Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire
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Historic Sites Of Lancashire And Cheshire By James Croston HISTORIC SITES OF LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE. CHAPTER I. SWARTHMOOR HALL AND THE FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. THE traveller who, by chance, finds himself in the quaint old town of Ulverston with a few hours at his disposal will find no difficulty in occupying them pleasantly and profitably. In the busy capital of Furness he is on the very threshold of that great storehouse of English scenic beauty, the Lake Country; almost at his feet is the broad estuary of the Leven, and beyond, spreads Morecambe Bay with its green indented shores, presenting alternately a flood of waters and a trackless waste of shifting sand. In that pleasant region there is many a picturesque corner, many a place of historic note, and many an ancient building that wakes the memories of bygone days. One of the historic sites, and certainly not the least interesting, is within the compass of a short half hour's walk—Swarthmoor Hall, for years the resort, and, for a time, the home of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends; and scarcely less interesting is the primitive-looking little structure that stands within a few hundred yards of it, the first regularly constituted meeting-house in which Fox's disciples, the "Friends of Truth," or the "Children of Light," as they were indifferently called, worshipped. The locality is one he always loved. Here he gained his most enthusiastic converts, achieved his greatest triumphs, and suffered his severest persecutions; it was here, too, he won his faithful wife, and here, also, in the later years of his life, he loved to retire to recruit his weakened energies and prepare himself for a renewal of his arduous work. It was a warm summer's evening when we set forth upon our short pilgrimage; the air was unusually clear, a dreamy quietude spread around, and the sun, as it declined towards the west, glowed grandly upon the distant woods and fells. As we slowly mounted the ascending road we could see the lonely sands gleaming in the mellow light, and the broad expanse of water that lay far out in the offing calm and smooth as a mirror; while in rear, and upon the right, the wild mountains stood out in picturesque disorder, dark, rugged, and forbidding, save where here and there a golden radiance brightened their loftiest peaks. A short distance beyond the railway we turned off the road and struck into a pleasant meadow path on the right that soon brought us to a green and bosky dell, at the bottom of which a mountain stream, the Levy Beck, meandered freakishly beneath the embracing trees, prattling with the rough boulder stones and aquatic plants along its course, and telling its admiration in a never-ending song of gladness as it rippled onwards towards the sea. The little bowery, untrodden nook is just the place for fays and fairies to secrete themselves, the spot of all others where John Ruskin would expect to catch sight of Pan, Apollo, and the Muses. Every sight and sound is suggestive of peaceful quietude, and, while the lazy wind stirs the over-arching branches for the warm sunshine to steal through, we are tempted to linger in the vernal solitude, watching the playful ripples on the water and listening to the gentle murmuring around—— Nature's ceaseless hum, Voice of the desert, never dumb. An old-fashioned bridge bestrides the stream, and the stump of a tree offers an inviting seat. While we stay to contemplate the scene, the soft zephyrs that play about and the alternate sunshine and shade as the light clouds float overhead induce a dreamy forgetfulness of outer things. Then we are up again, and, crossing the stream, follow a rough and miry cart- way that climbs up the opposite height, and brings us in a few minutes to the breezy summit. Swarthmoor, for that is the name, possesses historic renown. It lies just where the parishes of Ulverston, Pennington, and Urswick join each other, and is said by tradition to have derived its name from the Flemish general, "Bold Martin Swart," or Swartz, a valiant soldier of noble family, who, in 1487, with Lord Lovel and the Earls of Lincoln and Kildare, encamped here with an invading army of 7,000 German and Irish troops, who had landed at the Pile of Fouldrey with the object of placing Lambert Simnel on the throne of England. But tradition in this instance, is at fault; for the name has a much earlier origin, and is met with as Warte as far back as the time of Duke William of Normandy. At a later date, when the soldiers of King Charles had entered Furness and "plundered the place very sore," as the old chronicle has it, Colonel Rigby, the Parliamentarian commander, temporarily withdrew from Thurland Castle and started in hot pursuit; and we are told that the Roundheads, after stopping on Swarthmoor to pray, marched on to Lindale, a couple of miles further, where they fought with such vehemence and resolution that the unlucky Cavaliers were put to flight. But Swarthmoor has other and more peaceful associations. On reaching the summit of the moor, which is now enclosed, you see in front of you a large, irregular, and somewhat lofty pile of building, of ancient date, which, though by no means pretentious in its outward appearance, still wears an air of sober dignity that well accords with the memories that gather round. Evil times have fallen upon it, and it is now occupied as a farmhouse; but in its pristine days it was successively the home of Judge Fell and George Fox. From the high table-land on which it stands you can look round upon a scene but little changed from what it must have been when the father of Quakerism gazed upon it, more than two centuries ago. The old hills and the wild fells still lift their heads to the breezes of heaven; the tide ebbs and flows over those broad sands as it did of yore; there are the same bleak moorlands, the same broad fields, the same crops of golden wheat, and the same sun ripening for the harvest; but how changed are all human affairs since earnest George Fox, "the man in leather breeches," discoursed in Ulverston church, and Judge Fell's wife "stood up in her pew and wondered at his doctrine, for she had never heard the like before." The hall evidently dates from the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, and, though it has been altered from time to time to meet the wants of successive occupants, it still retains many of the architectural features of that period. The roof is gabled; the windows are square, with the usual latticed panes and heavy mullions and transoms—they have in places been bricked up, but their original position may be determined by the moulded dripstones which still remain—and on one side a square bay of three storeys projects from the line of the main structure, the only feature specially noticeable in the building. Externally the place has a forlorn and neglected appearance, and exhibits unequivocal signs of heedless indifference and unseemly disrespect. It is partially surrounded with barns, shippons, and outhouses, and heaps of refuse and farmyard litter strewn about give an air of meanness and disorder that but ill accord with its earlier associations as the abode of a vice-chancellor and circuit judge. SWARTHMOOR HALL. We loitered about for some time, and then, pushing back the gate, crossed a little enclosure which seems to have been at some time a garden, but is now only so by courtesy, and entered by a narrow doorway a passage that communicates with the "hall." Though shorn of its original proportions, it is still a spacious apartment; plain, however, to a degree, and exhibiting the gloomy character common to many houses of the Tudor period; it has a plain flagged floor, some remains of oak wainscotting, and a huge fireplace that seems to have been intended to make up in warmth what was lacking in cheerfulness. In this room the earlier meetings of the Friends were held, and here it is said that for forty years they were in the habit of assembling, after which the chapel on Swarthmoor was built by George Fox's order and at his cost. On one side of the room is a deep embayed recess with a slightly raised floor—a cosy nook, with mullioned and quaint latticed windows lighting it on three sides, and here is preserved an old-fashioned oak desk, a treasured relic of the great reformer. A couple of stone steps lead into a small and dimly-lighted room which tradition affirms to have been the study of Judge Fell and afterwards of George Fox. The upper chambers are large and airy, and one of them, more pretentious than the others, exhibits some remains of ancient ornamentation. An old four-post bedstead of carved oak, on which it is said that Fox slept, still remains, and we were told that the privilege of sleeping upon it is never denied to any member of the Society of Friends, but that it is one very rarely availed of. From one of the chambers on this floor a door opens to the outside, though at a considerable distance from the ground, leading to the belief that there has been at some time or other a projecting balcony, and it is said that within the memory of persons still living there was such a projection with a sort of canopy above it.