Today’s title reflects just some of the eclectic content below, with ancient axe heads, charcoal burning, water-powered fulling mills, train crashes, a Roman helmet, today’s forests, map reading skills and even an international treaty.

Last week I wrote about books on Lake District history and finished up with some thoughts on its future. Today I start with history but finish in the present.

History of Cumbria

Firstly, the other day I came across a very interesting blog produced by historian, Diane McIlmoyle. What I saw first was an article on an ancient treaty between Scots and English kings, almost a century and a half before the 1066 Norman conquest. The Treaty of Eamont Bridge in 927CE: the first English/Scottish union?. It certainly added to my knowledge of important things that have happened in Cumbria, and as I scanned other articles on the blog I made a note to go back to read more.

I’m personally not overthrilled with the faerie and witchcraft articles but the many more interesting pieces include The Crosby Garret Roman Helmet (Where is it?), Langdale axes: Cumbria’s prehistoric export (European business 6,000 years ago) and Train Disasters at Aisgill (three in less than a century on the Settle-Carlisle line at the top of the Mallerstang valley close to the source of the River Eden).

Great Langdale in October
By SLR Jester, from Flickr.com - Click above for his Photostream

Windermere’s Industrial History

Having mentioned a really ancient Lakeland export industry I must say it was good also to read recently of a project to explore Windermere’s old industries. From charcoal burning to fulling mills the industrial archaeology of the area around England’s longest lake gives much room for further investigation. The Windermere Reflections project is described more fully on Cumbria Crack.

Lake District Forests

Now returning to the present I’m probably going to upset some of my readers yet again. I see that the Westmorland Gazette (which I normally think of as a reliable newspaper) is again publishing campaign news on forestry. I suppose they have to do so. After all it is happening, and as a local newspaper they should not be biased in what they include/exclude. Also, at least they put words in quotations to show that it was someone else who said that “Public forests are ‘under threat again’”

Save Lakeland’s Forests and Friends of the Lake District say swingeing cuts are undermining the Forestry Commission and threatening the future of the woodlands that hundreds of thousands of people fought to preserve.
[Full article at Westmorland Gazette]

When we look further we discover the exaggerated nature of this campaign. It turns out that as part of the struggle to get our national finances back into some semblance of order there is to be a reduction of 3 in the number of the Forestry Commission’s wildlife rangers in the whole of the Northern Region, from 16 at present. “Swingeing cuts”? Hardly!

I was never convinced of the “threat” to the forests last year either. Who owns the forests is not the main point. The key consideration is under what terms they are managed. That campaign of public hysteria was substantially built on selective quotation and exaggeration, and it looks like they’re starting again.

Of course it would be nice to keep levels of Forestry Commission staffing as they are. Maybe they could even usefully do with more. I don’t know. But what I do know is that we have to get our national finances in order if we’re not going to become another Greece. (Oh, am I also exaggerating for effect? Yes, probably, so I’ve crossed out the last bit.)

Don’t Replace Your Lake District Map with a SatNav

Finally for today, map reading! I’ve written about this before on this blog (At the sign of the “Map and Compass”), and also on The Lake District in Books. It was good to see the importance of map reading skills emphasised in a Daily Telegraph article recently.

Experts have warned that traditional map-reading skills are now on the decline, with sales of paper charts slumping. Mountain rescuers and national park wardens say that hikers are increasingly relying instead on electronic navigation devices. This means many are unable to find their way out of difficulty if their equipment fails or is not used correctly.
Full article at The Telegraph

As has been pointed out many times in many places, including repeatedly on this and associated blogs, digital aids are no replacement for a printed map and the knowledge of how to use it. Satellite navigation devices can be very useful a lot of the time, but they can often lose their signal in remote and mountainous areas. Walkers, please note!

I was writing a piece on my “Lake District in Books” site when it occurred to me how much material I’d written there over recent months referring to the history of the region. This post is substantially a survey of things I’ve written there in the past, brought together for readers of the Around-England blog. It also gives me an opening at the end of the piece to be opinionated once again on the subject of development and over-conservation.

I recently posted an item on the other site about a great book on the landscape history of Northwest England: England’s Landscape: The North West by Angus Winchester. This one covers a wide area, taking in Cumbria, Lancashire and further afield. Other books mentioned in the past have been more focused on Cumbria, and especially the Lake District.

The English Lakes – A History by Ian Thompson is an excellent survey, in just short of 350 pages, of the background to the Lake District as we have it today. In my opinion this title should be on the bookshelf of everyone who loves Lakeland.

The next title is much narrower in scope. A Lakeland Valley Through Time, produced by The Staveley and District History Society, concentrates on the history of Staveley, Kentmere and Ings. It is a good example of how a local group can produce interesting and well-presented history that is sharply focused on a small group of villages.

Historic Farmhouses in and around Westmorland narrowed the view down in a different way to individual farmhouses. This is not easy to find now in good condition but R. W. Brunskill’s Traditional Buildings of Cumbria contains much of similar interest, if not the detail on individual Westmorland properties. The National Trust has played a major role in the conservation of the Lake District landscape, both natural and built, and continues to do so. Last year I wrote a brief item on two histories of the National Trust in the Lake District.

Turning to industry and economics the Lake District, along with surrounding areas of Cumbria, has an extensive railway history – even if most of it has now gone. The history of rail in the lake counties by David Joy is a must for anyone looking for a comprehensive overview. Individual lines also have their own histories. A more academic work, The Lake Counties from 1830 to the Mid-twentieth Century: A Study in Regional Change, by Marshall and Walton, reviews a century of economic and social change in the region, which is of course the context in which its transportation history developed. The last two chapters are especially valuable on the growth of the tourist trade and of environmental conservation.

All these histories are stories of change over many centuries, leading to what we see today – both above and below ground. Think for a moment of the generations of men working in the Coniston coppermines, deep underground in what are now cavers’ tunnels (but only for those competent to handle the hazards!). Those miners left what at the time were “scars” on the landscape but now they are part of the precious historic character of the region.

Uploaded to YouTube by EdvinDeadman in February 2009

That is a modern film but here below is a 1926 film of slate quarrying, from the Honister Slate Mine which today is once again producing slate products to go around the world in addition to being one of the region’s important tourist attractions – in spite of its opponents! (honisterslatemine YouTube.com)

Well so far we’ve had copper and slate. What about other industrial products of this region? There was the “lead” in pencils – which, of course, is not lead at all but graphite. This was mined in one of the most beautiful valley of Lakeland, Borrowdale down which runs the young river Derwent on its way to Derwentwater. Maybe another day I’ll put up a video of pencil manufacturing in Keswick but for now we’ll move slightly outside the boundaries of the Lake District National Park to Nenthead, near Alston, on the western edge of the North Pennine moors where there was extensive lead mining and today there is a visitor centre. (Uploaded to YouTube, December 2010, by North Pennines Archaeology Limited northpennarch).

That’s Lake District History, But What Of Its Future?”

A subject dear to my heart is Lake District industrial archaeology. Too often the region is treated as though its landscape is totally “natural” and that it must therefore be preserved absolutely unaltered for future generations to enjoy. Forgotten are the generations of Cumbrian men and women who laboured on these mountains and fellsides to carve out livelihoods, to support their families as miners, quarrymen and farmers. In so doing they changed it for ever, and left us the beautiful and interesting place we have today. (See the book on the left).

The legacy of these workers of the past is admired, their derelict buildings are restored and promoted as visitor attractions, but in the twenty-first century (and here comes my provocative thought for the day) Cumbrians are now expected to have only minimal impact, and preferably none, on their surroundings apart from helping to restore it to an imagined romantic vision of past environmental glory. There are even calls to take sheep off the fells!

A study of our history should teach us that change is part of living. Seeking to put an idealised past into deep freeze risks bringing about the slow death of our local communities, then what will future historians have to write about apart from a large tourism facility expensively preserved in aspic for the admiration of visitors?

The Lake District and its surrounding areas are beautiful, but to remain so they must also continue as a genuinely lived-in, and therefore changing, landscape or in the long-term run a severe risk of decline, an unintended consequence of well-meaning preservation.

Related Posts:

To Protect? Or to Preserve?

Toward Environmental, Social and Economic Balance

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 to get rained upon today.

The Dales Countryside Museum, Hawes, Wensleydale

Here’s the first, of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s “Dales Countryside Museum” at Hawes – telling “the story of the people and landscape of the Yorkshire Dales past and present … school days, home life, leisure time, religion, transport, communication and tourism, farming, local crafts and industries”. The museum shares the building with the Hawes National Park Centre, and is wheelchair friendly. Now, where next? Yes, there’s still lots more to do in Hawes.

The Wensleydale Creamery, Hawes, The Yorkshire Dales

With your mind thoroughly informed about the Yorkshire Dales from your visit to the Dales Countryside Museum you can now turn to thinking about your body and visit the Wensleydale Creamery. I suggest that, in common with the other 200,000 or so visitors that come here every year, you forget slimming for an hour or so and enjoy the creamery’s visitor centre with its museum and observation area – then, of course, there’s the shop with its Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese and lots of other goodies!

Enjoy your Wensleydale “Day in the Damp” – and don’t forget the Wensleydale heritage railway with its station right next to the Dales Countryside Museum.

For many centuries the presence of copper in the Lake District mountain rocks above Coniston Water provided a livelihood for people in the area. Now Coniston coppermines are mostly visited by walkers and mine explorers (scroll down for video). Looking at the area today it is not easy to imagine a time (much of it before modern-style industrialisation) in which people living on the slopes of Coniston Old Man made a living from iron, copper and slate.

Coniston is not the only Lake District area to have a copper-producing history. The Keswick area was another centre of this metal extracting industry, especially the Newlands Valley. In their early years the Coniston copper mines sent their output to Keswick by packhorse to be processed. After the smelting facility there was destroyed in the late-1700s the ore was taken by boat down Coniston Water from a quay at Coniston Hall to the Nibthwaite Quay. It was then carried to the coast by cart. From the port at Greenodd, and later from Ulverston through its canal, much of the ore went to St. Helens in Lancashire. There it was smelted and and made into copper cladding for the hulls of sailing vessels.

Coniston Copper Mines: The Early Years

The Coniston coppermines certainly go as far back as the 1500s, and possibly longer, although most of what is still visible on the surface dates from the mid-19th century. The mines were worked up until the English Civil War of the 1640s but then there was a break before they were revived. For some of the time, as also at Keswick, the enterprise was led by experienced German miners. The Company of Mines Royal, which had also run other copper extraction enterprises in the Lake District, had control of Coniston’s “Coppermines Valley” toward the end of the 16th century.

The Antiquities of Furness (1774)

In 1774 the antiquarian Jesuit priest Thomas West wrote in his book, The Antiquities of Furness, as follows:

“The fells of Coniston have produced great quantities of copper ore. During the rage of the civil wars the copper mines in Coniston fells were shut up. After the Restoration, Sir Daniel Fleming had an inquest of all the old workmen then living, concerning them, with their opinion of the charges necessary for recovering the said mines. The following abstract is given here, as it may be of some service to future adventurers. The original is at Rydal hall. … “

[West then lists nine different areas of working with depths, thickness of the seams, and comments on the quality of the the ore, including mention of other metals present such as lead, silver and gold. He then continues .... ]

“About 140 workmen were employed in these works, and the ore was carried on horses backs to the smelting-house at Keswick. About 20 miles distant from some of the works the ore was raised at different prices, according to its goodness, from 2s.6d to 8s per kible, every kible being near a horseload. The ore was first beaten small, and washed and sifted then weighed or measured.

“Before the works were left off, a proposal was made for erecting a smelting-house at Coniston, as more convenient for building houses, a nd better supplied with wood and peat, with the convenience of an iron forge, then at Coniston, being only seven miles from the sea-port at Penny bridge, five of which were by water down the lake, and two miles of land carriage on a good road.”

For reasons now unknown West does not mention in his 1774 Antiquities that the Macclesfield Copper Company reopened the Coniston coppermines in 1758. For almost the next forty years they were again in production but then there was a hiatus of about thirty years before they were once again reopened. This time production took off in a big way controlled by the firm of John Barratt, and copper became the basis for several generations of local prosperity, at one point employing as many as 400 men.

Coniston Coppermines in the 19th Century

This prosperity rubbed off not only on Coniston village itself but also on the surrounding area. The 1851 census describes John Biggins of neighbouring Torver as a “calker-maker”. As John Dawson says in his history of Torver, “Calkers are pointed pieces on horseshoes placed so as to prevent slipping; no doubt in regular demand at a time when so many horses would be working up and down the steep and slippery ways to the mines and quarries. Numbers of horses were also employed inside the Coniston copper mines to haul out wagon-loads of ore, a situation in which calkers would give the animal a better grip where the surface was wet and uneven.” Dawson also mentions other makers of industrial equipment such as pick and hammer shafts.

Coniston Water now became an even busier commercial route than it had been previously. Boats were already carrying slate from the quarries. Now they also carried copper ore. At Nibthwaite Quay, near where Coniston lake becomes the River Crake, two buildings became known locally as the “Copper Houses”.

By the late 1840s the Furness Railway had its line running from the Furness area and up the coast of Cumberland. Already thought was being given to the possibility of a branch line to Coniston. After an earlier false start the line was opened in 1859. It was promoted heavily by the owners of interests in the Coniston copper mines because getting the increased volumes of copper ore down to the coast by the traditional water and land route was becoming more and more difficult. In the following year the line was extended to run beyond Coniston to the Copper House at the mines. Although in later years the Furness Railway emphasised the tourism aspects of the Foxfield-Coniston branchline, its reason for existence was copper.

The End of Coniston’s Copper Era

Copper-based prosperity did not last. Good quality ore became available in large quantities from other parts of the world, especially South America, at prices with which the Coniston copper mines could not compete. By the end of the nineteenth century it was all over.

Coniston Copper Mines Today

Today the Coppermines Valley is virtually silent apart from voices of walkers. Many signs of the old industry survive and remain the subject of great interest to many thousands of visitors each year as well as to industrial archaeologists.

There are, however, considerable dangers lurking behind the entrances to the mine workings. Visitors to the area should under no cicumstances enter the mine workings unless properly authorised, equipped and accompanied. Unless you’re an experienced caver or mine explorer and are properly equipped look at them from the outside only, and when back down in Coniston village take a look at the Ruskin Museum where you’ll find a wealth of information about Coniston copper. For now as well you can take a look at this YouTube video from AditNow, Jun 25, 2009:

(NOTE:This post is a revised version of a 2009 page on our old Lake District site.

Related Posts:

Coniston Coppermines – includes links to interesting and useful books.

Lake District History and the Future

Where to Go and What to Do in the Lake District: South & Central

The Keep, Brough Castle, Cumbria

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 hundred years of history – in fact it’s much more than that as a Roman fort was here long centuries before the Normans embarked on their fortification of England’s northern border.

How many stop to take a look at this interesting structure? I would very definitely recommend a break in your journey for a short spell of castle-browsing. Centuries ago this was one of the main residences of Lady Anne Clifford, that doughty owner and restorer of castles from Skipton in West Yorkshire almost to the Scottish border. (Castles at Brougham, Pendragon and Appleby were others of her rebuilding projects in this part of the country).

True, what is left today is merely a pale reflection of the splendour that once was there, but English Heritage have done an excellent job of bringing the ruin to life through the provision of a series of well-written and illustrated information boards. What is more the English Heritage web site contains several highly informative pages on the castle’s history and significance, as well as describing the underlying research and archaeological investigation.

Brough Castle, Eden Valley, Cumbria

Over the centuries the castle has suffered many bouts of ill-fortune including invasion, fire and sheer neglect – including being burned down during a 16th century Christmas party! In between, however, and especially in the hands of that great northern dynasty the Cliffords, it was restored, enlarged and equipped as an important noble residence.

Brough Castle, showing part of the interior remains

Visiting recently for the first time, I had expected to be in and out of the castle site in fifteen minutes to join my wife in the adjacent very pleasant tea room. But no, I found myself reading, viewing and attempting to visualise how life might have been within these walls after the renovation three hundred and fifty years ago – not to mention trying to get some good photos. It is interesting also to try to identify the different phases of building. For example, how many different window styles are there in the remaining structures?

The Tearoom, Brough Castle, Cumbria

If you’re in the Eden Valley around Brough, Kirkby Stephen or Appleby, or even just ploughing over the A66 across the Pennines, don’t miss Brough castle. The countryside is great, Brough being right on the edge of the North Pennines AONB – a designated “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”. The ice-cream here is really good too, and there’s a children’s play area behind the tearoom.

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.

This book of over 200 pages (initially published in hardback in 1985, and reprinted as a paperback in 1990) provides an captivating  description of the way lanes and roads in the Dales evolved over many centuries.  Starting with ancient hunter-gatherers and the transportation across the region (even to continental Europe) of axeheads produced in the Lake District, through the needs of the Roman military machine , into the Middle Ages with the massive impact of agricultural development, especially under the Cistercian monks in their abbeys of Rievaulx, Fountains and elsewhere.

I found it especially interesting to see how the author explored the writings of travellers in the Tudor and Stuart periods, who seemed especially keen to record the bridges they crossed, and so gave hints as to the routes they followed from place to place.  Then of course, there were the almost regal journeys of Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, that doughty mistress of Skipton Castle and owner of castles, houses and vast estates from Skipton to Penrith and beyond.

This is a fascinating book.  Be warned, though, that unless you have a detailed map of the region firmly planted in your brain you will probably need one in front of you as you read. The book does rather assume that its readers know the territory quite well.  However, that’s a minor difficulty.

It’s a pity that Roads and Trackways of The Yorkshire Dales is not currently in print. I’ve checked, though, and paperback copies are available secondhand from Amazon here. (Buy a copy labelled “Very Good”; remember that “Good” in secondhand parlance all too often means “just about holding together” or “creased and stained but reasonably legible”).  There are also hardcover copies available.

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 for only seven years, and for the early years I was away travelling on business for much of the time, I can’t claim to be an expert on its local history. I was aware of a battle having been fought to the south of Newark during the fifteenth century Wars of the Roses but knew little about it.

At first attempt I missed the church of St. Oswald, down a narrow lane toward the Trent in East Stoke, but eventually found it on my way back toward the main road. The church building here is very ancient in its origins, although substantially rebuilt in the 1700s.

What I originally came to find was a memorial plaque bearing an inscription “Blessed are the peacemakers” (words of Jesus from the Gospel of St. Matthew). I found it, and the photograph above of the church shows at its far left the top of the statue rising out of the bushes. More on that in a later article. The thing that caught me by surprise, however, was a large stone plaque against the wall of the church itself.

As I’ve said, the fact of a battle was not new to me. What struck me was the sheer scale of the event. As I now know from further reading, in the space of just over three hours on June 16th 1487, in what today is a peaceful backwater overlooking the valley of the meandering River Trent, a total of 48,000 men fought so intensely that they left 7,000 dead behind them.

The Earl of Lincoln was in command of the Yorkist troops, a mixture of English rebels and Irish recruits backed by a mercenary force of Germans led by Colonel Martin Schwartz and funded by the dowager Duchess of Burgundy. The Yorkist rebellion had seemingly been defeated at the much better known Battle of Bosworth Field two years earlier. This was a ‘last-ditch’ attempt to gain the crown, and if successful the Earl of Lincoln was expected to be in a position of considerable power. It was not to be.

Although King Henry VII was present, and nominally at the head of his army, the effective military leader on the Lancastrian side was the Earl of Oxford. At first it appeared that the smaller number of Yorkist troops were about to prevail, but Oxford maneuvered skillfully and the King kept his throne.

In a field close by there is said to be another memorial stone with the inscription: “Here stood the Burrand Bush planted on the spot where Henry VII placed his standard after the Battle of Stoke (June 16 1487)” I haven’t seen that yet, and can feel another bout of exploration coming on. Map. More on the Battle. English Heritage Battlefield Register.

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 a source of large amounts of copper ore. This ore was initially carried by pack horses to be processed at Keswick but from the 18th century onwards was transported by boat down Coniston Water and then carted by road to the coast.

Today the homes of generations of Coniston copper mine workers are mostly holiday cottages and the old mine workings are a tourist attraction, albeit mostly for those with enough energy to do some walking.

Anyone interested in old industries, or simply in the ways our forefathers earned their livelihood, or in the processes by which today’s Lake District landscape was shaped, will want to explore this aspect of Coniston’s past – either on the ground or in an armchair (see Coniston Copper Mines: A Field Guide by Eric G Holland).

Eric Holland’s much larger book, Coniston Copper: A History, gives a more extensive treatment of the subject. It is out of print but can still be found, albeit often quite expensive, at some book dealers either new or secondhand.

There is also a later blog post on the Coppermines at Coniston, expanding on this fascinating aspect of Lake District history.

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 and operated by our county councils. Students of Lake District history would be in great difficulties without them.

Life has changed since then. There was no such thing as a laptop computer, and any thought of a handheld pda such as a Palm or Blackberry was the stuff of science fiction. Search rooms were small, and one sat at tables with paper and pencil poring over boxes of papers – yes, the originals, not images on a screen. Such indexes as existed were typescripts, and much of the contents of many boxes had never yet been indexed.

Of course the functions of a county record office are wider ranging than to provide a service for amateur, or even professional, historians. The county archivist has statutory duties with respect to the documentation of the various local government bodies. Nevertheless what most people these days experience is the provision of information in the form of old, even ancient, documents recording the history of towns, villages, parishes, houses and families.

Those of us with an interest in Lake District history, or Cumbria family history outside the National Park, owe a great debt to the professionalism of the staff at the record offices in Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow and Whitehaven. They, however, need modern facilities in which to provide the ever more sophisticated services we ask of them.

It is good, therefore, to know that the building of the new state-of-the-art Carlisle record office is under way and completion is expected late in 2010. The major task of packing for the move is already in progress. Apparently volunteers to help with this massive “house move” are still being sought. Click here for more details if you’re interested.

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 nieces, and the even larger numbers of great- and great-greats as well.  But also she thinks a lot about the past.

Having been born in 1907 there’s a lot of past for her to think about, and her memory is still amazingly intact.  Old photographs fascinate her, and this made me think of how important it is to record in writing for future generations something about those people on the sepia tinted pictures of yesteryear before no-one any longer has a clue who they were.

Memories, of course, often involve places as well as people. In family collections it is often the snaps of people rather than places that have survived. Photos of fondly remembered places as they were many years ago are often limited to a few creased old postcards. Occasionally a treasure hoard of old photographs is discovered and what memories they bring flooding back as they appear in the local newspaper.

Windermere, Sunset 1926.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

The English Lake District for a century and a half has been one of the most photographed areas of Britain.  How good it is to know that many photographs – of lakes, rivers, towns, villages and individual buildings – have survived and are available to massage the memories of generations of lovers of Lakeland.

Holidays past, childhood homes, honeymoons among the mountains, visits to grandparents, sunny afternoons rowing on Derwentwater, the “steamers” on Windermere, paddling in the Rothay and scrambles up Scafell; all these and more come back to life through an old photo on the wall.

Increasingly, as photos of distant places long ago become conveniently traceable over the Internet, people living even thousands of miles across the world’s oceans can find and acquire beautifully printed copies of these records of the past.  More and more homes around the world are displaying fondly a picture of England’s Lake District, a valued legacy from the photographers of generations past.

—
David Murray, a native of Cumbria now returned to the North, is owner of a growing portfolio of niche websites including some about the English Lake District.  The Lake District In Old Photos, Around-England and The Lake District in Books are three of his sites about which he is especially enthusiastic. [This paragraph updated, October 2011]