the liberality of subscribers they would soon be enabled to open a school for girls.” (It was customary then that, even in the same building, boys and girls had separate entrances, were taught together, but were regarded as being in separate schools.) An advertisement in October 1874 indicated what was expected of the master and that testimonials were required. WANTED a MASTER and MATRON (Members of the Church of England and without incumbrances for the School …. The wife of the master must act as matron. The Master must be competent to give the Boys, and the Matron the Girls, a good general English Education, comprising English Grammar, Arithmetic &c. Salary, £75 per Annum, with Board &c.

27 Westmorland Gazette 15 May 1852 also in the Kendal Mercury and both had an illustration of the proposed building from the drawings of the architect George Smith Esq. .

Page 51 In the census 1881[28] George Fancourt age 44 was the Master, his wife Annie was the Matron, they had a daughter age 6, there were two servants and 22 children, 15 boys and 7 girls. The report of 1882 named Mr and Mrs Hodgiss?. In 1921 The Master and Matron of the School were Mr and Mrs Hamilton, formerly of Bolton School; their predecessors for many years were Mr and Mrs William Robinson, of Brough.[29] Finance seems to have been an on-going concern, the expenditure required to meet the obligations and aspirations was scarcely covered by income. In 1880 it was announced that the late Miss Reardon had bequeathed a tenth of her estate to the Society. Then it was not known how much that would be or when it would be available. In 1881 concern was expressed that last year £5,000 had been bequeathed to the society but in consequence Many of those who intended to subscribe had subscribed nothing …. But … They had not got the money. … not a single farthing of interest. Some clauses in the will were challenging but in 1882 it appeared that matters would be agreed satisfactorily. In 1883 “I think the committee is to be congratulated upon the fact that the Reardon bequest has at last come into our hands. I am told that primarily the society is indebted to Mr. Pennington for that bequest, and I think I may without impropriety suggest to the committee, if it is within the scope of their scheme, that the proceeds of that bequest the annual interest should be applied to the improvement of the curriculum of the school.” [30] Mr. Richard Pennington, a native of Kendal, was at that time president of the Incorporated Law Society, and he was sent for by Miss Helen Reardon, an old and rich lady, who wished to make her will. She told Mr. Pennington she had a certain amount of money to leave, and asked him to assist her by naming some deserving charities. The Westmorland Society was one among the number suggested, and though the old lady had no connection with the county, she acted on the advice given to her—hence the bequest of £5,600. As Mr. Rigg remarked when he was narrating the incident to me, "It was a veritable Godsend.” [31] Candidates for election, with their names and qualifications, were detailed in the annual reports. Less is known about their circumstances. They were called ‘poor’. Were their families regarded as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving poor’? The peers and wealthy businessmen, who wanted to help, probably had little understanding of urban poverty and people just about managing, where illness or a death could push them into debt. In 1883, John Alfred Richardson and Agnes Emily Richardson were elected to the school. Their father had been born at Grammar School Appleby and their grandfather was the Rev John Richardson, Master of the Grammar School, which suggests that the family was likely to be considered ‘deserving’. An appeal was made, on behalf of the family by Harrison Thompson, and associated with the Society. [32] Their mother revealed such a state of distress, the family had been living on bread and water; her wages from needlework were 8s to 9s weekly out of which they paid 6s for rent, the rest fed the parents and five children. Mr Richardson had walked hundreds of miles but had failed to obtain employment as a clerk. It may be that this was an extreme case but, in 1896, a speech said that the school took “children whose

28 Peter Higginbotham Childrens’s Homes website http://www.childrenhomes.org.uk/London/LondonWestmorland1881.shtml?LMC L=tLSZDt 29 Penrith Observer 8 March 1921 30 Penrith Observer, 8 May 1883 31 Manchester Courier, 21 March 1914 Richard Pennington became a Freeman of Kendal in 1902. In 1911 the school began awarding an annual prize in his memory. 32 Penrith Observer, 29 May 1883

Page 52 parents could not support them, hardly being able to support themselves. The society took those children. He had no hesitation in saying that he had seen children, who, if they had not come to their schools, would have gone to their grave in a very few months.” Tracing some children in the 1881 census, many had lost a parent; Robert A Faraday’s father was a widower with five children. Charles Bradbery’s mother was a widow by 1891; his deceased father was from Ravenstonedale and had worked as an upholsterer for William Hewetson. William, Charles and Edward Bradbery, had all been pupils of the school, became clerks and their sister became a telegraphist. William gaining employment as a railway clerk was mentioned at the annual dinner and his name is in a list of donations from former pupils. Phoebe Shaw became a domestic servant at the Brassey Arms and was a witness at the Old Bailey to a burglary there. Her sister Eleanor became a draper’s assistant. Ernest Atkinson became a grocer but little is known about his sister Margaret until her death in 1948, their father had died in 1875. John Craston, the father of Bertha and Flora Craston was the son of the Parish Clerk of Kirkby Lonsdale, was a certified National School master and Organist when he died in 1875. Flora became a trained nurse and in 1911 was employed by Lady Sarah Spencer, the great-aunt of Lady Diana Spencer (Princess of Wales). Bertha became a P.O. Telephonist. Their brother John P Craston had attended the school earlier and won a prize for writing in1877. He was apprenticed to the Merchant Navy and advanced to become qualified as a Master of a Foreign -Going Ship in 1895. Girls were always included in the Society’s desire to maintain and educate children, although more boys were elected for support. This may have been due to the practical considerations of parents who may have made more applications for their sons. Boys were expected to become ‘breadwinners’ whereas girls were likely to marry or take on other caring roles, so helping at home could prepare them for their future roles. Men had higher wages and more career opportunities than women. In Society reports opinions were expressed that education for girls would make them better wives and mothers, therefore it would be of benefit to society. There was also a desire to protect girls from lives of drudgery. In a speech in 1883 a member spoke to support the idea of keeping girls in school until they were sixteen. The girls left school at the age of fifteen. Now what could be done with a girl who left school at the age of fifteen? She had probably to go to service, and what wages could a girl of fifteen earn? Was she not likely to fall into trouble of various kinds, the trouble of ill-health, if no other? Were they not sending the girls to do the work of grown women? And what person would give to a girl of fifteen any wages that were worth having? Towards the end of the nineteenth century a greater variety of careers were opening to girls; clerical work in the Post Office and as telephonists or telegraphists; retail work; nursing; teaching; millinery and dressmaking developed. A list of prizes, awarded in 1911 to girls and boys, shows that new subjects had entered the curriculum; shorthand; typewriting; dictation; letter writing; French translation; mapping, plus the more traditional needlework and religious knowledge. It may also show traditional expectations in the award of a silver watch and chain for an annual Richard Pennington Memorial Prize, after stiff competition it went to a boy. The annual reports were very keen to publicise the successes of former pupils and to urge members to help pupils find situations. Major successes included the Mayoralty of Ipswich, Mayoralty of Leominster on two occasions, chief engineership on the Madras Railways, Puisne Judgship in Straits Settlements, and a Science Professorship in Cape Colony. Letters were received from those who had emigrated to Canada, South America and South Africa. Finance was an on-going concern, in most reports income barely covered expenditure and nineteenth century changes in education precipitated debates about the character and viability of the Westmorland Society School. People began to ask “What is the use of such an institution?” Reports commonly said the children were well clothed, well fed

Page 53 and well educated, although in 1883 it was said that some improvement might be made in education. We must not forget … that our children are placed in a totally different position from that in which they were placed twenty years ago. They will have to compete when they go out into the busy world against the children educated in the Board Schools, … “Go to Switzerland, Go to Germany and see what is the result of a higher education than is given even in our own Board Schools. The examination in 1889 again stated that the children were thoroughly well taught. Considering proposals for raising State grants to schools in 1896, “the Westmorland School had nothing to do with that matter”. It “did not get its money by what was called payment by results. …. there was an evil in it as everyone knew, viz., that there was a certain amount of cramming.” Being independent, the school could arrange its own curriculum “The master could drum into those children their lessons until they understood what they had been taught, until they understood the answers that they gave,” There was praise for Dr Hodson, the examiner, who tried to find out what the children did know, not what they did not know. The Westmorland Society and its School struggled on. There might be desirable reasons for change but for sentimental reasons supporters continued to ‘paper over the cracks’. The war years were the final straw causing a decreased annual income and increased expenditure. It was proposed to dispose of the School property and use the proceeds to maintain and educate children in some other school. This would cost less and children would mix with more children. In 1921, A Northerner, wrote in the Penrith Observer, “force of circumstances have compelled a change, sad it is proposed to sell the property— if it is not already disposed of—and devote the proceeds to educating and maintaining the children in one or more institutions.” He continued with a list of Steadfast Supporters in 110 years. Supporters whose names might be recognised locally included Sir James Whitehead, who, was born at Bramhaw, Sedbergh and attended the Friends School in Kendal with his cousin Titus Wilson. He became a freeman of Kendal, MP and Lord Mayor of London. Robert Burra (1841-1913), inherited Gate Manor, in Dent, through his mother and was a member of the Burra family of Westmorland. His grandfather, Robert Burra (1767-1846) was Treasurer of the Westmorland Society for 36 years and whose son James was secretary for more than thirty years. William Thompson was born at Grayrigg. He made a fortune in iron works and became an MP and Lord Mayor of London. He retired to Underley Hall. The Earl of Bective, his son-in-law, succeeded him as MP for Westmorland and at Underley Hall, he also had his shooting lodge at Deeside and was a governor and supporter of Cowgill school. Widespread support came from wealthy and influential men, peers and MPs, who were able to have residences in London and Westmorland. The majority of the migrants made their lives in London and moved into comfortable homes in the suburbs that developed around the railway network. The annual meeting in 1896 was reminded that the Westmorland Society was “founded not by rich men who put down their hundreds, as happened nowadays, but by the youth of Westmorland who came south to seek their fortune.”

Page 54

Bell Ringers in Time for Victory Jean Wood, Teresa Towler Betty Braithwaite

RASC near Bari, Italy, September 1945, from Neville Balderston’s photo album

Page 55 SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS All publications are available at the HISTORY SOCIETY ROOM in the Information Centre, in Sedbergh or by post from SDHS Publications, c/o 72A, Main Street, SEDBERGH, Cumbria. LA10 5AD. Please note that this price list supersedes all previous ones. VOLUME ONE: NEWSLETTERS - For a complete list see Sedbergh Historian Vol. IV No. 1, 1998 VOLUME TWO: SEDBERGH HISTORIANS Volume Two consists of those six Sedbergh Historians printed from 1985 to 1991 inclusive. Issue 1 is 32 pages, photocopied and bound. All the others are 48 pages and printed. The cost is £4.00 each plus postage £1-10, overseas £2-50. For a complete list see Sedbergh Historian Vol. IV No. 1, 1998 VOLUME THREE: SEDBERGH HISTORIANS Volume Three is those six Sedbergh Historians printed from 1992 to 1997 inclusive. For a complete list see Sedbergh Historian Vol IV No.4, 2001 VOLUME FOUR: SEDBERGH HISTORIANS £ 5.00 each, postage as for Vol II above. Feb 1998 Excavations Crosedale Beck (2); Adam de Staveley; Bridges; Two Queens; Hebblethwaites Marthwaite; Atkinsons Crosedale Beck; Letters Home L/Cpl Walter Sanderson Feb 1999 History Thorns Hall; Medieval Howgill; Cavaliers and Roundheads; Bridges of Sedbergh, Garsdale and Dent (2); Adam Sedgwick and Dent Fault; Sedbergh in 1851 Feb 2000 Description of Farms in Dentdale; Deadly Days in Stuart Dentdale; Sedbergh Post Office; Adam Sedgwick and Dent Fault (2); Akay in Marthwaite; Thomas Hadwen alias Thomas Ward; Early Stuart Dentdale June 2001 Tale of Two Queens, Field Boundaries in Howgill (LHI), Intacks and Lotmunds Encroachment and Enclosure, Births Marriages and Deaths in Eighteenth Century Dentdale, Thistlethwaites and Carters of Dentdale, Mines and Quarries in Garsdale, Mid-Nineteenth Century Dentdale June 2002 Development of the Parochial System, Sedbergh United Charities and Widows’ Hospital pt 1, Farms in Fell End Ravenstonedale, End of the Manor of Dentdale, Thomas Dawson’s Free School in Garsdale, Cowkeepers of Liverpool, Back Yards of Sedbergh in 1940s June 2003 Charities for the Poor in the Township of Garsdale, Westhouses: Masons Sills and Suttons, William Wordsworth and Sedbergh, Maps of Lower Dentdale, Sedbergh United Charities and Widows’ Hospital pt 2, Brassingtons Builders, Air Raid on Dentdale 1941 June 2004 St Andrew’s Sedbergh at the Reformation, The Damning of Dentdale, Another Tithe Strike in Dentdale & Garsdale, John Haygarth 1740-1827, Willan of Shoolbred, Robert Foster 1754- 1827, Houses in Dentdale, Sedbergh United Charities and Widows’ Hospital part III June 2005 Dent Boundaries, Dr Roger Lupton, Corn Mill in 16C Dent, Farmers’ Wealth in Past Centuries, Farming in Past Centuries, Hand Knitting Industry, Poor Charities in Dent, Brendan Bracken June 2006 Restoration of St Andrew’s Sedbergh, Mill Owning Families in Early Dent, Willan of Nether Mill in 16th Century, Comings and Goings of Sedbergh Schoolboys, The Herd Family of Howgill, Vagrancy in Kirkby Stephen June 2007 Boundaries of Deepdale, Local Wills in Tudor Times, Quarrying in the area, Garsdale in the Nineteenth Century, Plantations in the West Indies, Windows of St Andrews’s Sedbergh June 2008 Asshes, Ashbeckgill in Soolbank, Sixteenth Century Vicars of Sedbergh, The Rise and Decline of Local Quakerism, The Brunskills Photographers, Cowkeepers, William Dawson, John Atkinson’s Copybook. June 2009 Howgill Church Choir 1840s, Sedbergh Masters and Martyrs, Millthrop, Sedbergh Braggs, Robert Foster, The Brunskill Family; Commercial Photographers. June 2010 Asshes, Ashbeckgill in Soolbank 2, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vicars of Sedbergh, Ale and Beer in Sedbergh, War Diary of Edmund Herd pt1. Landownership in Dentdale, Dialect Speech in Wuthering Heights. June 2011 Change in Victorian Dentdale, Origins of a Royal Tale, A Cautley Methodist Family in the 1860s, War Diary of Edmund Herd pt2. The Ancestry of Anthony and Alice Hewitson. June 2012 Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Vicars of Sedbergh, War Diary of Edmund Herd pt3, Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, The Willan Family USA, Peter Moor, John Dawson Watson, Baliol School. June 2013 Robert Willan, Florence Upton’s Absences from Ingmire, Founding Sedbergh’s Workhouses, Beyond Red Letter Days, War Diary of Edmund Herd pt4, Thomas (Tommy) Moor(e). June 2014 Cowper Family (1); A Garsdale Family; Sedgwick Dialect and Language; Bland Mill; Sedbergh Households 1851; Borders Voyage to India 1915. June 2015 History Society 1980-88; Cowper Family (2); William Sutton; Three Colonels Hebblethwaite; Wartime Sedbergh, 1941. June 2016 History Society 1989-2000; War Sedbergh 1939-40; William John Sutton; Cowper Family (3)

Page 56 June 2017 History Society 2000-2011; Willan Letters from Canada 1822-1840; Wartime Sedbergh 1942 June 2018 Richard Herd Howgill Poet; Spicers at Waterloo; Arras 1917; Wartime Sedbergh 1943. NEWSLETTERS AS SENT TO MEMBERS, 1988, 24 pages, £1.50 plus £1.00 postage. All the rest, 32 pages, £2.00 plus £1.00 postage. Earlier listings in previous Historians 2002 Sedbergh Shops in 1940s Survey, Snowdrop Band Library, Dent Parish Registers, Golden Jubilees 1837 & 2002, Guides to Records – Tithe Maps Hearth Tax Returns Muster Rolls Land Tax Returns, Wills and Testaments, Cowkeepers, Dent Elections 1835. Sedbergh Shops in 1940s Pt2 2003 Sedbergh Shops in 1940s Pt3, Furness Railway, Upton Family, Property of Sedbergh Rectory 1568, 1st Ed. OS Map Sedbergh, Dent Parish Magazines 1895, Killington Schoolmasters in 1876 Diary, Visits to Hoffmann Kiln, Gayle Mill, Kirkby Lonsdale 2004 Family of Roger Lupton, Grandfather’s House Dent 1940s, Buildings, Buffalo Bill in Kendal, Workhouse, Visits, Pilgrimage of Grace, Henry Hope of Ravenstonedale, Unusual Doorway, Sedbergh Musical Society, Women’s Rights 2005 Dent Boundaries, Pilgrimage of Grace, Sedbergh Wartime Defences, John Haygarth, Brougham Hall and other houses, Local Measurements, Killington Hall, Uptons, Dent Grammar School, 2006 Cowkeeping, Andrew de Harcla, Brunskill Photographs, The Uptons, Cornmills in Dentdale, Ingleborough, Middleton Chantry, Holmes A Askew, Sedbergh Railway, Sedbergh Manor Minutes 1857, Visits to Middleham, Leighton Hall and Lancaster 2007 Bank Barns, Boskins and Beeholes, Who was Whaley, Phantom Footsteps, Local Farming, Windermere Canada, Sedbergh Cricket, Sedbergh School 16th Century, Cowkeepers, Quarries, Clergy Ordinations 1510-1541, Webster Buildings, HMMTB 93 Sedbergh, Mystery at Black Horse, Thomas Mawson, Wilberforce 2008 Ice Age Dentdale, Fitzhughs, Sedberghians in Tibet, Civil War, Time Team in Garsdale, Queen’s Gardens, Middleton Hall, John Dawson, Sedbergh War Memorial, Dr Roger Lupton, Sanctuary at Durham, Common Land 2009 Walking Match 1878, Great War Bibles, Boundary Perambulations, Turnpike Tolls, Gervase Benson, Napoleon Westmorland Connections, Phantoms of Upper Eden, Manhole Covers, John Whitwell, Lord Armstrong and Dent, Hebblethwaite family, Tommy Handley, Traditional Food, Ploughing and Hedging 1879, Local Methodism 2010 Food, Lady Ann Clifford, Ploughing and Hedging, Methodism, William Sawrey, F W Stacey, Memories, People’s Hall, Typhoid Dent 1889, Crucks, Conscription, Nowells. 2011 Sedbergh Union Workhouse, Auschwitz to Ambleside, Gunpowder Mills, St Andrew’s Church Bells, Pilgrimage of Grace, Afghanistan, Reports of SDHS activities and activities 2012 Appleby New Fair, Cumbrians on the Move, Stone Circles, Newspaper Cuttings 1897, Joss Lane Auction Mart, The Ironstone Man, Extracts Kendal Mercury 1861, Northumbria, 2013 HSBC Bank, Kosovo Journeys, Bowling, Evacuation of Kabul 1929, Killington, Prof Sedgwick and Dent, Diary Thos Fenwick, Adam Sedbar, 2014 Day in Dales 1912; New Road in Dent; Dr Inman; Mr Batty; Oral History; Brontes; Roman Roads; Folk Song; Marriage and Death Records. 2015 Dent Rushbearing; Sizergh; Dentdale Skull; Low Borrowbridge; Crime and Punishment; Floods; Richard III; Horticultural Show; Carlisle Cathedral; Evacuation in WW2; Rugby and Football, Jack Brown and HMMTB 92 2016 Foundation Sedbergh School; Adam Sedgwick Memorial; Battle of the Nile; Doon Dent poem; Settle Carlisle Railway; Ted Morphet; Horse Racing; Reports Burma; Archaeology A66; Entrances; Notebook re Vaughan Williams; Great Wall of China 2017 Medieval Craven; Evacuation Burma 1942; Liverpool Cowkeepers; Westfield Village; Enclosure Bluecaster; Canada Diary; Dr Thomas Garnett; Dickens and Cowgill; Dent Marble; Shap Stones; William Westall; Newspaper Extracts 2018 Boskins, Skelbuse Foddergangs; Guldrey Lodge; NW Monasteries; Highland Clearances; Slavery in UK;Slovenia Visit; Book of Bridges; WW2 Effort; Richard Smith and Cricket; Holme Mill; Lady Bell Ringers; Lune Gorge Archaeology; Suttons in Vancouver; Lake District Boats; Kendal Yards; Sedbergh Railway; Remembrance 2018; Visits.

The Newsletters and the Sedbergh Historian are now edited by a board consisting of Diane Elphick and Julie Leigh. If you have any correspondence relating to the Society’s Publications please write to the Editor c/o, The History Room, 72A Main Street SEDBERGH, LA10 5AD. If you would like to contribute an Article to next year’s Sedbergh Historian, please let us know as soon as possible. Because of the long lead time involved with publications such as this we must have finished articles on or before January 1st.

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