This afternoon in the Cockermouth sunshine the confluence of the Cocker and the Derwent looked tranquil. On 19th November 2009 it was a very different picture. Record volumes of rainwater poured down the two rivers from the Lake District mountains and inundated the centre of this historic town.

Cockermouth - where the Rivers Cocker and Derwent meet - 9th August 2011

Parts of the town that day were under six to nine feet of water. One property affected was the poet William Wordsworth’s birthplace. National Trust staff hurriedly carried irreplaceable items up stairs to higher floors before eventually being compelled to leave to avoid being completely cut off by the rising water. Today the water level is marked on the wall of one room, just a few inches from the ceiling.

The Garden of the Wordsworth House, Cockermouth - 9th August 2011

Outside, the garden was completely swamped, plants and shrubs carried away by the force of the pounding water. But here it is today, above, looking toward the river with the new flood defences in the background, and below, looking toward the house. What a tremendous restoration job the staff and volunteers have done. Were the apple trees washed away and later replaced, or did they stand firm against the waters? I forgot to ask, but the apples on them looked incredibly tempting. (Yes, I resisted!)

The Garden at the Wordsworth House, Cockermouth, 9th August 2001

Inside the house all is to the standard one has come to expect of the National Trust. If I were to make just one criticism (but really, it pales almost into insignificance against the excellence of the work that has been done) it would be that I’d have benefited from a simple sheet of card somewhere in each room outlining the nature of the room and identifying its principal contents. In fairness, though, I had failed to take one of the guide cards from the entrance hall.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth’s Birthplace, Cockermouth – 9th August 2011

It feels almost unfair to have separated out for prime attention this one building. So many homes and businesses were torn apart by that 2009 flooding – but look at Cockermouth today. Great credit is due to the people of the town and to the authorities for such a splendid work of restoration – which in some parts still continues. Well done, Cockermouth.

More on Cockermouth

Cockermouth on the Around-England blog

The Lake District, West: Cockermouth

It was a sunny Saturday a few weeks ago when we set off to drive from the Eden Valley down to Skipton and beyond. We hadn’t gone more than thirty miles or so when my wife said, “Let’s stop in Kirkby Lonsdale and walk down to Ruskin’s view of the River Lune”.

Kirkby Lonsdale is a quaint old town well worth visiting for its own sake, quite apart from the view which we’ll see in a moment, to walk around slowly and to enjoy a meal. That day we didn’t stay to eat but we did stroll through the streets before heading for the churchyard.

Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard – Ruskin’s View

Down past the old church at end of the graveyard is a viewing point which attracts thousands of visitors each year to see the view of the Lune valley which John Ruskin in 1875 described as “one of the loveliest in England” – the River Lune flowing peacefully down past meadow land, then sweeping round as it hits the rocky escarpment – “a gentle panorama of river, meadow, woods and hills in almost perfect balance”. I have to agree with Ruskin. It is splendid. I’ve gazed at it repeatedly through my life and never tire of seeing it yet again.

Walking back toward the church by a different path from the one we used to get to the viewing point we passed something else I’d noticed repeatedly over the years.

This part of the churchyard now has its grass uncut as a deliberate attempt to encourage wildlife, but still clearly visible by the side of the path is an unusual gravestone. The stone had been here eight years when Ruskin famously praised this view of the Lune. I wonder whether he noticed it as generations of others have done since.

This is not an elaborate monument like Ruskin’s own monument in Coniston churchyard. It is a simple stone. But the words are so forceful. I’ve often wondered about its history. Who was Ellen Cookson? Did she ask for these words to be inscribed over her grave? Or was it the idea of some surviving relative struck by the suddennness of Ellen’s loss? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. But almost a century and a half later, here in Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, she still speaks to passers by.

My time in the Lake District has been very limited so far this year but I did get three days there last week, the primary reason for the visit being to visit elderly relatives. In addition to an overnight in Workington I managed to spend two nights in one of the sleeping ‘pods’ of a large tent belonging to some friends on a camp site near Threlkeld and attended a few meetings at the Keswick Convention, an annual inter-denominational Christian event drawing thousands of people every year and that has been running for around 130 years since being started by a local vicar in the mid-1870s. It was also possible to fit in a couple of afternoon trips into areas easily accessible from Keswick.

Earlier in the week the weather had been wet (as is necessary to fill the rivers and lakes, so we shouldn’t complain too much about it) but my days there were quite pleasant. Friday afternoon took me with two friends past Bassenthwaite to Cockermouth where we enjoyed a late lunch at the Trout Hotel and followed this with a drive to see Loweswater, Crummock Water, Buttermere, Honister Pass, Borrowdale and Derwentwater. I love the northern lakes. They’re so much less congested with traffic and people than the honeypot areas of Windermere, Ambleside, etc, beautiful as those areas are.

The contrasting scenery of Loweswater and Buttermere, the different shaped valleys, the sudden transition from the steep scree-covered slopes of Honister to the greenery of Borrowdale, all these made for a great afternoon. As we drove along we talked of The Secret Valley and the Herries Chronicles, fictional accounts of this fascinating landscape. What a pity that having passed Lodore we didn’t have time to visit Watendlath and Ashness Bridge.

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]

I hesitated before starting to write this. After all, why should anyone else be interested in a record of how my wife and I spent a few days in the Lake District. We’d driven north to look after grandchildren for a few days, then there was a gap before I had to be north again for two preaching engagements, so rather than return home between the two we took our tent to the Crake Valley, close to where the River Crake flows out from the foot of Coniston Water (picture below, taken in the rain).

Why should this interest anyone else? Well, it strikes me that an important point about these days is that they were wet. Yes, more than damp … wet!

This  is not intended to put off those considering a visit to the Lakes, but rather to demonstrate that rainy weather does not have to destroy an holiday in the English Lake District. It can, in fact, add interest as one searches for alternatives to the obvious; and in the Lake District one doesn’t have to search far.

1. Go prepared. Check out in advance what indoor places of interest are to be found in the area. Research historical events and famous people connected with the area, and see whether there are museums or historic houses associated with them. Ask which writers and artists have worked around here, are they commemorated in some way, and are their works on display? Why not use our “English Lakes” site to help with your planning?
2. However well you think you know the area, take every opportunity to scavenge the racks of brochures that are in just about every hotel foyer, restaurant, coffee shop, trinkets store, petrol filling station, etc, etc, etc.. You’ll almost certainly be surprised to find something that you didn’t imagine would be around here, or which you vaguely knew about but had forgotten.
3. Don’t let a bit of rain turn you totally away from the idea of an outdoor holiday. Use the gaps in the heavy rain to take short walks. If you’re visiting the Lakes I assume you’ll have waterproofs with you.  Put them on and go out.

Day One:  Coniston Water, Millom and Haverigg

Wednesday: We were camping (the tent attaches to the back of our estate car – more on that in a later post) at a small secluded site at Blawith, between Torver and Greenodd.  We’d chosen this because, although as a child in the 1950s I’d often visited my uncle’s farm just up the road between Lowick and Gawthwaite, we’d never before explored the area in any detail.

The morning was damp but not actually raining, so skirting the private land over which there appears to be a right of way only to use the Coniston passenger launch jetty, we found our way down to a point at the water’s edge where there is a canoe launching point.  Even in the damp air with the mist over the hills it was a  beautiful, peaceful spot and until we reached the road on our return walk by a different path we never saw a single soul.

For the afternoon we chose to visit a town and headed west to Millom, home of the late Norman Nicholson, possibly the most outstanding of 20th-century “Lakes Poets”.  It would have been nice to spend some time in the local museum, which I’m told is very informative on the history of the area – this grey town between the heights of Black Combe and the Duddon Estuary which for generations was home to a major steel-producing plant based on the local availability of haematite ore, all now gone. This, however, will have to wait for another trip as we decided to head further west to Haverigg, a small coastal village.

If you’re lover of windswept views of sand and sea then this outer point of the Duddon estuary, looking south across to Askam and Barrow with Walney Island wrapped around the tip of the Furness Peninsula, must be for you.  As we reached the coast the rain had stopped.  We strolled onto the first few sand dunes (an area of dune said to be the largest in England, and recognised now as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its extensive natural habitats).  I’d like to spend more time exploring this area.  For today, though, we sat for a while on a seat overlooking the estuary, enjoying the view, then drank an excellent cup of tea at the beach cafe. Across from the cafe is an information board about the Duddon Estuary – one of the best, in the sense of being genuinely informative and interestingly put together, that I’ve seen anywhere. (I don’t expect you to be able to read the text on the photo!)

Day Two:  Barrow-in-Furness

Thursday: Still raining.  And disaster struck.  It’s not easy to lock the keys inside our car; it’s designed to make it difficult, but I succeeded.  “Don’t worry,” said my wife.  “I’ve got my keys in my bag.”  “Where’s your bag?”  “Oh! … It’s in the car!”  That occupied the morning, but the Green Flag emergency call-out man did a splendid job, and by lunch-time we were mobile.  We decided to go west again, this time on the south side of the Duddon, so headed out past Greenodd. Ulverston and Dalton to Barrow.

Now what can I say of my birthplace?  My parents left just after World War II, and took me with them. I was only three years old so I never knew Barrow well, but over the years came to think of it as a rather dull, dusty, declining and dispirited town with little going for it apart from the fluctuating fortunes of the shipbuilding industry.  Today, however, I saw a brighter Barrow.  The town is picking itself up.  As we walked through the streets, even on a dull day, there seemed to be more energy about the place.

I’m cheered at that.  But actually, our focus now was not to be on the present but on Barrow’s past.  There is a excellent museum in one of the old docks; three floors of exhibits on the history of this remarkable town and its growth from almost nothing to a major industrial centre based on iron, ships and railways within little more than thirty years in the nineteenth century.  It was indeed a miracle town of the industrial revolution.  For me it has a special interest as one of my four sets of great-grandparents arrived in the area from Liverpool during the 1870s, but even without a personal connection The Dock Museum can provide a fascinating afternoon out, not least for its scale models of ships launched from the shipyards here – and there’s a nice coffee shop. The Barrow Dock Museum is something of which the town can rightfully be proud.  (I wonder whether it is fully appreciated locally).

There’s much more to Barrow for the visitor. The lover of history can investigate the magnificent ruins of Furness Abbey, the ancient Cistercian monastery from which the powerful abbots of long ago strongly influenced both the religious and economic life of this region, and beyond.   The nature lover can spend fascinating hours at the reserves on Walney Island, and a drive back to Ulverston along the “coast road” on the south of the peninsula is beautiful, but for now we had to return to base camp and chose to go through Askam (briefly to revive childhood memories of walks along the sand to Dunnerholme with the dogs) and Broughton.

Day Three:  Hawkshead and Coniston

Friday. I wish we’d known the significance of the day as we chose to visit the Beatrix Potter properties of the National Trust at Hawkshead and Near Sawrey … but as described in an earlier post on this blog we found them both closed.  (Warning!  Don’t try to visit Beatrix Potter on a Friday.  She’s “not at home” to visitors on that day).  However, after eating our sandwiches in the Hill Top car park, we drove back and wandered around Hawkshead under umbrellas, found a good bookshop and visited the old Grammar School (pictured above), founded in 1585 and attended by William Wordsworth from 1779-1787.

Next stop was Coniston village.  I wanted some photographs of the Ruskin monument in the churchyard, and obligingly the rain stopped for a while.  On previous visits I’d not noticed that W. G. Collingwood (at different stages of his life Ruskin’s student, assistant, secretary, travelling companion, colleague and biographer – as well as artist, archeologist, antiquarian and author in his own right) is buried in the adjacent plot.  Then to complete a trio of gravestone photos I walked to the modern burial ground a few hundred yards away to see the grave of Donald Campbell who was killed in 1967 when his Bluebird speedboat crashed on Coniston Water during an attempt on the world water speed record.

I’ve visited the Ruskin Museum in Coniston several times in the past, and decided this time to give it a miss.  If you’ve never been then you should include this on your itinerary, but I satisfied myself with a photograph of the temporary entrance as in the very near future a new extension is to be opened housing the restored Bluebird, remains of which were recovered a few years ago along with Donald Cambell’s body (at last laid to rest in 2001) after eventually being found in the depths of the lake.  I hope to return when the new exhibits are open.

The weather by now was blustery but dry, so after a cup of tea in a very nice cafe a walk to the lake was just what was needed.  More photographs, then on the way back we stopped off to look at an exhibition of two Lakeland photographers.  Rather unusually they were housed in an upstairs gallery over  the Fudge Shop on a small retail development, strategically positioned so that the footpath is routed through it, between the village and the lake.  I was very impressed with the work of both Trevor Brown and David Briggs.

Day Four:  Windermere and Near Sawrey

Saturday: Overnight it had poured down, but our trusty tent kept us snug and dry. We took it down between showers, and drove to Lakeside, at the foot of Windermere.

The plan had been to visit the freshwater aquarium there but we changed out minds and left it for another visit. It look as though this could provide a very interesting hour or two on a rainy day, or even to retreat from the sun when it’s too hot, but I simply cannot understand how the National Park planning authorities allowed it to be built in a style more suited to a small town supermarket. Why on earth isn’t it at least faced in local slate to make it fit in with the general environment?

The weather now improved and we had a very good, intermittently sunny day mostly around Windermere. Firstly Fell Foot Park, owned by the National Trust and providing access to a beautiful stretch of the lake shore. Given my interest in the local rivers it allowed me photograph the point at which the River Leven flows out from the lake to commence its short coastward journey.

We then moved on toward the northern end of the lake, to Brockhole. headquarters of the Lake District National Park Authority. The house, gardens and a stretch of lake shoreline are open to the public free of charge (apart from a modest car park fee). The house includes an information centre, Lake District exhibitions, a very nice restaurant, a bookshop and a film theatre. This is a “must-see” for any visitor to this part of the Lake District. Many special events are held at Brockhole on a wide variety of Lakeland themes. Views from the garden are little short of spectacular.

We also fitted in a visit to Hill Top, the Beatrix Potter farmhouse, compensating from our failed attempt the previous day, and then it was time to hit the motorway. We’d had an excellent few days. The weather didn’t allow the intended photographic exploration of the Crake Valley; that will have to wait for another time; but we demonstrated clearly that damp days don’t have to be a spoiled holiday.

The redevelopment of Waterhead, Ambleside, was bound to be controversial. Reconciliation of the many inevitably conflicting interests are difficult enough in an ordinary town or village but when it’s in a national park, and especially when it’s by Windermere, you can guarantee a good debate.

The Westmorland Gazette a few days ago published an article on the latest compromise proposal. Here’s the link so that you can follow what is being talked about for the future of this important area on the Windermere shore.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes

What is now the Keswick Country House Hotel was originally built by the company that in 1865 launched the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway. As their new railway line into the northern Lake District replaced the previous three-hour (minimum!) journey from the Penrith mainline station by horse-drawn coach, the tourist trade expanded rapidly. A new hotel was needed alongside the station. A hundred and forty years later the hotel has adopted twentyfirst century standards while the station house now houses several executive class rooms as an extension of the hotel. The trains stopped coming to Keswick more than thirty-five years ago.

Last night while searching through a pile of old Lake District brochures in my study, looking for something entirely different from what I eventually found, I came across a book I’d forgotten about but which I presumably bought on a visit to Keswick some years back. It kept me up late reading. Here it is, a fascinatingly detailed account of the history of the railway line that ran east to west across the northern lakes area.

I’ve created a page about it on our English Lakes site with the title, “By Train to Keswick“, but if you really want to know more about this piece of Lake District history, click on the book here to see whether there’s a copy available from Biblio.com. Alternatively, try Amazon.co.uk.

Note: This book seems now to be quite rare. Shop around between the two sources here, as each will probably list several alternative book dealers – and prices tend to vary widely.

- David Murray -
England’s Lakes