Well Chapel at Gosforth, both mediæval; in the mansion on Lord's
Island, Derwentwater, destroyed before the end of the seventeenth
century, we found green Borrowdale roofing slates. Purple Skiddaw
roofing slates were also found in the ruins of a seventeenth and
eighteenth century cottage at Causeway Head near Keswick. But
it was not until the eighteenth century that quarrying began to
develop. Mr. H. S. Cowper, in his _History of Hawkshead_, says
that the Swainsons, from about 1720, worked a quarry in the
Coniston flag formation near the Monk Coniston Tarns, and sent
out their flags even as far as Ulverston Church. Fifty years
later George Bownass, the Coniston blacksmith, was the great
purveyor and repairer of tools, and from his ledger the names of
his customers, gathered by Mr. Herbert Bownass, throw light on
the history of the industry in the second half of the eighteenth
century.
In 1770 appear William Jackson & Co. and Edward Jackson, no
doubt of Tilberthwaite. In 1771, the Company of Slate-getters at
Pennyrigg, Saddlestones, Cove and Hodge Close; Zachias Walker
& Co., at Cove; George Tyson & Co., quarry owners; William
Atkinson & Co., at Scoadcop Quarry; John Masacks & Co., at Cove;
John Atkinson, slate merchant, Torver Fell Quarry; Wm. Fleming
and Thomas Callan, Stang End Quarry; Matthew Carter, Stang End
Quarry; also George Thompson and Wm. Vickers at a quarry with an
unreadable name, and John Johnson, Jonathan Youdale, Wm. Wilson,
Anthony Rigg and Wm. Stopart, slate-getters. In 1772, William
Atkinson, Broadscop Quarry; John Speding & Co., quarry owners;
slate-getters at Bove Beck or Gatecrag Quarries; Wm. Parker, slate
merchant, Langdale; Wm. Fleming, Bessy Crag Quarry; Wm. Johnson,
Pennyrigg Quarry; and John Vickers, Thomas and Rowland Wilson,
John Casson, and George Bownass, slate-getters.
Of the quarries here mentioned as working 130 years ago Stang End
and Bessy Crag are in Little Langdale, Pennyrigg and Hodge Close
on opposite sides of the Tilberthwaite valley; Cove is on the
flank of the Old Man above Gaitswater; Scoadcop and Broadscop look
like variants of the name Goldscope, the quarry opposite Cove,
and near Blind Tarn, to the right hand as you go up Walna Scar;
Torverfell Quarry may be Ashgill; Saddlestones is the quarry seen
on the way up the Old Man (page 3).
Father West in 1774 said that "the most considerable slate
quarries in the kingdom" were in the Coniston Fells; the slate was
shipped from Penny Bridge "for differents parts of the kingdom."
In 1780, Green saw the quarry near the top of the Old Man "in
high working condition." W. Rigge & Son of Hawkshead, who worked
some of them, exported 1,100 tons and upward a year, and the
carriage to Penny Bridge was 6s. 10d. to 7s. 10d. a ton. The slate
was shipped at Kirkby Quay upon sailing boats, of which there
were enough upon the water in 1819 to furnish the subject of a
paragraph in Green's _Guide_ describing a scene of "bustle and
animation."
From papers given by Mr. John Gunson of Ulpha to the Coniston
Museum, we can gather a few particulars of the slate trade in the
early part of the nineteenth century. John Atkinson of Ivytree,
Blawith, in 1803 was interested in the Tilberthwaite Quarries, and
in 1804 applied for leave to redeem the Land Tax on the ground
they covered, the annual sum being £2 13s. 4d. From 1820 we find
John Atkinson & Co. working seven quarries--Ashgill (to the left
hand as you go up Walna Scar) the most important, occupying
usually about a dozen men, and worked at considerable profit until
1830, when it began to show a deficit; Tilberthwaite, after 1820
giving employment to about seven men, with fair profit until 1826,
when the men seem to have been withdrawn to work a quarry at Wood
in Tilberthwaite for a year and a half; Goldscope, employing from
nine to fifteen men between 1821 and 1826, when the Cove Quarry
seems to have been run with no great profit or energy until 1832;
and Mosshead, on the north-east side of the Old Man, at the head
of Scrow Moss, was worked in 1829 and at a loss. The Outcast
Quarry, near Slater's Bridge (now Little Langdale Quarries), is
mentioned only in 1830. The best workmen were paid 3s. 6d. a day;
lads seem to have started at 6d. There are notes of indentures,
in Atkinson's account-book, from which it seems that apprentices
at the riving and dressing began at 1s. or 1s. 6d., with a yearly
rise to 2s. 6d., before they were out of their time. The profits
were fluctuating--Goldscope in two years (1821-23) produced £1,072
17s. worth of slates, and paid £719 18s. 10d. in wages; Ashgill in
1826 made £381 less powder, tools, candles, &c.; but these were
good years. The royalties to Lady le Fleming on Cove and Mosshead
for 1827-32 amounted to £33 6s.
Tilberthwaite was the old possession of the Jacksons. Their
ancestor had come from Gosforth, Cumberland, about 1690, and is
said to have acquired it by marriage from the Walkers, who held
the land in freehold, not, as usual hereabouts, in customary
tenure under a lord of the manor. The Jacksons held most of
Tilberthwaite, Holm Ground, and Yewdale until their estates were
bought by Mr. James Garth Marshall, and it was by marriage with
an Elizabeth Jackson that John Woodburn of Kirkby Quarries came
to have an interest in the slate trade here. His name appears in
John Atkinson's account books after 1832, and he seems to have
taken over the actual working of the quarries. In 1904 the total
output of the Coniston quarries (Cove, High Fellside, Mossrigg and
Klondyke, Parrock, Saddlestone, and Walna Scar) was 3438 tons;
value at the quarries, £12,251.
WOOD.
In spite of local production, iron was not plentiful in the
eighteenth century. Iron nails were too valuable for common use,
though they are found in quantities at the old furnaces on Peel
Island and elsewhere, which must date from an earlier period.
Wooden pegs were substituted in making kists and other furniture,
house roofs, doors and boats. The trade in woodwork of many kinds
flourished in Coniston and its neighbourhood.
We have already mentioned the sixteenth century "Cowpers and
Turners, with makyng of Coles," and the Baptist tanner of Monk
Coniston in the seventeenth century; his tannery was, no doubt,
that at Bank Ground. Another old tannery was at Dixon Ground in
Church Coniston. Bark peeling and charcoal burning are among the
most ancient and continuous industries; the round huts of the
charcoal burners and their circular pitsteads can be traced,
though overgrown and so nearly obliterated as to resemble
prehistoric remains, in many of the woods, or places which once
were wooded.
In George Bownass' ledger, already quoted, John Bell & Co. are
named as wood-mongers in 1771, and in 1772 the same smith repaired
the "coal boate" owned by the executors of William Ford.
In 1820 the old _Lonsdale Magazine_ says that the woods were cut
every fifteen or sixteen years, and brought in the same value as
if the land had been under cultivation. The wood was used for
charcoal in smelting (and later in gunpowder making), for poles,
hoops, and birch besoms; bird-lime was made from the bark of the
holly, and exported to the West Indies.
As the Lancashire spinning increased there was a great demand for
bobbins, and large quantities of small copse wood went to the
turning mills. There was one near the Forge at Coniston, and a
later bobbin mill farther down stream at Low Beck. Others were
worked at Hawkshead Hill by W. F. Walker, and more recently at
Sunnybank in Torver. But this industry has now died out.
An agreement in possession of Mr. H. Bownass, dated February 13th,
1798, between John Jackson of Bank Ground, gent. (landlord), and
Robert Townson of the Gill, yeoman (tenant), of the one part, and
T. Mackreth of Bank Ground, tanner, and John Gaskerth of Mattson
Ground, Windermere, woollen manufacturer, of the other, authorises
the building of a watermill for spinning and carding on the land
called the Becks and Lowlands in Church Coniston. The carding mill
near Holywath was owned early in the nineteenth century by Mr.
Gandy of Kendal, and managed by Mrs. Robinson of the Black Bull.
* * * * *
The rise of Coniston trade is shown pretty accurately by the
returns of population in this period. In 1801 Church Coniston
contained 338 persons; in 1811, 460; in 1821, 566; and in 1831,
587. At this last date there were 101 houses inhabited and 9
empty, none building; and there were 102 families of which 25 were
employed in agriculture, 65 in trade, mining, &c., and 12 beside.
In Monk Coniston with Skelwith the population in 1801 was 286; in
1811, 386; in 1821, 426; and in 1831 it had dropped to 397. There
were then 78 houses occupied and 12 empty; 36 families lived by
agriculture, 2 by trade or manufacture, and 41 otherwise. This
means that the village was always the home of the miners and
quarrymen, while "at the back of the water" there was a gradually
increasing settlement of gentlefolk attracted to the place by
its scenery. In the later half of the century the population of
Church Coniston, after reaching 1324 in 1861, fell to 1106 in
1871, 965 in 1881, and 964 in 1891; showing the decline of the
once flourishing industrial enterprises. During the next decade
the slate trade increased, and in 1901 the population had risen
to 1111, whence the new rows of houses which, if not picturesque,
were much needed. It is no longer possible to crowd the cottages
as in mid-Victorian days when, it is said, the miners coming down
from their work took the beds _warm_ from the men on the other
shift. And yet, granting the necessity, one cannot help regretting
the meanness and ugliness of much recent building in the village.
A pleasant exception is the new office for the Bank of Liverpool
at the bridge, which is a clever adaptation of the old cottage,
making a pretty effect without pretentiousness; and perhaps, with
this example, local enterprise may still create--what is far
from impossible--a little town among the mountains worthy of its
environment.
IX.--OLD CONISTON.
The poet Gray, author of _The Elegy in a Country Churchyard_,
in his tour of 1769, and Gilpin, in search of the picturesque,
in 1772, did not seem to hear of Coniston as worth seeing. The
earliest literary description is that of Thomas West, the Scotch
Roman-Catholic priest, who wrote the _Antiquities of Furness_
in 1774. He illustrated his book with a map "As Survey'd by Wm.
Brasier 1745," in which are marked Coniston Kirk, Hall, Waterhead,
Townend, Thurston Water, Piel I., Nibthwaite, Furnace, Nibthwaite
Grange, Blawith Chap., Waterycot (by obvious error for "yeat"),
Oxenhouse, Torver Kirk, Torver Wood (Hoathwaite), New Brig (the
old pack-horse bridge), White Maidens, Blind Tarn, Goat's Tarn,
Low Water, Lever Water, and so on, giving names in use 150 years
ago.
West says:--"The village of Coniston consists of scattered houses;
many of them have a most romantic appearance owing to the ground
they stand on being extremely steep." Later editions add:--"Some
are snow white, others grey ... they are all neatly covered
with blue slate, the produce of the mountains, beautified with
ornamental yews, hollies, and tall pines or firs."
Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, author of the _Mysteries of Udolpho_ and
other romantic novels, came here in 1794 or earlier; and after
describing the Rhine, and all the other lakes, found Thurston Lake
"one of the most interesting, and perhaps the most beautiful,"
though she took the Hall for a Priory, and sentimentalised about
the "solemn vesper that once swelled along the lake from these
consecrated walls, and awakened, perhaps, the enthusiasm of the
voyager, while evening stole upon the scene." Conishead, not
Coniston, was the Priory; the confusion between the two has been
often made.
With fuller knowledge and from no hasty glance, Wordsworth soon
afterwards described the same spot (_Prelude_, VIII.):--
A grove there is whose boughs
Stretch from the western marge of Thurston mere
With length of shade so thick that whoso glides
Along the line of low-roofed water, moves
As in a cloister. Once--while in that shade
Loitering I watched the golden beams of light
Flung from the setting sun, as they reposed
In silent beauty on the naked ridge
Of a high eastern hill--thus flowed my thoughts
In a pure stream of words fresh from the heart:
Dear native regions, wheresoe'er shall close
My mortal course, there will I think on you....
Need I quote farther the famous outburst of patriotism?--it was
our lake that roused it. And another great enthusiasm was stirred
by our Coniston Fells.
In 1797 the landscape painter Turner came here as a youth of 23
on his first tour through the north. After his pilgrimage among
the Yorkshire abbeys, so finely described by Ruskin in _Modern
Painters_, vol. v., the young artist seems to have arrived among
the fells one autumn evening, and sketched the Old Man from the
Half-penny Alehouse. Then--I piece this together from the drawings
and circumstances--he went round to spend the night at the Black
Bull with old Tom Robinson and his wife, the daughter of Wonderful
Walker. She was a wonderful woman herself; had been first a
miner's wife, helping him to rise to a clerkship at the Leadhill
Mines in Dumfriesshire, and on his death returning to Seathwaite;
then, sorely against her old father's will, taking up with Tom,
and settling at Townend to farm; afterwards for many years at the
Black Bull, keeping the inn, managing the carding mill, and acting
as parish officer in her turn; a notable figure, in mob cap and
bedgown and brat; sharp tongued and shrewd of judgment. What
did she make, I wonder, of the sunburnt, broad-shouldered lile
cockney, with his long brown curls, his big nose and eagle eyes,
and his sketch-book, "spying fancies?" Early in the morning he
was out and scrambling up Lang Crags. It was one of the magical,
misty autumnal sunrises we know so well. There had been rain, and
Whitegill was full, thundering down the precipice at his feet.
The fog was breaking away from the valley beneath, and rising in
drifts and swirls among the clefts of Raven Crag, and the woods
of Tilberthwaite. Far away, serene in the morning light, stood
Helvellyn. It was his earliest sight of the mountain glory; the
thrill of emotions never to be forgotten. Going home to London,
he painted his first great mountain subject, afterwards in the
National Gallery--the first picture for which he was moved to
quote poetry in the Academy catalogue, and this from _Paradise
Lost_--"Morning on Coniston Fells:--
Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
From hill or streaming lake, dusky or grey,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold
In honour to the world's Great Author rise."
By this time the fashion of visiting the lakes was coming in,
enough to give employment to a guide--Creighton, whom Captain
Budworth, about 1790, described as a self-taught scholar, claiming
descent from a noble family in Scotland, and fond of bragging
about the nobility he had taken up the fells. His son William
was something of a genius; he was found here by John Southern
of Soho drawing a map of the world with home-made mathematical
instruments, but using them with immense skill. Mr. Southern took
him into his drawing office, and young Creighton, by hard study,
became a considerable linguist, astronomer, and cartographer.
To the old Black Bull, De Quincey came from Oxford in 1806 to see
Wordsworth. Next year William Green, the artist and guide-book
writer, was there, and went up Walna Scar with Robinson. Mrs.
Robinson died in extreme old age, and afterwards Adam Bell was
landlord (1849); in 1855, Edward Barrow.
The tourist business made more hotels necessary. In 1819 the old
Waterhead Inn was called the New Inn as distinguished from the
Black Bull. It stood at the head of the lake, where now is the
plantation between the letter-box and the sign-post. In Holland's
aquatint view (1792), a rambling farmhouse is shown there, but
not called an inn. This became a favourite stopping place for
tourists. John Ruskin's father was fond of it, and often stayed
there alone or with his family. But John Ruskin, returning in
1867, wrote--"Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing
in the boats, _exists_ no more." The present hotel was built by
Mr. Marshall in 1848-49, and tenanted by Mr. Atkinson, afterwards
by Mr. and Mrs. Sly, and now by Mr. Joseph Tyson.
In 1849 the landlord of the Crown was Isaac Massicks. The Ship, in
1849, was kept by John Aitkin; the Rising Sun, in 1855, by James
Harker. The old Half-penny Alehouse was pulled down in 1848 to
build Lanehead.
To tell the story of the many "worthies" of Coniston, and to trace
the fortunes of 'statesman families often wandering far into the
world, and winning a fair share of renown, would need a volume
to itself. One or two names we can hardly omit--such as Lieut.
Oldfield of Haws Bank, who piloted the fleet into Copenhagen, and
received his commission from Nelson for that deed; and Sailor
Dixon, who fought under Howe on the first of June and under
Duncan at Camperdown; twice taken prisoner, once retaken and once
escaping from Dunkirk; implicated in the great mutiny of 1797, and
yet acquitted by court martial, he lived at Coniston to the age of
71.
With these might be mentioned the soldier John Jackson, whose
records of foreign service in the Crimea and elsewhere are still
extant. His cousin, the late Roger Bownass, left many papers of
interest to the student of Old Coniston. The first of his family
came in 1710 from Little Langdale, and bought from William Fleming
of Catbank for thirteen pounds odd the smith's shop at the place
called Chapel Syke, _i.e._, where the Crown Inn bar is now; a
stream rising above the Parsonage used to cross the road there,
whence the name. He bought also the old Catbank Farmhouse and
its land now covered with cottages. His son was about twelve or
fourteen in 1745, and told the writer of the manuscript history of
the family that he remembered taking a cartload of cannon balls,
forged at the smithy, to Kendal for the Duke of Cumberland's army.
By 1773 a new site was needed for the smithy, and it was moved to
Bridge End, where the Post Office now stands, on land bought from
William Pennington of Kendal, wool comber, by George Bownass, son
of the original blacksmith who by this time had died at the age
of 87. Here a large business was carried on in quarry and edge
tools, employing a number of men and apprentices; and profitable
enough to enable the owner to buy many plots of land round about,
to which his son William, who inherited the business, added
other purchases, and still managed to save £100 a year. William
Bownass died in 1818, and was the first person buried after the
rebuilding of the church; of his seven children, Isaac, of Queen's
College, Cambridge, became a successful schoolmaster, but died at
the age of 28, and Roger, for 45 years postmaster at Coniston,
died in 1889. Old George Bownass, the second of the name, died
a year later than his son William; one of his daughters married
a Coniston man, William Gelderd, who became the first mayor of
Kendal after the passing of the new Municipal Act.
In the Christmas number, 1864, of the old Liverpool _Porcupine_
is a short story by Dr. Gibson which, if we read _Bownass_
for "Forness," _Spedding_ for "Pedder," and _Coniston_ for
"Odinsmere," as the writer certainly intended, becomes a very
vivid and interesting picture of Coniston folk and their
surroundings at the beginning of the last century. It describes
the smith "George Forness" as the well-to-do and industrious
craftsman, in his busy workshop, surrounded by the village gossips
at Candlemas. To him enters "old Matthew Pedder," bound next
morning for Ulverston, to settle accounts. The smith entrusts him
with money to pay his iron bill at Newlands, and save himself
a journey. The next scene shows us a lane through the deerpark
before dawn; Matthew on his half-broken mare attacked by a wastrel
who has overheard the conversation, and now tries his unaccustomed
hand at highway robbery. The mare throws him down, and Matthew
gallops away believing his unknown assailant to be dead. Ten
months later Matthew is called from his house in Tilberthwaite to
the death-bed of Tom Bratton, and comes back subdued and silent.
"What did he want wi' yee?" his family clamoured. "To ex me to
forgive him." "Then it _was_ him 'at tried to rob ye?" "Niver ye
mind wha tried to rob me--neahbody _did_ rob me!" "And what did
ye say till him?" "I ext him to forgive me, and we yan forgev
t'udder."
The slackness of anything like police in those days is illustrated
by a document in possession of Mr. John Bell, which is an
agreement dated 1791 on the part of leading villagers to form a
sort of Trades Defence Association to preserve their property from
"the Depredation of Highwaymen, Robbers, Housebreakers and other
Offenders." It is signed by Edward Jackson, Isaac Tubman, Geo.
Bownas (the smith), James Robinson, George Dixon, John Gelderd,
David Kirkby, John Dawson, and by Thomas Dixon for Mr. John
Armstrong, each of whom subscribed eighteen pence to found the
association, and resolves in strictly legal form to stand by his
neighbours in all manner of eventualities.
The smith's ledger, already quoted, gives also a number of
farmer's names in 1770-74, which may be worth recording as a
contribution to the history of Coniston folk. At Littlearrow lived
John Fleming and Wm. Ion; at Spone How (Spoon Hall), Geo. Dixon;
at Heathwaite, John Fleming; at Bowmanstead, T. Dixon and T.
Parke; at Dixon Ground, John Ashburner; at Catbank, Roger Tyson;
at Brow, T. Bainbridge; at Bove Beck, Wm. Dixon; at Far End, Wm.
Parke; at Tarnhouse (Tarn Hows), John Johnson; at "Utree," Geo.
Walker; at Oxenfell, Christopher Huertson; at Tilberthwaite,
John Jackson; at Holme Ground, Wm. Jackson; at Lane End, Henry
Dawson; at Waterhead, Anthony Sawrey; at Hollin Bank, John Suert;
at Bank Ground, John Wilson; at Howhead, Eliz. Harrison; at Town
End (Coniston Bank), Ed. Barrow and Wm. Edrington; at Lowsanparke
(Lawson Park), Wm. Adinson. Other well-known names are Adam Bell
(Black Bull), John Bell, John Geldart, T. Gasketh, G. Knott, David
Kirkby, Matthew Spedding, T. and W. Towers. Many of these names
are still represented in the neighbourhood, but the old 'statesman
holdings have nearly all passed into alien hands.
A list dated between 1830 and 1840 enumerates the acreage of
fifty-three separate estates in Church Coniston, ranging from
the Hall (Lady le Fleming's), over 397 acres, and Tilberthwaite
(John Jackson's), over 135 acres, to Henry Braithwaite's plot
of 15 perches. But of the whole number only twenty-five, or
less than half, are smaller than ten acres. In 1841 the list of
Parliamentary voters for Church Coniston gives twenty owners of
house and land in their own occupation out of forty-six voters. In
this list, James Garth Marshall of Leeds appears as owner of High
Yewdale, occupied--no longer owned--by a Jackson; but there are
very few non-resident landlords on the list.
So late as 1849 the directory mentions as 'statesmen owning their
farms in Monk Coniston and Skelwith, Matthew Wilson of Hollin
Bank, John Creighton of Low Park, and William Burns of Hodge
Close; in Church Coniston, William Barrow of Little Arrow, William
Dixon of Dixon Ground, Benjamin Dixon of Spoonhall, James Sanders
of Outhwaite, and William Wilson of Low Beck.
But after the "discovery" of the lakes, in the last quarter of the
eighteenth century, Coniston began to be the resort of strangers
in search of retirement and scenery.