A History of Cumberland

1 ' '«'. ^^^ttmttm^aatHKa Gc M.U 942.8501 P38h 1267335 ^NElAl-OGY COL-UEICTION ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00726 2162 y\A^ I ^ ^^^^# j?^> c^^ / // v-^' ^'^ .^ gAnSA IHFQRMATIOH SE8VMI 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZ* iEW YOtKt >v Y. HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND. POPULAR COUNTT HISTORIES. HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND, RICHARD S. FERGUSON , M.A., LL.M., F.S.A. "chancellor of CARLISLE, PRESIDENT CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORLAND ANTIQUARIAN AND ARCH/EOLOGICAL SOCIETY, AND AUTHOR OF SEVERAL LOCAL WORKS. BRITISH i^iFOR^!AT'^^^: W i NEW YORK THE LlBFjARY 1^ \ LONDON: "^ ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. i8go. PREFACE The time has gone past for writing a history of Cumber- land, or of any county, on the old-fashioned lines and scale. The work is now subdivided ; the fauna and the flora, the pedigrees and the geology, the ecclesiology, and the everything else, are dealt with b}^ specialists in little books devoted exclusively to one subject. A few years ago one or two ponderous tomes supplied a country gentleman with all that was in print concerning his county, whereas nowadays a whole bookcase is required to house the more portable and numerous volumes that are in vogue. A guide to these volumes is required, and that the writer has endeavoured to supply for Cumber- land in the classified list of books relating to that county which precedes the index. As to this volume itself, it is an attempt to discharge the functions of the " General Introduction " to an old- fashioned county history in two or three quarto volumes. How far the writer has succeeded it is not for him to say. Many monastic chartularies and other documents relating to Cumberland are still unprinted and unindexed. These the writer has done his best to consult, but until they are printed and indexed, he, or any other local writer, must expect in course of time to be set right on many points. The writer has made liberal use of papers in the Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and ArchEeological Society, and thanks the authors thereof for much assistance and advice, parti- cularly his old friends W. Jackson, F.S.A., the Rev. T. Lees, F.S.A., the Rev. W. S. Calverley, F.S.A., the Rev. H. Whitehead, and others. Dr. Prescott's pamphlets have been of much service, and suggested many important points. Mr. Robert Ferguson's works have been a great help ; but it would occupy too much space to enumerate all the authors from whom the writer has derived information. The Classi- fied List of Books must be turned to. HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.—THE EARLY INHABITANTS. The most northerly point of the county of Cumberland is niched into an angle between the English county of Northumberland and the Scotch one of Roxburgh, at a place in the Cheviots situate on the Kershope Water or Burn, and called on the six-inch Ordnance Map Scotch Knowe, but called by the older writers on local history Lamyford. From Scotch Knowe the western boundary of the county runs down the Kershope Water to Kershope Foot, the junction of the Kershope and Liddell Waters, then down Liddell Water to its junction with the river Esk, and then down the Esk a short distance to a point called Scotsdike : hence the boundary line runs due west to the river Sark, a distance of four miles, defined by an earthen bank, known as the Scotsdike ; the boundary next runs down the Sark to its junction with the Esk, and down the Esk into the Solway Firth. So far the direction of the boundary has been generally south-west. The Solway Firth now becomes the boundary of Cumberland, and runs westerly as far as Skinburness, where it turns to the History of Cumberland. southward to St. Bees, whose North Head is the most westernly point of Cumberland, and marks the Hmit of the Solway Firth. From St. Bees the Irish Sea forms the boundaiy, until the mouth of the river Duddon is reached, where Hodbarrow Point marks the most southerly point of the county. From Scotch Knowe to Hodbarrow the western boundary of Cumberland is defined by water, fresh and salt, with the exception of the four-mile bank of earth cutting off the angle between Esk and Sark. This angle was added to Cumberland on the division between England and Scotland, in 1552, of the Debateable Lands, which, from being a common pasture to both countries, had degenerated into a lawless harbour of ruffians. To return to the Scotch Knowe, the eastern boundary of the county of Cumberland runs from thence in a south-easterly direction over the fells, keeping to the eastward of Christenbury Crag, by a line defined, more or less, by piles of stones and mounds of earth, until it runs into a little affluent of the river Irthing, called variously the Troutbeck and the Gair Beck ; it continues down this affluent to the Irthing, and down Irthing until it meets the Poltross Burn, near Gilsland Railway Station. It next ascends the Poltross and goes up the fells, and after running south for a time it turns due east and makes a great detour to the east side of the watershed to include the mining district of Alston, running up or down one or other burn, over or along one or other watershed, to the most easterly point of the county at Knoutberry Hill : hence over the fells to the river Tees, which it ascends in a westerly direction to its head ; thence over the Watershed, and by the Crowdundle Beck to the river Eden, and down the Eden to its junction with the Eamont. It then ascends that river to its source in Ullswater, which lake, for two-thirds of its length, forms the boundary between Cumberland and Westmorland. 2 ; Introductory. 3 The boundary leaves the lake at the west end of Gow- barrow Park, and by Glencoin Beck ascends Helvellyn, from which it descends over Dolly Waggon Pike to Dunmail Raise on the coach-road between Ambleside and Keswick. From Dunmail Raise it proceeds over Bow Fell to the Shire Stones on Wrynose, where the three counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire meet in a point. From thence it runs to Blackball above Ulpha, and then down the Duddon to the sea. The area thus enclosed is irregular in outline, and the mining district of Alston is separated from the rest of the county, with which it has little in common, by a lofty range of fells, rising in Crossfell to a height of 2,930 feet above the sea-level. These fells extend along the whole east side of the county from Scotch Knowe to close upon Penrith, and are part of the great range which runs from the Tweed to Derbyshire, losing itself in the Midlands they include, beside Alston Moor in the extreme east of the county, the bleak expanses of Spadeadam Waste and Bewcastle Fells in the extreme north. The south-west angle of Cumberland is occupied by mountains and fells, and forms part of what is well known as the Lake District ; these mountains and fells extend eastward nearly as far as Penrith, and northward to Caldbeck and Binsey : on the west a narrow strip of plain, widening as it goes to the north, separates them from the sea. They include such famous heights as Scawfell, Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Bow Fell, the Pillar, Saddleback, etc. ; and the lakes of Ullswater, Bassenthwaite, Derwentwater, Crum- mock, Wastwater, Thirlmere, Ennerdale, Buttermere, and Loweswater, as well as many smaller lakes and tarns. The eastern and the western fells approach each other somewhat narrowly at Penrith, from whence they widen out to the north, including between them a plain, the great central plain of Cumberland, afterwards familiar as I — ; History of Cumberland. Inglewood Forest, which has in its centre, rising like the umbo of a shield, the conspicuous hill known as Barrock Fell; this plain sweeps round to the westward by the strip of alluvial flats south of the Solway to join the plain between the Lake Hills and the sea. The Lake District of Cumberland sends its waters mainly westward to the sea. At the south, Duddon gathers the waters from Wrynose, and, running between Cumberland and Lancashire, expands into an estuary some nine miles long, over whose sands, bared at low water, somewhat dangerous fords exist. A little to the north, Esk, Mite and Irt drain Eskdale, Miterdale, and Wasdale, and unite in the land-locked harbour of Raven- glass, now so silted up and shallow on the bar as to be almost useless. Calder and Ehen drain the Ennerdale District, the latter issuing out of Ennerdale Lake, The Derwent, rising in Borrowdale, flows through Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lake, and falls into the sea at Workington. Its affluents are the Greta,, which drains Thirlmere, and the Cocker, which performs the same office for Buttermere and Crummock Lakes while the Elne, or Ellen, rises in Caldbeck Fells, and drains a range of plain between those fells and the sea at Maryport. From the eastern side of the Lake Fells issue the rivers Eamont, Petteril, and Caldew, all of which empty them- selves into Eden : the first issues from Ullswater, and runs due east ; the second from Greystoke Park, Hutton, and Skelton, and turning to the north drains the centre of the plain of Cumberland, and falls into the Eden close to the east of Carlisle ; the third rises on Caldbeck Fells, and, running north, drains a portion of the plain of Cumberland, and falls into the Eden just west of Carlisle.

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