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History

The Dales in the Damp

September 3, 2011

This morning, looking in any direction from my home in the Eden Valley it seemed clear (although actually it’s ‘misty’ and unclear in a literal sense) that whether to the north (The North Pennines), to the west (The Lake District) or to the south-east (The Yorkshire Dales) it was quite probable that people were going [...]

Coppermines at Coniston

July 20, 2011

For many centuries the presence of copper in the Lake District mountain rocks above Coniston Water provided a livelihood for people in the area. Looking at the area now it is not easy to imagine a time (much of it before modern-style industrialisation) in which people living in the shade of Coniston Old Man made [...]

Brough Castle in the Eden Valley, Cumbria

June 22, 2011

Brough Castle is passed by thousands of motorists every day as they plough past on the A66 between Cumbria and County Durham at whatever maximum speed the traffic will allow, hurrying towards or on the way down the Pennine slopes from Stainmore. Those using the Kirkby Stephen road pass even closer to the castle’s nine [...]

Roads and Trackways of The Yorkshire Dales

January 12, 2011

Last night, while scanning my shelves, I came across a book that I must have bought around twenty years ago, Roads and Trackways of The Yorkshire Dales, by Geoffrey N. Wright. I couldn’t recall reading it before so spent an hour or so, with everything except eyes under the duvet, reading the first few chapters. [...]

The Battle of Stoke Field, 1487

January 22, 2010

Yesterday I dropped my wife off for an hour in Newark-upon-Trent to do whatever wives do when they “go into town”, and with camera in my pocket I drove five or six miles down the A46 in search of a memorial. What I came away with was quite a surprise. Having lived in this area [...]

Coniston Coppermines

November 23, 2009

The copper mines around Coniston were worked from at least the middle of the 16th century and, with a number of breaks in production in between, up to end of the 19th when competition from high-grade ore imported from overseas killed this local Lake District industry. Coniston Old Man, the mountain behind Coniston village, was [...]

Lake District and Cumbria History On The Move

November 19, 2009

Back in the early-70s, when what is now Cumbria was spread between Cumberland, Westmorland, and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, I became a frequent user of the county record offices. What began as a family history search became a local history study, and I came to appreciate the great value of the archive services maintained [...]

The Past in Old Photos

February 18, 2009

Recently (early 2009) I travelled up to the Lake District in the north of England to visit an elderly maiden aunt. I say, “elderly,” but that’s not really an adequate expression. Approaching a hundred and two years old she still has a lively interest in the present-day doings of her large brood of nephews and [...]

The Coniston Railway

February 3, 2009

In a previous posting I mentioned recently visiting the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway after staying overnight at Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass. During the same trip, while further north, I had a chance to slip into Michael Moon’s bookshop in Whitehaven. I’d not gone for anything in particular but enjoyed maybe thirty minutes just browsing around and [...]

Windermere and the Ice Age

September 1, 2008

It was the year before I was married. (I’ll let you work out when that was; I’m just indicating that it was well within living memory). Windermere was frozen over for several weeks during that winter, and for the first time in many years it was safe to skate over large areas of its surface. [...]

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