When Thorneythwaite was sold in separate lots on 9th August, 2016 roughly a thousand years of discernible history of its existence as an independent fell farm came to an abrupt halt. A surprising amount of that history has been recorded.
It is there in the Norman documents of the 12th century, when it belonged to Alice de Rumilly of Skipton Castle; there in the chartularies of Fountains and Furness Abbeys to whom she gave all Borrowdale, Keswick and Crosthwaite Church, which she founded. It is there in the Great Deed of Borrowdale (1614); in the records of the German copper miners later that century; and as home also to many who toiled in the Graphite mines of Seathwaite and in the later development of Honister quarry and mine. Ian Hall was a teenager there in the 1960s and has sought here to put flesh on the skeleton provided by those records, mixing the ongoing saga of the forty generations who have called Thorneythwaite home with his memories of his own parents’ struggle to make a living on this harsh little fell farm. He is also the author of ‘Fisherground – Living the Dream’, a memoir of the last quarter of the 20th Century, when he and his wife Jennifer shared a fell farm with their good friends Geoff and Anne-Marie Wake.
Twice in her life Mary Jackson found herself the subject of intense gossip. In each case she faced down her detractors, bearing herself with dignity and fortitude. In each case she won through, proudly bearing her renowned title: the Countess Ossalinsky.
In 1839 Mary Jackson, rumoured to be the richest heiress-at-law in the north of England married Count Boris Ossalinsky, said to be a Polish nobleman who had been entertaining, and entertained by, Keswick society for most of the decade. For four glorious years the couple scandalised the town, with the Count’s lavish spending of what was not yet her legacy. The ongoing battle between the Count and Mary’s grandfather fuelled the rumour-mill.
Forty years later Mary, Countess Ossalinsky, found herself again at the epicentre of a storm of public opinion, this time on the national stage, as she took on the mighty Manchester Corporation over their plan to turn her lovely Thirlmere valley into a cold, lifeless reservoir. She was ultimately unable to prevent the destruction of her dale, but exacted a heavy penalty, obliging the Corporation Men to pay enormous compensation for the taking of her land. This is the story of a woman who, under the guise of compliant femininity showed a steely determination to survive and prosper: the Countess Ossalinsky.
Please note this book was previously published under the title Ante-Nuptial Fornication.
1799: in a little chapel near the English/Scots border a sharp-nosed preacher rails against the immorality of the times rebuking a couple for ‘ante-nuptial fornication’ – sex before marriage.
The first memory of my great-great-great-grandmother, this sets the scene for her life and that of the next three generations. Come with me as we explore the lives and loves of these four ordinary North Cumberland women in the changing times of the 19th century, as the railways, the factories and war evolve around them. Only one ever strayed beyond twenty miles of Carlisle, and then only once to have her illegitimate daughter – my grandmother.
2019 sees the 250th Anniversary of the beginnings of the tourist industry in Keswick and Borrowdale. Between October 2rd-7th 1769 the poet Thomas Gray, author of ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’, stayed in the Queen’s Head and travelled round the lake, writing enthusiastically to his friend and later publishing his journal. Six months later Wordsworth was born. A mere twelve years later Peter Crosthwaite opened his museum in Keswick Main Street and held the first Derwentwater Regatta with his crony Joseph Pocklington. Tourism was up and running.
Gray called the area ‘the Vale of Elysium’ – the lap of the Gods, and so it is. Its fate has also seemed to be in the lap of the Gods – absentee landlords who bought estates and islands with an eye towards enhancing the landscape, under the watchful eye of Wordsworth and Southey. Throughout the 250 years there has been a perennial tussle between the preservationists and the entrepreneurs; a battle which shows no sign of abating. Now we are all Gods through the National Trust, the largest landowner by far, which claims to own the valley ‘for ever, for everyone’.
In 1849 the Reverend Basil Ranaldson Lawson became the parson of Wythburn parish, a beautiful Lakeland Valley containing two little gems of lakes holding hands in the middle, spanned by the three iconic bridges above. In the forty-one years he served the parish it changed – at first subtly as Manchester Waterworks Committee bought up more and more of the farms and cottages and the threat of inundation grew – and then climactically as hundreds of navvies descended on the defenceless dale and built a mighty dam across the river mouth. In 1894 the water began to rise and cottage by cottage, farm by farm, his parish sank below the expanding reservoir.
By then Parson Basil Lawson had been dead a couple of years, spared the sight of his vanishing parish and the distress of those evicted. He left behind two invaluable sketchbooks detailing many of the properties. Along with contemporary paintings and photographs these sketches bring to life a long-lost exquisite Lake District valley, available only now to us in the mind’s eye as we turn the pages of memory.
In this lavishly illustrated book are well over a hundred contemporary paintings, sketches and photographs which bring the old valley to life in a way not before attempted, using some drone photographs and a computer generated image to illustrate how the drowned farmsteads would have looked.
In 1976 four friends pool their limited resources to buy a fell farm in Eskdale. They embark on an adventure in shared living, combining incomes, efforts and skills to try to make success of their fragile enterprise.
Join them as they meet an array of Cumbrian characters and explore the world of auctions, shows and life in a Lakeland valley.
The Sarah Losh Journal publishes work on the Losh family, and on the church and village of Wreay.
The second volume contains the following articles: Sarah Losh, Wreay Church and other Buildings in Cumbria by Matthew Hyde; For Advancement of Learning: some aspects of the past provision of schooling for the children of Wreay by Adrian Allan; A Young Boy’s Memories of Wreay by Brian Hodgson; Notes on George Losh by Marie McCulloch; The Sun Dial at Wreay by Mark Clowes; Sarah Losh at the Ball by Stephen Matthews; Songs of Praise Factsheet: Programme 3 St Mary’s Church, Wreay Poetry by Alan Mottershead, Alan Forsyth, Stephen Matthews and Claire Delores Storr; Wreay Hall 1623-1919 by Ian Moonie; Wreay Chapel of Rest: Record of Remedial Work by Peter Strong; The People of Wreay by Stephen Matthews; Extracts from the Diary of James Losh by A.R. Davies; Images of Wreay by Claire Delores Storr.
