The Medieval Landscape of the Lake District
The intensity of the struggle which the Normans faced, over a period of at least two hundred years, to establish themselves in Cumbria is marked by the series of great castles which they built in the region in order to consolidate their hold and drive back the Scots.
Castles such as Cockermouth, Penrith, Appleby and especially Kendal and Carlisle were at the centre of this struggle, which saw the Scots briefly in control as far south as Morecambe Bay in the middle of the twelfth century; as late as 1172 a further Scots invasion of northern England had some initial success, but it was shortlived. From the thirteenth century onwards the invaders were restricted to brief border raids of brutal severity but only local significance.
Within the mountain core there were no such struggles and therefore no great castles. Domesday Book has little to say about the district, covering only the Kendal and Furness areas, and throughout the early medieval period the mountainous core appears to have been largely neglected.
The pattern of Norman church building echoes this, for although some sixty Cumbrian churches show evidence of Norman work they are almost all peripheral to the fell country. As with their AngloSaxon forebears, the Normans clearly settled the fertile lowlands and were less interested in the higher ground.
Nevertheless, there was some penetration into the eastern periphery of the Lake District, and both Barton and Dacre churches, in the low rolling fell country close to Ullswater, betray their Norman origins (though Dacre, at least, was a rebuilding of an earlier Anglian church).
The Normans and the Lake District
The Normans were content for the most part to leave the economic development of the mountain resource in the hands of the monks. Although only two abbeys were sited in the National ark Shap Abbey in a lonely valley in the remote eastern fringes, and Calder Abbey in the far west a number of much more powerful foundations lay just outside the Park and, through their development of the large tracts of land gifted to them in the dales and on the fellsides, played a very significant role in changing the characteristics of the landscape in the medieval period. Amongst these major landowners Furness Abbey was pre-eminent.
Furness Abbey the Lake District
Furness Abbey, founded in 1127, received with its charter from Stephen much of the Furness peninsula and the fells between Windermere and Coniston Water (High Furness), and in succeeding years added greatly to its land holdings in the Lake District. The most important acquisitions were the greater part of Borrowdale, bought from Alice de Rumeli in 1209 for £156 Us 4d, and 14,000 acres in upper Eskdale, acquired in 1242.
This latter acquisition was that of the sheep farm of Brotherilkeld, probably first established by the Norse settlers in the tenth century, and still in existence the long, low whitewashed farmhouse now on the site dates from the great seven::eenthcentury rebuilding but is redolent of the site's antiquity¬as part of the National Trust's estate in Eskdale.
The packhorse bridges in the Lake District
Amongst the landscape features associated with the monks of Furness in Eskdale are the delightful packhorse bridge and sheepfold at Throstle Garth, not far upstream from Brotherilkeld and reached by a quite superb riverside footpath, and the remains of a boundary dating from 1284 which divided deer park and sheep pasture in Great Moss, the strange, flat wilderness nestling below Esk Buttress and the Scafell range.
The imprint of the Cistercian monks from Furness is strongest, however, in High Furness, an intimately picturesque area of low wooded hills and secret country lanes lying to the west of Windermere. Here the map indicates the location of the abbey's outlying sheep farms, which include the distinctively Norman pI ace name element park.
High Stott and Low Stott Park Windermere
Examples are Parkamoor, situated above the woods at the southern end of Coniston Water, and, near the foot of Windermere, High Stott Park and Low Stott Park, which appear to have originated as stock rearing enterprises.
Some of these farms were so distant from the abbey that granges or manor farms were created as centres from which the far-flung estates could be managed; just outside Hawkshead the monks' grange and courthouse survives as an attractive slate and sandstone building now cared for by the National Trust. In Borrowdale the name of the hamlet of Grangein Borrowdale betrays the existence of another key farm.
Shap Abbey the Lake District
The buildings of Shap Abbey, nestled in a shallow valley on the eastern edge of the Lake District, come as quite a surprise in bleak and largely uninhabited moorland country. The substantial tower of the abbey church, modelled on the tower at Fountains Abbey and ironically completed only just before the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, is the most imposing surviving remnant, though there is much earlier work in the chancel.
The abbey had substantial estates in the eastern Lake District, where the name of Bampton Grange gives a clue to a former monastic farm, and in the Yorkshire Dales. On the other hand, Calder Abbey, in its secluded setting in the remote west, was less well provided for, and the monks were much troubled by Scots raiders, so much so that in 1138 the monks (only twelve in number) were driven away.
Nevertheless, records indicate that the abbey later played its part in the medieval clearance of forests to make way for pasture. By the middle of the thirteenth century the monks were allowed to 'cut down and prostrate the branches of trees throughout all the woods of Copeland Forest, for the feeding of animals in winter.
Amongst the features to seek out are the ruins of the abbey itself, with the tower still standing to half its original height, and five bays of the west aisle remaining, together with part of the chancel; the medieval packhorse bridge (Matty Benn's Bridge), confidently attributed to the monks, higher up the valley of the Calder; and the monks' toad between the abbey and Calder Bridge.
Lake District forests and places to go
Where the monks failed to penetrate, the medieval Landscape of the Lake District was one of 'forest' either royal forest such as that of Inglewood, which included much of the fell country at the Back 0' Skidda' or private forests such as Copeland, covering the western fells, and Millom, which included much of Dunne dale.
These were forests in the Legal sense and were by no means all tree covered; they were areas where forest Law applied in order to preserve game for the huntsman. Within the forests clearance for agricultural purposes was illegal, though this by no means stopped it from taking place: to give just one example, names such as Harry Place, Ellers and Middle fell Place commemorate a whole series of medieval clearances in Great LangdaLe. By the fourteenth century this process of colonisation and creation of huge upland sheep walks was accepted and smaller, enclosed deer parks were created for the huntsmen.
Troutbeck and Rydal Beck Deer parks
Deer parks such as those at Troutbeck and in the Rydal Beck valley (an enjoyable afternoon can be spent tfacing the wall built in 1277 to delineate this latter park on the slopes of Nab Scar) flourished for a while, but the rise of sheep rearing was inexorable and only a few fragments of these deer parks remain.
The prosperous early medieval period saw the growth of many settlements into villages and the creation of new market towns. Places such as Grasmere and Ambleside, originally mere outlying hamlets in much Larger parishes (in this case Kendal), became chaperones and were eventually granted full parochial status. Indeed, by the fourteenth century Grasmere had 17 tenements and 7 cottages, as well as a fulling mill, a water mill, a fishery, a brew house and a forge.
Two hundred years later there were no Less than eighteen fulling mills harnessing the waters of the Rothay and its tributaries. The increasing population of the dales was instrumental in Leading to the provision of new chapels in the comparatively remote dale heads: the church of Borrow dale, close to the hamlet of Stonethwaite, dates from this early medieval period, though the present building is entirely nineteenth century in appearance, and the oLder of the two chapels in Martindale dates from the thirteenth century.
By no means all of these medieval chapels, the product of a period of considerable prosperity, have survived, and the same can be said of some of the communities which they served. One such chapel was established at Boredale Hause, at the head of the remote valley of Boredale, east of Patterdale, to serve the tiny and now vanished community of Boredalehead. It is an astonishing Location for such a chapel, far above the limits of present day settlement and with the remains of the Chapel in the House barely discernible amongst the maze of paths which meet here.
William Wordsworth and the Lake District
Wordsworth waxed Lyrical: 'Scarcely did the Druids, when they fled to these fastnesses, perform their rites in any situation more exposed to disturbance from the elements ... What dismal storms must have often drowned the voice of the preacher!' If the storms can be avoided, this is an especially pleasant place to visit, with fine views into the eastern fells and across PatterdaLe to Helvellyn. The remains of the medieval settlement of RannerdaLe, on the western side of the Lake District, exist in similarly melancholy circumstances today as a result of the seventeenth or eighteenth century desertion of the hamlet. Slight mounds and hollows in the shadows below the steep flanks of Grasmoor now mark the site of the medieval farmsteads and the chapel of the Blessed Mary Magdalene.
The Lake District Restaurants bars
Whether you plan to visit the many historical attractions in the Lake District, including Roman forts, Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount, which were once owned by the family of William Wordsworth, Hill Top, the house of Beatrix Potter, Honiston Slate Mines, or you prefer to relax by Lake Windermere or take a boat trip from Bowness, you will find some of the best restaurants and accommodation close to the attractions. You may want to book a table at L´enclume in Cartmel to enjoy Michelin-star dining, or stroll along to a bistro in Bowness. Whatever floats your boat, you will find it in the Lake District.
Castles such as Cockermouth, Penrith, Appleby and especially Kendal and Carlisle were at the centre of this struggle, which saw the Scots briefly in control as far south as Morecambe Bay in the middle of the twelfth century; as late as 1172 a further Scots invasion of northern England had some initial success, but it was shortlived. From the thirteenth century onwards the invaders were restricted to brief border raids of brutal severity but only local significance.
Within the mountain core there were no such struggles and therefore no great castles. Domesday Book has little to say about the district, covering only the Kendal and Furness areas, and throughout the early medieval period the mountainous core appears to have been largely neglected.
The pattern of Norman church building echoes this, for although some sixty Cumbrian churches show evidence of Norman work they are almost all peripheral to the fell country. As with their AngloSaxon forebears, the Normans clearly settled the fertile lowlands and were less interested in the higher ground.
Nevertheless, there was some penetration into the eastern periphery of the Lake District, and both Barton and Dacre churches, in the low rolling fell country close to Ullswater, betray their Norman origins (though Dacre, at least, was a rebuilding of an earlier Anglian church).
The Normans and the Lake District
The Normans were content for the most part to leave the economic development of the mountain resource in the hands of the monks. Although only two abbeys were sited in the National ark Shap Abbey in a lonely valley in the remote eastern fringes, and Calder Abbey in the far west a number of much more powerful foundations lay just outside the Park and, through their development of the large tracts of land gifted to them in the dales and on the fellsides, played a very significant role in changing the characteristics of the landscape in the medieval period. Amongst these major landowners Furness Abbey was pre-eminent.
Furness Abbey the Lake District
Furness Abbey, founded in 1127, received with its charter from Stephen much of the Furness peninsula and the fells between Windermere and Coniston Water (High Furness), and in succeeding years added greatly to its land holdings in the Lake District. The most important acquisitions were the greater part of Borrowdale, bought from Alice de Rumeli in 1209 for £156 Us 4d, and 14,000 acres in upper Eskdale, acquired in 1242.
This latter acquisition was that of the sheep farm of Brotherilkeld, probably first established by the Norse settlers in the tenth century, and still in existence the long, low whitewashed farmhouse now on the site dates from the great seven::eenthcentury rebuilding but is redolent of the site's antiquity¬as part of the National Trust's estate in Eskdale.
The packhorse bridges in the Lake District
Amongst the landscape features associated with the monks of Furness in Eskdale are the delightful packhorse bridge and sheepfold at Throstle Garth, not far upstream from Brotherilkeld and reached by a quite superb riverside footpath, and the remains of a boundary dating from 1284 which divided deer park and sheep pasture in Great Moss, the strange, flat wilderness nestling below Esk Buttress and the Scafell range.
The imprint of the Cistercian monks from Furness is strongest, however, in High Furness, an intimately picturesque area of low wooded hills and secret country lanes lying to the west of Windermere. Here the map indicates the location of the abbey's outlying sheep farms, which include the distinctively Norman pI ace name element park.
High Stott and Low Stott Park Windermere
Examples are Parkamoor, situated above the woods at the southern end of Coniston Water, and, near the foot of Windermere, High Stott Park and Low Stott Park, which appear to have originated as stock rearing enterprises.
Some of these farms were so distant from the abbey that granges or manor farms were created as centres from which the far-flung estates could be managed; just outside Hawkshead the monks' grange and courthouse survives as an attractive slate and sandstone building now cared for by the National Trust. In Borrowdale the name of the hamlet of Grangein Borrowdale betrays the existence of another key farm.
Shap Abbey the Lake District
The buildings of Shap Abbey, nestled in a shallow valley on the eastern edge of the Lake District, come as quite a surprise in bleak and largely uninhabited moorland country. The substantial tower of the abbey church, modelled on the tower at Fountains Abbey and ironically completed only just before the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, is the most imposing surviving remnant, though there is much earlier work in the chancel.
The abbey had substantial estates in the eastern Lake District, where the name of Bampton Grange gives a clue to a former monastic farm, and in the Yorkshire Dales. On the other hand, Calder Abbey, in its secluded setting in the remote west, was less well provided for, and the monks were much troubled by Scots raiders, so much so that in 1138 the monks (only twelve in number) were driven away.
Nevertheless, records indicate that the abbey later played its part in the medieval clearance of forests to make way for pasture. By the middle of the thirteenth century the monks were allowed to 'cut down and prostrate the branches of trees throughout all the woods of Copeland Forest, for the feeding of animals in winter.
Amongst the features to seek out are the ruins of the abbey itself, with the tower still standing to half its original height, and five bays of the west aisle remaining, together with part of the chancel; the medieval packhorse bridge (Matty Benn's Bridge), confidently attributed to the monks, higher up the valley of the Calder; and the monks' toad between the abbey and Calder Bridge.
Lake District forests and places to go
Where the monks failed to penetrate, the medieval Landscape of the Lake District was one of 'forest' either royal forest such as that of Inglewood, which included much of the fell country at the Back 0' Skidda' or private forests such as Copeland, covering the western fells, and Millom, which included much of Dunne dale.
These were forests in the Legal sense and were by no means all tree covered; they were areas where forest Law applied in order to preserve game for the huntsman. Within the forests clearance for agricultural purposes was illegal, though this by no means stopped it from taking place: to give just one example, names such as Harry Place, Ellers and Middle fell Place commemorate a whole series of medieval clearances in Great LangdaLe. By the fourteenth century this process of colonisation and creation of huge upland sheep walks was accepted and smaller, enclosed deer parks were created for the huntsmen.
Troutbeck and Rydal Beck Deer parks
Deer parks such as those at Troutbeck and in the Rydal Beck valley (an enjoyable afternoon can be spent tfacing the wall built in 1277 to delineate this latter park on the slopes of Nab Scar) flourished for a while, but the rise of sheep rearing was inexorable and only a few fragments of these deer parks remain.
The prosperous early medieval period saw the growth of many settlements into villages and the creation of new market towns. Places such as Grasmere and Ambleside, originally mere outlying hamlets in much Larger parishes (in this case Kendal), became chaperones and were eventually granted full parochial status. Indeed, by the fourteenth century Grasmere had 17 tenements and 7 cottages, as well as a fulling mill, a water mill, a fishery, a brew house and a forge.
Two hundred years later there were no Less than eighteen fulling mills harnessing the waters of the Rothay and its tributaries. The increasing population of the dales was instrumental in Leading to the provision of new chapels in the comparatively remote dale heads: the church of Borrow dale, close to the hamlet of Stonethwaite, dates from this early medieval period, though the present building is entirely nineteenth century in appearance, and the oLder of the two chapels in Martindale dates from the thirteenth century.
By no means all of these medieval chapels, the product of a period of considerable prosperity, have survived, and the same can be said of some of the communities which they served. One such chapel was established at Boredale Hause, at the head of the remote valley of Boredale, east of Patterdale, to serve the tiny and now vanished community of Boredalehead. It is an astonishing Location for such a chapel, far above the limits of present day settlement and with the remains of the Chapel in the House barely discernible amongst the maze of paths which meet here.
William Wordsworth and the Lake District
Wordsworth waxed Lyrical: 'Scarcely did the Druids, when they fled to these fastnesses, perform their rites in any situation more exposed to disturbance from the elements ... What dismal storms must have often drowned the voice of the preacher!' If the storms can be avoided, this is an especially pleasant place to visit, with fine views into the eastern fells and across PatterdaLe to Helvellyn. The remains of the medieval settlement of RannerdaLe, on the western side of the Lake District, exist in similarly melancholy circumstances today as a result of the seventeenth or eighteenth century desertion of the hamlet. Slight mounds and hollows in the shadows below the steep flanks of Grasmoor now mark the site of the medieval farmsteads and the chapel of the Blessed Mary Magdalene.
The Lake District Restaurants bars
Whether you plan to visit the many historical attractions in the Lake District, including Roman forts, Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount, which were once owned by the family of William Wordsworth, Hill Top, the house of Beatrix Potter, Honiston Slate Mines, or you prefer to relax by Lake Windermere or take a boat trip from Bowness, you will find some of the best restaurants and accommodation close to the attractions. You may want to book a table at L´enclume in Cartmel to enjoy Michelin-star dining, or stroll along to a bistro in Bowness. Whatever floats your boat, you will find it in the Lake District.
Labels: Lake District forests and places to go, The Lake District Restaurants bars
posted by Windermere Boutique Hotels | 07:31
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