into the rubble core of them went many Roman inscribed stones that
antiquaries would now dearly prize. Adrian’s Tower, with the Well
Tower, was built originally in Roman times: the first so early as A.D.
125, and the Well Tower in A.D. 305, by Constantius Chlorus. Roger,
the Norman, seems to have repaired and added to these. In Roman times
the basement of Adrian’s Tower was a place where the corn for the
garrison was ground. Later it became a bakery, and has since 1892 been
a museum. In the excavations of 1890, an old floor and a considerable
deal of rubbish were removed, to a depth of eight and a half feet,
revealing the original level. In the course of these works a portion
of the Roman millstone for grinding corn was discovered, and here it
remains, in company with such diverse objects as a Roman altar, found
in the foundations of the Shire Hall in 1797; some pikes captured from
the Scottish rebels of 1715, forbidding festoons of fetters, and a
“madman’s chair,” fitted with bolts and chains, as used at the time
when the dark lower chambers of the keep served the purpose of county
lunatic asylum, and, together with the fearful treatment accorded the
lunatics, served only to confirm them in their lunacy. There are indeed
some very fearful things in this old fortress, place of judgment, and
prison of Lancaster Castle, which has been everything, from the home of
kings down to debtors’ prison and county gaol.
As Shire Hall, Sessions House, Assize Courts, and gaol it still
remains. Prominent among the gruesome sights of the castle are the
dungeons in the Well Tower, one below the other, in the basement, where
prisoners lay in darkness, secured to the floor by the iron rings that
still remain. The roof of the upper dungeon bears witness to the method
of its construction. The earth having been first spread with a strongly
made layer of wattled osiers, liquid cement was then run over them, and
in drying formed a compact mass.
The earth was then easily excavated beneath the ingeniously constructed
roof. Some few of the osiers still remain in it.
[Sidenote: _MALEFACTOR-BRANDING_]
More modern resources of justice are seen in the Drop Room, and in the
Crown Court itself, where, at the back of the dock, may yet be seen
the “Holdfast” and the branding-iron once used in branding malefactors
with an M on the brawn of the left thumb. The operation was performed
in Court and the success of it announced by the Head Gaoler in the
formula, “A fair mark, my Lord!”
[Illustration: “A FAIR MARK, MY LORD.”]
The tragical memories of Lancaster Castle range from mediæval deeds
of blood down to the executions of prisoners taken in the Jacobite
rebellions, and to the merely sordid executions since it has been a
gaol. From 1799 to 1889, when the castle ceased to be a gaol for the
whole of Lancashire, no fewer than 228 criminals were hanged here.
He is a fortunate visitor who comes to Lancaster at the opening of
Assize (unless he comes for trial), for old times live again in
the pageant of the Judges’ reception by the Javelin-men, in their
costume of blue and yellow, who escort them to their lodgings, and
stand attendant in Court at the opening of the commission of Oyer and
Terminer.
The impressive approach to Lancaster Castle is by way of John o’
Gaunt’s gateway, one of the many works added by that historic
personage, Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” when his father,
Edward the Third, created him Duke of Lancaster and raised Lancashire
in consequence to the condition of County Palatine. The “time-honoured”
one himself stands in effigy in a niche over the door-way. One would
like to think the statue contemporary with him, but the guide-books,
from which no derogatory secrets are hid, tell the disappointing tale
that it dates only from 1822.
[Illustration: JAVELIN-MAN.]
[Illustration: LANCASTER CASTLE.]
[Sidenote: “_HORSESHOE CORNER_”]
John o’ Gaunt is not to be avoided in Lancaster, castle or town. He
is, indeed, to be found pretty well all over the country, for he was
not merely Duke of Lancaster (although that was no small matter), but
owned manors in almost every part of England. Moreover, from him sprang
the House of Lancaster, the Red Rose, whose struggles with the Yorkist
White Rose form so long and bloody a series of chapters in English
history. Here, in Lancaster, from “John o’ Gaunt’s Chair,” the topmost
turret of the castle keep, down to Horseshoe Corner, the great Duke is
everywhere, and figures on picture-postcards, china, and silver spoons
with a fine impartiality. Horseshoe Corner is an otherwise commonplace
crossing of streets where, in the middle of the roadway, a horseshoe is
inserted. It is the representative, at this long interval of time, of a
shoe cast by John o’ Gaunt’s horse on the spot, and is renewed every
seven years.
St. Mary’s Church, adjoining the castle, and separated from it only
by that sad spot on the terrace where criminals were hanged in the
times of public executions, is a fine bold structure of Perpendicular
character, and possibly a good deal might be said of it in the
architectural way; but it interests me chiefly as containing a memorial
brass, now very much the worse for wear, to Thomas Covell, Governor of
the castle forty-eight years, Coroner forty-six years, and six times
Mayor of Lancaster. He died in 1639, aged seventy-eight, and is the
subject of the following encomiastic verse:
Cease, cease to mourne, all teares are vaine to aide,
Hee’s fledd, not dead; dissolved, not destroy’d.
In Heaven his soule doth rest, his bodie heere
Sleepes in this dust, and his fame everie where
Triumphs; the towne, the country farther forth,
The land throughout proclaimes his noble worth.
Speake of a man soe kinde, soe courteous,
So free and every waie magnanimous,
That storie told at large heere doe you see,
Epitomiz’d in briefe: Covell was hee.
He is represented standing, with hands clasped in prayer; a long robe,
open in front, disclosing his tall military jack-boots.
[Sidenote: _A GOOD-FELLOW GAOLER_]
No merrier fellow than the good Covell ever presided over dungeon and
little-ease. Prisoners who were fortunate enough to be consigned to
Lancaster Castle used it as a country house; and, so that they fairly
gave their parole to return, went and came very much as they pleased.
Some of them, that is to say. Popish recusants were sure of the best
attention, and the Bishop of Carlisle, writing with some heat upon the
subject, declared “they have liberty to go when and whither they list;
to hunt, hawk, and go to horse-races.” Enjoying life himself, Covell
was kindly disposed to others of like temperament. To Burton, however,
one of the Puritans who was sent to Lancaster Castle to have his ears
cropped, this high-spirited Governor was a “beastly man.”
“Drunken Barnaby” was not of that opinion. Doubtless the two drank many
a noggin together; Barnaby writing him down—
A Jaylor ripe and mellow
The world hath not suche a fellow.
John Taylor, the so-called “Water Poet,” who on his “Pennyless
Pilgrimage” to Edinburgh and back levied toll on many men’s hospitable
tables, tells how
The Iayler kept an Inne, good beds, good cheere,
Where, paying nothing, I found nothing deere;
and in short he was very much, in the amateur way, what his brother was
professionally, who kept the “George” inn, in the town; and, strange to
say, his wife was no less hospitable than himself.
We are not accustomed to think of Lancaster as a seaport, but it
was once much more important in that way than Liverpool itself. To
be sure, that was long ago, but not so very, very long: no further
back, indeed, than the time of Charles the First, who, in levying what
has been called the “objectionable” tax—but what tax is not, to the
taxee?—of Ship Money, assessed Lancaster at £30, Liverpool at £25, and
Preston at £20. What Manchester has laboriously and expensively done
in its Ship Canal might more easily and cheaply be effected by Preston
and Lancaster, lying nearer the sea: and doubtless a time will come—but
with that we have no concern. Meanwhile there are salmon in the Lune,
as wanderers along the riverside by Crook o’ Lune may discover, and
Lancaster as yet knows nothing of great commercial docks. With modern
developments, however, the Town Council has felt the need of a borough
motto. “Time-honoured Lancaster” was suggested, but the Heralds’
College, sticklers for accuracy, pointing out that this referred to
John o’ Gaunt and not to the town, suggested “Luck to Loyne” instead;
and accordingly, “Luck to Loyne” it is.
The finest view of Lancaster is from the Skerton Bridge crossing the
river Lune at a point where the castle and the old church of St. Mary
group finely on the castle hill, and rightly form the most prominent
objects, historical as they are. Unfortunately for the view, railway
developments have done a good deal to destroy its majestic simplicity.
A railway bridge of the most atrocious lattice-girder type, crossing
from the point known by the curious name of “Green Ayre,” cuts the
finest picture in half, and a number of sidings have abolished the
verdant banks of the Lune for a good distance and form undesirable
neighbours to the embowered beauty of Ladies’ Walk.
Skerton Bridge, which takes the road out of Lancaster to Carlisle, in
1900 replaced the old Lune Bridge built in 1788, which itself replaced
a much older structure.
[Sidenote: _OILCLOTH_]
But the commercial spirit has seized historic Lancaster, and factories
of various kinds thrust their chimneys into the sky. Oilcloth-making
by hand was started in a small way many years ago, in an old shed
rented by a journeyman house-painter, Williamson by name. The
enterprise quickly prospered and grew into a wealth-producing wholesale
business. The journeyman painter’s son is now Baron Ashton, much to
the dissatisfaction of many jealous folk who gave his father a job in
the days of small things. It is a romance of industry, and has helped
to change the appearance of Lancaster, the quiet, grave country-town
of yore. There was until recent years a bleak and barren upland known
as Lancaster Moor, overlooking the town: it is now transformed, with
trees and shrubs, as the “Williamson Park.” A huge new Town Hall is
also a Williamson product, and overlooking all Lancaster and dwarfing
the importance of the old castle itself, a mammoth bugbear of a thing
called the “Ashton Memorial” arrests the eye from far and near, like a
St. Paul’s dome on the hilltop. Entering Lancaster from the north, you
can no more miss seeing it than you could miss seeing St. Paul’s from
Ludgate Hill. American tourists ask, in their picturesque way, “Who in
thunder built it?” and they are told that it is built to the honour and
glory of the Williamson family. It arouses terrible thoughts of what
may yet be in store for the historic places of Old England, when each
ennobled maker of wall-papers, drain-pipes, and the like shall feel
that the merits of his race demand advertising as prominently as his
wares.
XVI
The suburb of Skerton, on the north side of Skerton Bridge, leads to
the hamlet of Slyne, perched on a hill overlooking Morecambe Bay. The
place-name “Slyne” looks as unpleasant in print as do the personal
names of Silas, Matthias, or Jabez, and the meaning of it, as of the
similar place-names “Slindon” and “Slinfold,” in Sussex, seems to have
escaped research. A quaint old manor-house, now a farm, with an odd
doorway inscribed
G
C M
1681,
stands facing the road, and with the
old “Cross Keys” inn, dated 1727, comprises nearly all there is of
Slyne. Here comes the left-hand turning to Hest Bank, on the shore of
Morecambe Bay, whence old travellers, greatly daring, took a short cut
across the treacherous quicksands at low water, to Grange and Cartmel,
instead of going the roundabout way of Carnforth and Milnthorpe.
Lancashire is here cleft into two separate and distinct portions,
Lonsdale south of the sands, and Lonsdale north; a great wedge of
Westmorland coming in between.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE “OVER-SANDS” ROUTE.]
[Sidenote: _LAKELAND_]
The geography of the district surrounding Lancaster is by no means
simple. It is a country bordering upon the sea, which here and there
advances into the land, in the shapes of great sandy bays and long,
tongue-like estuaries of short but turbulent rivers that, taking their
origin as mountain-torrents amid the gloomy heights of the eternal
hills and mountains of Lakeland, have their sudden moods, dictated by
the melting of the snows, and by rain-storms. The distant landscape
in the neighbourhood of Lancaster is always closed in by mountain
heights, and the flat shores of Morecambe Bay look the more flat, and
the far-off fells appear the more rugged, in these several contrasts.
A considerable number of these little rivers come pouring down from the
Lakes to the sea: the Lune, the Kent, the Keer, the Winster, the Leven,
the Crake, and the Duddon. The road on to Kendal and Carlisle avoids
all the estuaries, and goes uneventfully onwards; but travellers who
wished to pass expeditiously between Lancaster, Furness, and Ulverston
had no choice but to make their perilous way “Over Sands,” across the
inner bight of Morecambe Bay, at low tide. The alternative was the
unwelcome, and anciently the dangerous, one of going the extravagantly
long way round by Milnthorpe, Crosthwaite, and Newby Bridge, under
Whitbarrow, where the treacherous Mosses, almost as dangerous as the
sands of the seashore, spread, and where the lawless and desperate
cattle-reivers lurked. Confronted with these problems, old-time
wayfarers generally chose the sands.
[Sidenote: “_OVER-SANDS_”]
The story of “Lancaster Sands,” as they are often called, is romantic
and melancholy. The hazardous crossing was made between Hest Bank and
Kent’s Bank, a distance of eleven miles, over a wet sandy waste that is
twelve feet deep in sea-water, at high tide. In these days of railway
travel, and since 1864, when the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway was
opened, the Over-Sands route is less frequently used, and principally
by farmers’ carts and by inquisitive tourists; but in all the earlier
centuries it was necessary, and great pains were taken to ensure, so
far as might humanly be, the safety of travellers across.
The sands are first mentioned by Tacitus, in his history of the second
campaign waged by Agricola against the Western Brigantes, the tribes
inhabiting Furness and the northern detached district of Lancashire
now known as North Lonsdale. The Romans, with their usual combined
thoroughness and prudence, appear to have made causeways crossing the
estuaries of the Kent, the Leven, and the Duddon, considerably inshore
from the exposed Over-Sands route and somewhat on the route of the
present railway bridges; but traces of their handiwork are now very few.
The next historical reference is not met with until 1325, when the
Abbot of Furness petitioned the King that his jurisdiction might be
extended in this district, to comprehend the Leven Sands, which were
so dangerous that many travellers, sixteen on one occasion, and six
on another, had been overtaken by the tide, and drowned. His petition
was granted, and the Abbot established, on an island half-way across
the estuary, a little chapel in which the monks prayed all round the
twenty-four hours for the safety, or for the souls, as the case might
be, of those who sought to cross. It is, however, scarce to be supposed
that the Abbey privileges would have been thus extended had the aid
to travellers been merely that of prayers. A more practical note was
the addition of a lighthouse, or beacon tower, to the chapel, combined
with the readiness of the monks to guide strangers. Since 1820, the
guide across Leven Sands has received an annual salary of £22 from the
Duchy of Lancaster, with a grant of three acres of land. He enjoys, in
addition, under the provisions of the Ulverston and Lancaster Railway
Act of 1851, a further £20 a year, in compensation for loss of fees
caused by the opening of the railway; for although he is a public
official, he commonly received gifts and free-will fees from those he
guided across in pre-railway days.
The more lengthy journey, from Hest Bank to Kent’s Bank, was under the
especial care of the Priory of Cartmel, which from an early period
maintained an official guide who was paid out of a grant made to the
Priory from Peter’s Pence for the especial purpose of performing this
public service. Travellers here also had the benefit of the monks’
prayers, which in truth they often needed.
This very necessary office of guide did by no means fall into decay
with the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry the Eighth.
Provision was made by the expenses being charged to the Duchy of
Lancaster: “the Carter over the Kent,” as the guide was called, being
paid £20 per annum by the Receiver-General, and the guide across
the shorter passage of the Keer being paid £10. The Carter no doubt
performed his duty, but the Sands every now and then claimed their
victims. Thus, in the registers of Cartmel may be read the following
tragical entries:
[Sidenote: _TRAGEDY_]
“_1576, Sept. 12._ One young man buryed, which was drowned in the
brodwater.”
“_1582, Aug. 1_, was buryed a son of Leonard Rollinson, of Furness
Fell, drowned at the Grainge, the 28th daye of July.”
“_1610, Feb. 4_, John ffell, son of Augustine, of Birkbie, drowned on
Conysed Sands.”
“_1630, Aug. 10_, Wm. Best, gent., drowned on Melthorp Sands.”
The registers of Cartmel alone testify to over 120 persons having lost
their lives while crossing the channels of these treacherous shores.
The race of secular guides across the Kent began, after the surrender
of Cartmel Priory, with Thomas Tempest. Son succeeded father in the
office, but they seem soon afterwards to have become Carters; probably
having adopted the name from their official title.
The poet Gray, touring the Lake Country in 1769, relates a pathetic
story of a family overtaken by the mists half-way across the Sands: “An
old fisherman told me, in his dialect, a moving story, how a brother of
the trade—a cockler, as he styled him—driving a little cart with his
two daughters (women grown) in it, and his wife on horseback following,
set out one day to cross the Sands, as they had been frequently used to
do (for nobody in the village knew them better than the old man did).
When they were about half-way over, a thick fog rose, and as they
advanced they found the water much deeper than they expected. The old
man was puzzled. He stopped, and said he would go a little way to find
some mark he was acquainted with. They stayed awhile for him, but in
vain. They called aloud, but no reply. At last the young women pressed
their mother to think where they were, and go on. She would not leave
the place. She wandered about, forlorn and amazed. She would not quit
her horse and get into the cart with them. They determined, after much
time wasted, to turn back, and gave themselves up to the guidance of
their horses. The elder woman was soon washed off, and perished. The
girls clung close to their cart, and the horse, sometimes wading and
sometimes swimming, brought them back to land alive, but senseless
with terror and distress, and unable for many days to give an account
of themselves. The bodies of the parents were found the next ebb, that
of the father a very few paces distant from the spot where he had left
them.”
[Illustration: LANCASTER SANDS.
[_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._
]
The story is still remembered how, in the days when coaches crossed
Grange Sands at low water, an outside passenger lost his portmanteau
and excitedly jumped down after it, becoming half-engulfed in the
treacherous quicksands. He would probably have perished, had the guard,
used to the place, not come to his rescue, and pulled him out, with a
resounding “cluck,” similar to the noise made when drawing a cork.
[Sidenote: _TRAGEDIES THE OF THE SANDS_]
But a more serious affair was that of 1811, when the Over-Sands
coach, the Lancaster stage, was overturned in the Kent Channel, through
the horses turning restive. They brought the coach to a stop, and the
current washing away the sand under the wheels of one side, the whole
affair turned completely over. It was very nearly a tragedy, for there
were fifteen passengers, inside and out, flung floundering in the
sand and water at a very dangerous place. A young lady, floating on
voluminous clothes down the Channel, was grabbed by the guard, and the
passengers huddled together on the side of the overturned coach; but
all the loose luggage was swept away and lost, and two pointer dogs
were drowned. The passengers were brought to land on the backs of the
coach-horses, the last being taken off none too soon; for the coach was
gradually sinking, and was eventually completely engulfed in the sands.
A narrow escape was that of Major Bigland, who was crossing one dark
evening in his gig from Lancaster, intending to reach Cartmel. He drove
towards the sea instead, and only by extreme good fortune managed to
land near Conishead. A post-chaise was lost and the postboy and one of
the horses drowned near Hest Bank in 1821, and in 1825 the Lancaster
coach was blown over, midway, and a horse drowned. The passengers were
only with difficulty saved. In 1832 the identical coach was sunk in a
quicksand. Much later, in 1846, nine merry holiday-makers, returning
from the Whitsun fair at Ulverston, drove into a treacherous spot near
Black Scar, on the Leven Sands, and were all immediately drowned: and
a similar disaster occurred to a party of seven farm-hands crossing
the Kent Sands to Lancaster in 1857, the year the Furness Railway was
opened, and the Over-Sands coach discontinued. In every case, the
bodies were easily found; lending point to the grim story told of an
ancient mariner who, asked if guides were ever lost on the sands,
answered with simplicity: “I never knew any lost. There’s one or two
drowned, now and again, but they’re generally found when the tide goes
out.”
[Sidenote: _THE TIME OF CROSSING_]
About 1785 a coach was started between Ulverston and Lancaster, going
daily across the sands. The scene at its crossing was curious. The
Carter, on horseback, headed it, and in its wake generally followed a
number of carts and other country vehicles, forming a procession not
unlike an Eastern caravan crossing the deserts of Arabia. The Carter’s
guidance was absolutely necessary, for although the track might at
every ebb be beaten out by a multitude, the incoming tide inevitably
obliterated every trace of it, and the channels were constantly
shifting. A contemporary account says: “The Carter seems a cheerful and
pleasant fellow. He wore a rough great-coat and a pair of jack-boots,
and was mounted on a good horse, which appeared to have been up to the
ribs in water. When we came to him, he recommended us to wait till the
arrival of the coach, which was nearly a mile distant, as the tide
would then be gone further out. When the coach came up, we took the
water in procession, and crossed two channels in one of which the water
was up to the horses’ bellies. The coach passed over without the least
difficulty, being drawn by fine, tall horses. Arrived at the other
side, the Carter received our gratuities and we rode on, keeping close
to a line of rods which have been planted in the sands to indicate the
track. The channel is seldom two days together in the same place. You
may make the chart one day, and before the ink is dry it will have
shifted.”
A sufficient testimony to the dangers of the sands is found in the fact
that those who have known them best have ever been the ones to most
dread them and the “cruel crawling tide” that with the shifting of
the wind can readily change from a crawl to a hissing seething gallop
across the perilous flats.
It is the shout of the coming foe,
Ride, ride for thy life, Sir John;
But still the waters deeper grew
The wild sea foam rushed on.
The proper time to attempt the crossing is five hours after high water,
but even then only in fine weather. A strong sea-breeze will bring the
flood in, fully an hour before the tide-tables; while after heavy rains
the crossing is impossible, owing to the flood-water from the rivers
permeating the sands in every direction and converting the whole route
into one vast quicksand. Never at any time should the stranger attempt
the passage without competent assistance.