Ossik Coots and Collared Doves The story of an amazing community and its church – from the beginning. By Reverend Colin R Honour. M.Ed. 1 Copyright (c) 2011 Colin R Honour The right of Colin Honour to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the written permission of the author. 2 to all the ‘characters’ who have made this church and parish what it is. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank our special friends at Urswick for introducing me to its remarkable past and sharing a vision for its future, and to the original Hidden Light Project Group for all we shared together in good times and bad. To Steve Dickinson, local archaeologist, for firing my imagination in the early days, and for permission to reproduce his line drawings of the inscribed stones in the church’s north wall from ‘Beacon on the Bay’, and photographs of the ‘threshold stone’ between tower and nave exposed in 2003. To Sir Roy Strong for introducing the ‘wider picture’ in a way we can all understand, and for allowing me to quote from his little gem, ‘A Little History Of The English Country Church’. Thanks go to the patient Archivist and Staff at the Barrow Central Library Local Resources Section, and also at Kendal Library, for their willingness to go the extra mile for me. Thanks, too, to John Imlach and Graham Perry at the church for unearthing additional information and providing local contacts, to Ray Wilson, for his love of Urswick and care in nurturing its historical heritage. And to all those people, known and unknown, who over the many generations have kept, and are keeping, this beautiful church at the heart of their community, shared it, shaped it, securing its fabric and its story for future generations to enjoy. Colin R Honour Heversham November 2011 4 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: In the beginning.... shifting sands 7-15 Chapter Two: Witnesses in Stone 16-33 Chapter Three: The Norman Revolution 34-46 Chapter Four: There’s no smoke without fire 47-54 Chapter Five: From Columba to Cromwell 55-67 Chapter Six: Of Collared Doves and Scandalous Living 68-80 Chapter Seven: The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate 81-93 Chapter Eight: New Broom: Same Problems 94-110 Chapter Nine: Postlethwaite’s Passion 111-129 Chapter Ten: They also serve... 130-142 Full Bibliography and list of Resources for further study 5 BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION If only the stones could speak! The roots of this book lie in eight years of parochial ministry spent in this beautiful corner of North-West England where the remoteness and isolation of the Low Furness Peninsula has left so much of its early history undisturbed. So here’s a timely reminder of an exceptional community whose earliest footprint can still be seen and experienced in and through its local parish church and surrounding landscape. The very structure and the fabric of this amazing church of St. Mary and St. Michael, Great Urswick can still show us much of the local colour as it has evolved over more than 1500 years but, of course, it’s the people who give it it’s lasting character. Urswick is certainly not short of character!! To be a true ‘Ossik Coot’ one would have to have been born and bred in the village and in the light of its long and distinguished history that particular heritage perhaps explains both their fierce village loyalty and their characteristic ‘directness’. Father Thomas West, writing in the late 1700’s, graciously described the folk of Furness as being ‘civil and well-behaved to strangers, hospitable and humane’. He continued: ‘This universal civility and good manners is the characteristic of furness, and distinguishes it from those parts of the kingdom where as importunate curiosity degenerates into rudeness and barbarism, so flagrant and offensive amongst those of the lower stations. At church and market their appearance is decent, and sobriety is a general virtue. Quarrels and affrays are seldom heard of at fairs and public meetings. The modesty of the female sex and sobriety of the men prevent irregularities before marriage, and secure conjugal love and affection through life. The women are handsome, the men in general robust. As the air of Furness is salubrious, so the inhabitants of Furness are very healthy’. A little piece of heaven, then. There are those ‘collared doves’ who, like Reverend George Humphriss, have over the years portrayed some of the folk in a less rosy light and dared to suggest a degree of intolerance, stubbornness, and the love of an argument. A clergyman’s lot is not always what it seems..... as we shall discover. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction- sometimes it is fiction woven into the fabric! Here we shall explore both myth and legend, and tap seriously into the truth. Let the journey begin............... 6 CHAPTER ONE In the Beginning.... shifting sands Before the boundary revisions of 1974 the Furness Peninsula was part of ‘Lancashire north of the Sands’, in other words on the northern edge of the extensive and expansive Morecambe Bay. In fact, its most accessible route from the south (if not the safest) in earliest days, was across the shifting tidal route ‘over Sands’. In more recent years the area has been dominated by the growth of Barrow-in-Furness and its ship-building industry, and the number of smaller ‘villages’ on the Peninsula like Great Urswick and Little Urswick have increasingly become ‘commuter villages’ for those working away from the area or working in BAE Systems at Barrow or up the west coast at the nuclear energy plant at Sellafield. Whilst farming continues at some level many of the houses have become retirement homes for the growing numbers of older persons seeking the ‘peace and quiet’ of the countryside. There is, however, a strong local identity and fierce pride in its heritage by many whose families can be traced back for a number of generations, a feature and in some ways a benefit of having being somewhat insulated from the rest of the country for most of its history. It is because of this isolation that much of its historic past has been overlooked and ignored and it is only in recent years, particularly with the new interest in ‘Celtic spirituality’, that the area has begun to attract closer attention and its historical ‘treasures’ unearthed and placed in context. Amazingly, much of this historic footprint can still be seen in the fabric and the landscape of the church of St. Mary and St. Michael, Great Urswick, and no doubt there is much yet to be discovered and added to this fascinating journey. Steve Dickinson, a local archaeologist of whom more later, wrote: ‘Examination of the landscape around the church, and the church itself, allows a presentation of new and emerging archaeological evidence for a major late and/or sub-Romano-British church and monastic foundation; subsequently influenced by Irish and Anglo-Saxon activity.’ (The Beacon on the Bay, 2002) Not all of his conclusions and ‘inferences’ have found universal acceptance, not least by other archaeologists, and there is a lack of follow-up ‘evidence’ to date to support some of his most far-reaching claims. However, he has opened up for us an extremely helpful and lively debate which will continue. Sadly, some important discoveries made by Mr. Dickinson in his initial survey have gone unacknowledged and have become lost in later disputes and difficulties, and it is with this particular piece of ‘evidence’ that the ‘story in stone’ at Urswick begins. I refer to three fragments of ‘early Christian inscribed stones’ built into the outer north wall of the nave which are possibly part of a late or sub-Roman church dedication slab. 7 Line Drawings reproduced with permission from ‘Beacon on the Bay’ (2002) by Steve Dickinson. 8 Dickinson states that further fragments of early Christian inscribed stones can be seen elsewhere in the same wall. It is suggested that these stones incorporating cross symbols were deliberately chosen as a suitably Christian deterrent on the north side of the church. Readers might be interested to note that during Anglo-Saxon and Norman times, and probably even later than that, burials tended to be made to the south of the church because there was a tradition that the devil haunted the north side in order to take wandering souls off to hell! In a later publication about the church at Great Urswick and its landscape called ‘By water, by stone’ produced in 2004, Dickinson refers to three other ‘inscribed and/or sculpted stones in the church’. The first of these is a slab of pale gritstone that forms the threshold between the nave and the belfry. This was revealed in 2003 when re-wiring and work to the heating system was being undertaken. He claims that the ‘letter forms revealed through flash photography on its underside.... is considered to display part of a rare 5th-8th century AD memorial dedication’. Unfortunately this stone is currently inaccessible. The second stone is fastened to the sill of the tall nave window closest to the church porch door. It was actually discovered in 1911 being used as a lintel in another south nave window, hence its peculiar shape, having been cut and re-used. It is part of an Anglo-Saxon sandstone cross, originally some 3 metres high.