The Book of Coniston

The following is a copy of one of the most legible of these fugitive records:—

Lancr. P.ociall Cappell de Coniston.

We Jennet Dickson wife of Thomas Dickson and Isabell Fleming widow—doe severally make oath that the Corps of Isabel Dickson widow was buryed March y^e 15^th An^o Dmj 1692. And was not putt in, wrapt or wound up in any Shirt, Shift, Sheet or Shroud, Made or mingled w^th fflax, Hemp, Hair, Gold or Silver, etc: nor in any coffin lined or faced w^th cloath etc: nor in any other material but sheeps wooll onely According to Act of Parlyment. In Testimony whereof we y^e s^d Jennet Dickson and Isabel Fleming have hereunto putt our Hands and Seales the 15^th day of March, An^o Dmj 1692.

Capt et Jurt coram me		Jennet Dickson
Henri Mattinson Curt		her x mk
de Torver decimo nono		Isabel Fleming
die Martij Anno dom 1693		her x mk

So far Dr. Gibson on the "new" church, now the "old" church, and already of the past.

On November 17th, 1891, the church was reopened by Bishop Goodwin after a "restoration" which almost amounted to renovation. The Rev. C. Chapman, in his pamphlet on The ancient Parochial Church of Coniston, 1888, had already been able to announce that £600 had been gathered for the Building Fund, beside about the same amount spent in buying the old schoolhouse and playground in order to improve the site. But the money did not suffice for entire rebuilding; the ceiling and pews were removed, a chancel and vestry added, a clock placed in the tower, the roughcast of the exterior was cleared away, and stained glass windows have since been inserted, of which the best is the little west window by Kempe to the memory of the Beevers of the Thwaite. But few objects of antiquarian interest remain. The old oak chest with a curious padlock, the parish registers beginning 1594 and recommencing 1695, the old library, and the little brass on the south wall are all that is left to record the ancient family of the Hall. The brass is inscribed:—

To the Liveing Memory of ALICE FLEMING of Coningston-Hall in the County Palatine of Lancaster Widow (late Wife of William Fleming of Coningston-Hall aforesaid Esq^r; and eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby of Kirkby in the said County Esq^re) and of John Kirkby Gentleman her second brother was this Monument by her three sorrowful sons S^r Daniel Fleming Knight Roger Fleming and William Fleming gentlemen, for their dear Mother and Uncle here erected. The said John Kirkby (having lived above 30 yeares with his sister aforesaid, and having given to the Churches and Poor of Kirkby and Coningston aforesaid 150£) died a Bachelor at Coningston-Hall aforementioned September 28 A.D. 1680, and was buried near unto this place the next day: And the said Alice Fleming died also (having outlived her late Husband above 27 yeares and survived 5 of her 8 children) at Coningston-Hall aforesaid Febry 26 A.D. 1680, and was buried in this Church, close by her said Brother Febr 28, 1680, in the same Grave where ye Lady Bold (second wife of John Fleming Esq^re deceased, uncle to ye said William Fleming Esq^r) had about 55 yeares before been interred.

Epitaph

Spectator stay, and view this sacred ground
See it contains such Loue, on Earth scarce found,
A BROTHER and a SISTER, and you see
She seeks to find him in Mortality—
First he did leave us; then she stay'd & try'd
To live without him, lik'd it not and dy'd
Here they ly buried, whose Religious Zeal
Appeard sincere to Prince, Church, Commonweal;
Kind to their Kindred, Faithful to their Friends,
Clear in their Lives and Chearful to their ends.
They both were Dear to them whose good intent
Makes them both liue in this one Monument.
So Dear in Cordial Loue, tho' th' outward part.
Turne Dust it holds impression to the Heart.

The churchyard is first mentioned as a burying ground in 1594, and until 1841 was very small: indeed, the population it had to serve was small up to the nineteenth century. But by 1841 the population of the parish had grown, and Lady le Fleming made an addition to the churchyard. Subsequent additions were made in 1845, 1865, and 1878, the last by the removal of the old Institute, formerly the Boys' School. This used to stand between the church and the road, as shown in the photograph exhibited, with other views and relics of the neighbourhood, in the museum at the Coniston Institute.

In Coniston Churchyard the centre of general interest is Ruskin's grave, marked by the tall sculptured cross of gray Tilberthwaite stone, which stands under the fir trees near the wall separating the churchyard from the schoolyard. Near it are the white crosses of the Beevers, and the railed-in space is reserved for the family of Brantwood. The sculptures on the east face are intended to suggest Ruskin's earlier writings—the lower panel his juvenile poems; above, the young artist with a hint of sunrise over Mont Blanc in the background, for "Modern Painters;" the Lion of St. Mark, for "Stones of Venice," and the candlestick of the Tabernacle for "Seven Lamps." On the west face below is the parable of the labourers in the vineyard—"Unto this Last," then "Sesame and Lilies," the Angel of Fate with club, key and nail for "Fors Clavigera," the "Crown of Wild Olive," and St. George, symbolizing his later work. On the south edge are the Squirrel, the Robin and the Kingfisher in a scroll of wild rose to suggest Ruskin's favourite studies in natural history. On the north edge is a simple interlaced plait. The cross was carved by the late H. T. Miles of Ulverston from designs by W. G. Collingwood.

Since the restoration the clergymen have been:—

There seems then to have been an interregnum until William Tyson is recorded as assistant curate in 1805. The incumbent in 1809 was Jonas Lindow, who died 1826, under whom officiated as assistant curates:—

John Hodgson, June, 1809.
John Kendal (occasional).
Matthew Inman Carter, of Torver (occasional).
John Douglas, May, 1816, to November, 1821.
W. T. Sandys, February, 1825 (afterwards incumbent, assisted by P. Fraser).
H. Siree, February, 1835, to April, 1837 (assistant or incumbent?).
J. W. Harden, incumbent, 1837 to November, 1839 (to whom S. Boutflower, afterwards archdeacon of Carlisle, was assistant).
Thomas Tolming, incumbent, December, 1839; resigned April, 1870.
Charles Chapman, incumbent, 1870; died 1905.
H. E. Wood, curate in charge, 1905 to April, 1906.
F. T. Wilcox, incumbent, April, 1906.

The school used to be held in the church, an arrangement common in this district when the clergyman was also schoolmaster. Later, a small building was put up, within the area of the present churchyard; this was turned into a Mechanics' Institute in 1854, as already noted, when new schools were built. The site of the Boys' School and master's house, with adjacent ground, was conveyed by a deed dated December 6th, 1853, from Lady Le Fleming to the incumbent and chapel-wardens of Coniston and their successors. The buildings were to be erected as approved by Lady Le Fleming, and the school was always to be conducted on the principles of the Established Church of England. There is no deed extant for the Girls' (now the Infants') School. It was probably built at the same time as the old Boys' School, being similar in construction, especially in the chimneys (as Mr. Herbert Bownass notes). Dr. Gibson says in The Old Man (1849) that both schools had been conducted for the previous three or four years on the Home and Colonial School system.

The schoolmasters since the building of the new schools have been:—

Mr. Diddams, 1854-1858.
Mr. Ryder, 1858-1859.
S. K. Thompson, 1859-1864.
W. Brocklebank, 1864-1887.
C. J. Fox, 1887-1891.
John Morris, 1891-1902.
W. J. Rich, 1902.

The mistress of the Infants' School since 1876 has been Miss Agnes Walker.

The Mechanics' Institute in 1877 was found to be inadequate and inconvenient, and in 1878 a new building was made on the Yewdale road. This in its turn was outgrown, and in 1896 the committee, under the presidency of Dr. Kendall, resolved to enlarge it. A library and reading room, billiard and recreation rooms, room for meetings and classes, bath, museum, concert hall and caretaker's house were planned, and built in 1897 with the proceeds of various exhibitions and bazaars, added to private subscriptions. This enlarged Institute or village clubhouse was opened by Mrs. Arthur Severn on April 15th, 1896.

In 1900 an exhibition of drawings by the late Prof. Ruskin was held, and visited by over 10,000 people. From the proceeds of this a room for a museum was added, to supersede the little room formerly allotted for the purpose; and the Ruskin Museum was opened in August, 1901, Canon Rawnsley giving the inaugural address. The collection shown in the Museum is confined under two headings—"Ruskin" and "Coniston." It comprises (a) local history and antiquities, with a few illustrative specimens of general antiquities; (b) local minerals, to which it is hoped some day to add other branches of the natural history of Coniston: of this division Mr. Ruskin laid the foundation by his gift in 1884 of a collection of minerals and the model of the neighbourhood; (c) Ruskin drawings and relics, given or lent by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Severn; (d) books by and about Ruskin, with autographs, etc., in illustration; (e) engravings after Ruskin's drawings, and portraits of him; (f) copies and prints from pictures which have formed the subject of his writing. The collection is still growing, and an enlarged edition of the Catalogue (3d.) was brought out at Easter, 1906; copies can be had of the caretaker at the Institute. The Museum is open every week-day from 10 till dusk, admission one penny in the slot of the turnstile. Eight to ten thousand pennies have been taken yearly since the opening. The hon. curator is Mr. Herbert Bownass.

In the summer an exhibition, usually of pictures, is held during August and September in the large hall adjoining. Since the new Museum was built, the room formerly occupied by the collections has been used as a Ladies' Reading Room; and in 1905 a workshop for wood carving and other art crafts was added to the premises. The subscription to the Institute for residents over 16 years of age is 1s. 3d. a quarter; for boys, 9d.; for visitors 1s. a week, or 2s. 6d. a month. The management is in the hands of a committee elected by the members, non-sectarian and non-political; Dr. Kendall has been president since 1884, and Mr. Edmund Todd hon. secretary since 1902.

The Baptist Chapel was built in 1837, the youngest of many chapels described in a booklet entitled Old Baptist Meeting-houses in Furness, by F. N. Richardson (1904). Tottlebank, the oldest, was founded in 1669. Sunnybank, in Torver, 1678, and Hawkshead Hill, founded a few years later, no doubt took the early Baptists of Coniston; one of whom, William Atkinson of Monk Coniston, tanner, was fined in 1683 for attending a conventicle. These three chapels are now open, though Sunnybank and Hawkshead Hill were closed for some years before 1905. The seventeenth century chapel at Scroggs, between Broughton and Coniston, was dilapidated in 1842, and is now a cattle shed. The Coniston Chapel ministers were Mr. Kirkbride, Mr. Myers, and then for twenty-one years from about 1865 the Rev. George Howells; he was succeeded by Rev. Arthur Johnson. For nine years before 1904 there was no Baptist congregation, and the chapel was let to the "Brethren," who built a place of worship for themselves and opened it 1903. The Baptist Sunday School had been carried on all the while by Mr. William Shaw, and on regaining possession of the chapel a congregation was once more formed with Rev. R. Jardine as pastor.

A Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in 1859, but some years ago was converted into a Masonic Hall. A Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1875, but there is no settled minister.

The Roman Catholic Chapel was built in 1872 by Miss Aglionby of Wigton; Prof. Ruskin gave a window to this chapel. It was served for many years by Father Gibson; on his removal he was succeeded by Father Laverty, at whose death in 1905 Father Bradshaw was appointed to the cure.

VIII.—CONISTON INDUSTRIES.

Copper.

That the copper mines were worked by the Romans and the Saxons is only a surmise. Dr. A. C. Gibson, F.S.A., writing in 1866, said:—"Recent operations have from time to time disclosed old workings which have obviously been made at a very early period, by the primitive method of lighting great fires upon the veins containing ore and, when sufficiently heated, pouring cold water upon the rock, and so, by the sudden abstraction of caloric, rending, cracking and making a circumscribed portion workable by the rude implements then in use, specimens of which are still found occasionally in the very ancient parts of the mines, especially small quadrangular wedges perforated for the reception of a handle."

The mines of Cumberland were worked throughout the Middle Ages, and it is not impossible that these rich veins in the Coniston Fells were tried for ore; but we have no proof of the local assertion that they have been worked continuously since the days of the Romans. On the contrary, there seem to have been only two periods, of about a century each, during which mining was actively pushed. In the time of Queen Elizabeth we reach firm ground of history.

In 1561 a company was formed by several lords and London merchants to work the minerals of the kingdom under a patent from the Crown. They invited two German mining experts, Thomas Thurland and Daniel Hechstetter, who coming to England opened mines, and built smelting works at Keswick in 1565; and in spite of strong local opposition soon made a great success. (Their proceedings are described in a paper by J. Fisher Crosthwaite, F.S.A., in Transactions of the now defunct Cumberland Association, viii.)

They also took over the Coniston mines, and worked them with energy and profit. They opened out no less than nine new workings beside the old mine—the New or White Work, Tongue Brow (in Front of Kernel Crag), Thurlhead, Hencrag, Semy Work, Brimfell, Gray Crag, the Wide Work, and the Three Kings in Tilberthwaite; employing about 140 men. The ore was raised at a cost of 2s. 6d. to 8s. a kibble, each kibble being about a horse load, for it was carried on pack-horses to Keswick for smelting. To avoid this they proposed building a smelting house at Coniston, which was, they said, well supplied with wood and peat, and an iron forge was already there. It would be easy to boat the manufactured copper down the water, and ship it at Penny Bridge.

But in the civil wars the Corporation of "Governors, Assistants, and Commonalty of the Mines Royal" came to an end. The Parliament soldiers wrecked the works at Keswick, and operations at Coniston were stopped.

After the civil wars, Sir Daniel Fleming was several times approached on the subject of reopening the mines. He seems to have been willing. He notes on January 21st, 1658, "given unto the miller of Conistone for going along with me on to the fell, 1s.;" and on March 22nd, "given to Parce Corratts when hee came to looke at the blacke lead mine at Conistone, 2/6." This turned out a disappointment, for on May 2nd, 1665, he says, "given unto a Newlands man who came to look at the supposed wadd-mine at Coniston, 5/-." And so nothing seems to have been done.

In 1684 Roger Fleming at the Hall sent his brother, Sir Daniel, a report of the mines "which were first wrought by the Dutchmen" (Keswick Germans) and others discovered more recently. Only three of the old workmen were living, but from their evidence we get the details given above. On May 25th, 1686, John Blackwall wrote from Patterdale to Sir Daniel that he had examined the ground at Coniston and studied the evidence of the three old miners, and was prepared with a company to open the mines, if they could agree upon terms.

Sir Daniel died in 1701; and the Rev. Thomas Robinson's Natural History of Cumberland, &c., published in 1709, mentions that copper had been formerly got at Cunningston, by the Germans, and taken to Keswick, but says nothing about a revival of the industry. It was, however, prosecuted in a small way throughout the eighteenth century. A Company of Miners at Ulpha is mentioned in George Bownass' account for tools in 1772. West says, in 1774, merely, "the fells of Coniston have produced great quantities of copper ore," nothing of mining in his time; and the smith's accounts from 1770 to 1774 do not mention it. There must have been a revival shortly afterwards. Captain Budworth, about 1790, tells the story of the devil and the miner, retold by Dr. Gibson from local tradition, to the effect that Simon the miner found a paying vein in the crag—it is called Simon Nick to this day, and the cleft he made is seen yet on the left hand as you go up to Leverswater; but one night at the Black Bull he boasted of his luck, and said the fairies, or the devil, were his partners, upon which he found no more copper, and lost his life soon after in blasting.

In 1802 the mines were going. In 1820 the Lonsdale Magazine says that they had been worked at intervals for many centuries, and had lately been in the hands of "spirited adventurers," but were then discontinued.

About 1835 a new era of prosperity began, in which Mr. John Barratt became the leader. His skill and energy brought about such success that in 1849 they employed 400 men, and yielded 250 tons of ore monthly. In 1855 the monthly wage list amounted to £2,000. In 1866 Dr. Gibson said:—"For many years their shipments averaged 300 tons per month, and employed from five to six hundred people," but "the number of hands employed do not now exceed two hundred."

Up to this time the ore had been boated down the lake, and carted to Greenodd. Now the Coppermining Company promoted a railway connecting Coniston with Broughton and the Furness line. It was a separate concern when it was opened in 1859, but absorbed into the Furness system in 1862.

The mines, as they were in his days, are described at length by Dr. Gibson in The Old Man, or Ravings and Ramblings around Conistone. Alexander Craig Gibson, M.R.C.S., F.S.A., was born at Harrington, 1813, the son of a ship's captain, who died early. He was taken by his mother to her home at Lockerbie, and brought up there; afterwards apprenticed to a surgeon at Whitehaven. In 1844 he came to Coniston as medical officer to the mining company, and lived for seven years at Yewdale Bridge, where he wrote his "Ravings and Ramblings" as articles for the Kendal Mercury, afterwards collected into a volume, and subsequently republished with considerable revision. He left Coniston in January, 1851, and remained at Hawkshead for some years; then removed southward, and finally settled at Bebington in Cheshire, where he died in 1874. A collection of sketches in prose and verse, The Folk-speech of Cumberland, &c. (Coward, Carlisle, 1869; ed. ii., 1872), shows him to be master of the dialect of the north-west in various forms—Furness, Cumbrian, and Dumfriesshire; and his book on Coniston remains a valuable contribution to local anecdote. (I owe the data of his life to the Rev. T. Ellwood.)

After the middle of the nineteenth century the copper mines became less and less profitable, owing to the competition of foreign imports. During the "eighties," they were only just kept open, until the Coniston Mining Syndicate, under the energetic management of Mr. Thomas Warsop, tried to put new life into the old business. Mr. Warsop attempted to introduce a new system of smelting, but this smelting house was blown away by the storm of December 22nd, 1894. He took the watercourse from Leverswater to work a turbine, which superseded the old waterwheels for pumping, and also supplied power for boring in the mines, and for crushing and mixing the material from the old rubbish heaps, with which he made excellent concrete slabs, much in demand for pavements. But the development came to an end with Mr. Warsop's removal in 1905, and when the mines were offered for sale there was no purchaser.

Iron.

In our tour of the lake we have noticed that there are remains of old iron works along its margin, now difficult to trace.

In High Furness, the district of which Coniston Lake is the centre, and the most northern part of Lancashire, there are about thirty known sites where iron was smelted in the ancient way with charcoal, producing a bloom—the lump of metal made by blowing in the furnace—whence the name bloomeries. Of these sites about half are in the valley of Coniston, and eight are actually on the shore of the lake:—

All these have been bloomeries of a somewhat similar kind, and on Peel Island some iron works have been carried on of a rather different type, and perhaps at a different period. Small bloomeries have also been in blast at Tom-gill (the beck coming down from the Monk Coniston Tarns, often called Glen Mary), and at Stable Harvey in Blawith. One is said to be at the limekiln in Yewdale. There were two bloomeries of the later and larger type at Coniston Forge (up stream from the church) and at Low Nibthwaite, and two others further down the Crake, making sixteen in all the valley now known. There are, of course, many beside in the Lake District, as in other parts of the country.

That there were iron works before the Conquest in Furness appears from the place-name of "Ouregrave" in Domesday, which must be identical with Orgrave. At this place, early in the thirteenth century, Roger of Orgrave gave Furness Abbey the mine "cum ... aquæ cursu ad illam scil. mineriam lavandum," a grant confirmed by his son Hamo in 1235 (Coucher Book of Furness, p. 229). About 1230 Thomas le Fleming gave them iron mines in Elliscales. By 1292 a great part of their income was derived from iron works.

Canon Atkinson, in his introduction to the Coucher Book of Furness, c. xviii., reckoned that they must have had some forty hearths to produce the iron they made. When the wood near the mines was exhausted, it became easier to carry the ore to the place where charcoal was burned than to bring the charcoal—so much greater in bulk—to the ore. An acre of forest was not enough to supply charcoal for smelting two tons of metal, and so the woods were gradually devastated over a wider and wider area.

In 1240 the abbey, which owned the eastern side of the lake, but not the lake itself, got leave from the baron of Kendal to put boats on the lake of Coniston for fishing and carrying. The carrying was chiefly of timber for building, but the tops and branches were no doubt used for charcoal. That on the other shore the smelting works were creeping up the valley is seen from the grant, before 1282, of William de Lancaster to Conishead Priory of the dead wood in Blawith for charcoal to supply the canons' bloomeries—for it was not only Furness Abbey that dealt in iron; and, indeed, more bloomeries exist on the side that did not belong to the abbey than on the shore that did. Thus in the thirteenth century we infer that smelting went on by Coniston Lake shore well up the west side.

On the east side there is a remarkable coincidence between the sites of Furness Abbey "parks" (or early clearings for sheep farms) and the bloomeries we find there. Near Selside Beck, where slag has been found, is Waterpark—anciently Water-side-park, apparently the earliest of the abbey sheep farms. Above Parkamoor Beck bloomery is Parkamoor—the sheep farm on the moor. Above Beck-leven bloomery is Lawson Park, the latest of the Furness Abbey sheep farms. I think the inference is that when the land was cleared they put sheep on it, and went up the lake to the next beck for the site of their bloomery. What we know for certain is that in early times the valley of Coniston was thickly wooded, but by the time of the dissolution of the monastery, High Furness had been nearly denuded of timber.

After the dissolution of the monastery, the commissioners of Henry VIII. let part of the woods of Furness Fells to William Sandys and John Sawrey, to maintain three smithies, or combined smelting and hammering works, for which the rent was £20. Less than thirty years later, in 1564-5, these were suppressed, because it was represented that the woods were being wasted, and the £20 rent was thenceforward paid to the lord of the manor by the customary tenants as "bloomsmithy rent."

The tenants of High Furness were allowed to make iron for themselves with the loppings and underwood, which may account for some of the small bloomeries. But by this time an improved and larger furnace was beginning to come into fashion, and in the seventeenth century we find that one such existed at Coniston at the Forge, between the Black Bull and Dixon Ground. It is mentioned in 1650 by the German miners, and by Sir Daniel Fleming in 1675. In 1750 it was turning out eighty tons of bar iron a year, and in 1771 Thomas Tyson is mentioned as the ironmaster (George Bownass' accounts). This would suffice for the needs of the neighbourhood, while at the same time the Deerpark, which we know was stocked in the seventeenth century and probably was preserved in the sixteenth, would make impossible the carrying on of smelting at Waterpark bloomery, which is within it, and at Springs, close to it. The relics from Peel Island, associated with iron works, seem to be mediæval, and the isolation of a forge on an island, as at Rampsholme in Derwentwater, implies that protection was sought, which would hardly be needed in Elizabethan and later times hereabouts. The conclusion seems to be that many of the little bloomeries are mediæval; that at Stable Harvey, perhaps the work of Conishead Priory after the grant of 1282, and those in Monk Coniston, the work of Furness Abbey.

The iron ore came from Low Furness, but there was an iron mine at the Red-dell head under Weatherlam. The Rev. Thomas Robinson, in his Natural History of Westmorland and Cumberland, 1709, says "Langdale & Cunningston mountains do abound most with iron veins; which supplies with Ore & keeps constantly going a Furnace in Langdale, where great plenty of good and malleable iron is made, not much inferior to that of Dantzick."

Slate.

Roofing slabs have been found in the ruins of Calder Abbey and the Well Chapel at Gosforth, both mediæval; in the mansion on Lord's Island, Derwentwater, destroyed before the end of the seventeenth century, we found green Borrowdale roofing slates. Purple Skiddaw roofing slates were also found in the ruins of a seventeenth and eighteenth century cottage at Causeway Head near Keswick. But it was not until the eighteenth century that quarrying began to develop. Mr. H. S. Cowper, in his History of Hawkshead, says that the Swainsons, from about 1720, worked a quarry in the Coniston flag formation near the Monk Coniston Tarns, and sent out their flags even as far as Ulverston Church. Fifty years later George Bownass, the Coniston blacksmith, was the great purveyor and repairer of tools, and from his ledger the names of his customers, gathered by Mr. Herbert Bownass, throw light on the history of the industry in the second half of the eighteenth century.

In 1770 appear William Jackson & Co. and Edward Jackson, no doubt of Tilberthwaite. In 1771, the Company of Slate-getters at Pennyrigg, Saddlestones, Cove and Hodge Close; Zachias Walker & Co., at Cove; George Tyson & Co., quarry owners; William Atkinson & Co., at Scoadcop Quarry; John Masacks & Co., at Cove; John Atkinson, slate merchant, Torver Fell Quarry; Wm. Fleming and Thomas Callan, Stang End Quarry; Matthew Carter, Stang End Quarry; also George Thompson and Wm. Vickers at a quarry with an unreadable name, and John Johnson, Jonathan Youdale, Wm. Wilson, Anthony Rigg and Wm. Stopart, slate-getters. In 1772, William Atkinson, Broadscop Quarry; John Speding & Co., quarry owners; slate-getters at Bove Beck or Gatecrag Quarries; Wm. Parker, slate merchant, Langdale; Wm. Fleming, Bessy Crag Quarry; Wm. Johnson, Pennyrigg Quarry; and John Vickers, Thomas and Rowland Wilson, John Casson, and George Bownass, slate-getters.

Of the quarries here mentioned as working 130 years ago Stang End and Bessy Crag are in Little Langdale, Pennyrigg and Hodge Close on opposite sides of the Tilberthwaite valley; Cove is on the flank of the Old Man above Gaitswater; Scoadcop and Broadscop look like variants of the name Goldscope, the quarry opposite Cove, and near Blind Tarn, to the right hand as you go up Walna Scar; Torverfell Quarry may be Ashgill; Saddlestones is the quarry seen on the way up the Old Man (page 3).

Father West in 1774 said that "the most considerable slate quarries in the kingdom" were in the Coniston Fells; the slate was shipped from Penny Bridge "for differents parts of the kingdom." In 1780, Green saw the quarry near the top of the Old Man "in high working condition." W. Rigge & Son of Hawkshead, who worked some of them, exported 1,100 tons and upward a year, and the carriage to Penny Bridge was 6s. 10d. to 7s. 10d. a ton. The slate was shipped at Kirkby Quay upon sailing boats, of which there were enough upon the water in 1819 to furnish the subject of a paragraph in Green's Guide describing a scene of "bustle and animation."

From papers given by Mr. John Gunson of Ulpha to the Coniston Museum, we can gather a few particulars of the slate trade in the early part of the nineteenth century. John Atkinson of Ivytree, Blawith, in 1803 was interested in the Tilberthwaite Quarries, and in 1804 applied for leave to redeem the Land Tax on the ground they covered, the annual sum being £2 13s. 4d. From 1820 we find John Atkinson & Co. working seven quarries—Ashgill (to the left hand as you go up Walna Scar) the most important, occupying usually about a dozen men, and worked at considerable profit until 1830, when it began to show a deficit; Tilberthwaite, after 1820 giving employment to about seven men, with fair profit until 1826, when the men seem to have been withdrawn to work a quarry at Wood in Tilberthwaite for a year and a half; Goldscope, employing from nine to fifteen men between 1821 and 1826, when the Cove Quarry seems to have been run with no great profit or energy until 1832; and Mosshead, on the north-east side of the Old Man, at the head of Scrow Moss, was worked in 1829 and at a loss. The Outcast Quarry, near Slater's Bridge (now Little Langdale Quarries), is mentioned only in 1830. The best workmen were paid 3s. 6d. a day; lads seem to have started at 6d. There are notes of indentures, in Atkinson's account-book, from which it seems that apprentices at the riving and dressing began at 1s. or 1s. 6d., with a yearly rise to 2s. 6d., before they were out of their time. The profits were fluctuating—Goldscope in two years (1821-23) produced £1,072 17s. worth of slates, and paid £719 18s. 10d. in wages; Ashgill in 1826 made £381 less powder, tools, candles, &c.; but these were good years. The royalties to Lady le Fleming on Cove and Mosshead for 1827-32 amounted to £33 6s.

Tilberthwaite was the old possession of the Jacksons. Their ancestor had come from Gosforth, Cumberland, about 1690, and is said to have acquired it by marriage from the Walkers, who held the land in freehold, not, as usual hereabouts, in customary tenure under a lord of the manor. The Jacksons held most of Tilberthwaite, Holm Ground, and Yewdale until their estates were bought by Mr. James Garth Marshall, and it was by marriage with an Elizabeth Jackson that John Woodburn of Kirkby Quarries came to have an interest in the slate trade here. His name appears in John Atkinson's account books after 1832, and he seems to have taken over the actual working of the quarries. In 1904 the total output of the Coniston quarries (Cove, High Fellside, Mossrigg and Klondyke, Parrock, Saddlestone, and Walna Scar) was 3438 tons; value at the quarries, £12,251.

Wood.

In spite of local production, iron was not plentiful in the eighteenth century. Iron nails were too valuable for common use, though they are found in quantities at the old furnaces on Peel Island and elsewhere, which must date from an earlier period. Wooden pegs were substituted in making kists and other furniture, house roofs, doors and boats. The trade in woodwork of many kinds flourished in Coniston and its neighbourhood.

We have already mentioned the sixteenth century "Cowpers and Turners, with makyng of Coles," and the Baptist tanner of Monk Coniston in the seventeenth century; his tannery was, no doubt, that at Bank Ground. Another old tannery was at Dixon Ground in Church Coniston. Bark peeling and charcoal burning are among the most ancient and continuous industries; the round huts of the charcoal burners and their circular pitsteads can be traced, though overgrown and so nearly obliterated as to resemble prehistoric remains, in many of the woods, or places which once were wooded.

In George Bownass' ledger, already quoted, John Bell & Co. are named as wood-mongers in 1771, and in 1772 the same smith repaired the "coal boate" owned by the executors of William Ford.

In 1820 the old Lonsdale Magazine says that the woods were cut every fifteen or sixteen years, and brought in the same value as if the land had been under cultivation. The wood was used for charcoal in smelting (and later in gunpowder making), for poles, hoops, and birch besoms; bird-lime was made from the bark of the holly, and exported to the West Indies.

As the Lancashire spinning increased there was a great demand for bobbins, and large quantities of small copse wood went to the turning mills. There was one near the Forge at Coniston, and a later bobbin mill farther down stream at Low Beck. Others were worked at Hawkshead Hill by W. F. Walker, and more recently at Sunnybank in Torver. But this industry has now died out.

An agreement in possession of Mr. H. Bownass, dated February 13th, 1798, between John Jackson of Bank Ground, gent. (landlord), and Robert Townson of the Gill, yeoman (tenant), of the one part, and T. Mackreth of Bank Ground, tanner, and John Gaskerth of Mattson Ground, Windermere, woollen manufacturer, of the other, authorises the building of a watermill for spinning and carding on the land called the Becks and Lowlands in Church Coniston. The carding mill near Holywath was owned early in the nineteenth century by Mr. Gandy of Kendal, and managed by Mrs. Robinson of the Black Bull.

The rise of Coniston trade is shown pretty accurately by the returns of population in this period. In 1801 Church Coniston contained 338 persons; in 1811, 460; in 1821, 566; and in 1831, 587. At this last date there were 101 houses inhabited and 9 empty, none building; and there were 102 families of which 25 were employed in agriculture, 65 in trade, mining, &c., and 12 beside. In Monk Coniston with Skelwith the population in 1801 was 286; in 1811, 386; in 1821, 426; and in 1831 it had dropped to 397. There were then 78 houses occupied and 12 empty; 36 families lived by agriculture, 2 by trade or manufacture, and 41 otherwise. This means that the village was always the home of the miners and quarrymen, while "at the back of the water" there was a gradually increasing settlement of gentlefolk attracted to the place by its scenery. In the later half of the century the population of Church Coniston, after reaching 1324 in 1861, fell to 1106 in 1871, 965 in 1881, and 964 in 1891; showing the decline of the once flourishing industrial enterprises. During the next decade the slate trade increased, and in 1901 the population had risen to 1111, whence the new rows of houses which, if not picturesque, were much needed. It is no longer possible to crowd the cottages as in mid-Victorian days when, it is said, the miners coming down from their work took the beds warm from the men on the other shift. And yet, granting the necessity, one cannot help regretting the meanness and ugliness of much recent building in the village. A pleasant exception is the new office for the Bank of Liverpool at the bridge, which is a clever adaptation of the old cottage, making a pretty effect without pretentiousness; and perhaps, with this example, local enterprise may still create—what is far from impossible—a little town among the mountains worthy of its environment.

IX.—OLD CONISTON.

The poet Gray, author of The Elegy in a Country Churchyard, in his tour of 1769, and Gilpin, in search of the picturesque, in 1772, did not seem to hear of Coniston as worth seeing. The earliest literary description is that of Thomas West, the Scotch Roman-Catholic priest, who wrote the Antiquities of Furness in 1774. He illustrated his book with a map "As Survey'd by Wm. Brasier 1745," in which are marked Coniston Kirk, Hall, Waterhead, Townend, Thurston Water, Piel I., Nibthwaite, Furnace, Nibthwaite Grange, Blawith Chap., Waterycot (by obvious error for "yeat"), Oxenhouse, Torver Kirk, Torver Wood (Hoathwaite), New Brig (the old pack-horse bridge), White Maidens, Blind Tarn, Goat's Tarn, Low Water, Lever Water, and so on, giving names in use 150 years ago.

West says:—"The village of Coniston consists of scattered houses; many of them have a most romantic appearance owing to the ground they stand on being extremely steep." Later editions add:—"Some are snow white, others grey ... they are all neatly covered with blue slate, the produce of the mountains, beautified with ornamental yews, hollies, and tall pines or firs."

Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, author of the Mysteries of Udolpho and other romantic novels, came here in 1794 or earlier; and after describing the Rhine, and all the other lakes, found Thurston Lake "one of the most interesting, and perhaps the most beautiful," though she took the Hall for a Priory, and sentimentalised about the "solemn vesper that once swelled along the lake from these consecrated walls, and awakened, perhaps, the enthusiasm of the voyager, while evening stole upon the scene." Conishead, not Coniston, was the Priory; the confusion between the two has been often made.

With fuller knowledge and from no hasty glance, Wordsworth soon afterwards described the same spot (Prelude, VIII.):—

Need I quote farther the famous outburst of patriotism?—it was our lake that roused it. And another great enthusiasm was stirred by our Coniston Fells.

In 1797 the landscape painter Turner came here as a youth of 23 on his first tour through the north. After his pilgrimage among the Yorkshire abbeys, so finely described by Ruskin in Modern Painters, vol. v., the young artist seems to have arrived among the fells one autumn evening, and sketched the Old Man from the Half-penny Alehouse. Then—I piece this together from the drawings and circumstances—he went round to spend the night at the Black Bull with old Tom Robinson and his wife, the daughter of Wonderful Walker. She was a wonderful woman herself; had been first a miner's wife, helping him to rise to a clerkship at the Leadhill Mines in Dumfriesshire, and on his death returning to Seathwaite; then, sorely against her old father's will, taking up with Tom, and settling at Townend to farm; afterwards for many years at the Black Bull, keeping the inn, managing the carding mill, and acting as parish officer in her turn; a notable figure, in mob cap and bedgown and brat; sharp tongued and shrewd of judgment. What did she make, I wonder, of the sunburnt, broad-shouldered lile cockney, with his long brown curls, his big nose and eagle eyes, and his sketch-book, "spying fancies?" Early in the morning he was out and scrambling up Lang Crags. It was one of the magical, misty autumnal sunrises we know so well. There had been rain, and Whitegill was full, thundering down the precipice at his feet. The fog was breaking away from the valley beneath, and rising in drifts and swirls among the clefts of Raven Crag, and the woods of Tilberthwaite. Far away, serene in the morning light, stood Helvellyn. It was his earliest sight of the mountain glory; the thrill of emotions never to be forgotten. Going home to London, he painted his first great mountain subject, afterwards in the National Gallery—the first picture for which he was moved to quote poetry in the Academy catalogue, and this from Paradise Lost—"Morning on Coniston Fells:—

By this time the fashion of visiting the lakes was coming in, enough to give employment to a guide—Creighton, whom Captain Budworth, about 1790, described as a self-taught scholar, claiming descent from a noble family in Scotland, and fond of bragging about the nobility he had taken up the fells. His son William was something of a genius; he was found here by John Southern of Soho drawing a map of the world with home-made mathematical instruments, but using them with immense skill. Mr. Southern took him into his drawing office, and young Creighton, by hard study, became a considerable linguist, astronomer, and cartographer.

To the old Black Bull, De Quincey came from Oxford in 1806 to see Wordsworth. Next year William Green, the artist and guide-book writer, was there, and went up Walna Scar with Robinson. Mrs. Robinson died in extreme old age, and afterwards Adam Bell was landlord (1849); in 1855, Edward Barrow.

The tourist business made more hotels necessary. In 1819 the old Waterhead Inn was called the New Inn as distinguished from the Black Bull. It stood at the head of the lake, where now is the plantation between the letter-box and the sign-post. In Holland's aquatint view (1792), a rambling farmhouse is shown there, but not called an inn. This became a favourite stopping place for tourists. John Ruskin's father was fond of it, and often stayed there alone or with his family. But John Ruskin, returning in 1867, wrote—"Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing in the boats, exists no more." The present hotel was built by Mr. Marshall in 1848-49, and tenanted by Mr. Atkinson, afterwards by Mr. and Mrs. Sly, and now by Mr. Joseph Tyson.

In 1849 the landlord of the Crown was Isaac Massicks. The Ship, in 1849, was kept by John Aitkin; the Rising Sun, in 1855, by James Harker. The old Half-penny Alehouse was pulled down in 1848 to build Lanehead.

To tell the story of the many "worthies" of Coniston, and to trace the fortunes of 'statesman families often wandering far into the world, and winning a fair share of renown, would need a volume to itself. One or two names we can hardly omit—such as Lieut. Oldfield of Haws Bank, who piloted the fleet into Copenhagen, and received his commission from Nelson for that deed; and Sailor Dixon, who fought under Howe on the first of June and under Duncan at Camperdown; twice taken prisoner, once retaken and once escaping from Dunkirk; implicated in the great mutiny of 1797, and yet acquitted by court martial, he lived at Coniston to the age of 71.

With these might be mentioned the soldier John Jackson, whose records of foreign service in the Crimea and elsewhere are still extant. His cousin, the late Roger Bownass, left many papers of interest to the student of Old Coniston. The first of his family came in 1710 from Little Langdale, and bought from William Fleming of Catbank for thirteen pounds odd the smith's shop at the place called Chapel Syke, i.e., where the Crown Inn bar is now; a stream rising above the Parsonage used to cross the road there, whence the name. He bought also the old Catbank Farmhouse and its land now covered with cottages. His son was about twelve or fourteen in 1745, and told the writer of the manuscript history of the family that he remembered taking a cartload of cannon balls, forged at the smithy, to Kendal for the Duke of Cumberland's army.

By 1773 a new site was needed for the smithy, and it was moved to Bridge End, where the Post Office now stands, on land bought from William Pennington of Kendal, wool comber, by George Bownass, son of the original blacksmith who by this time had died at the age of 87. Here a large business was carried on in quarry and edge tools, employing a number of men and apprentices; and profitable enough to enable the owner to buy many plots of land round about, to which his son William, who inherited the business, added other purchases, and still managed to save £100 a year. William Bownass died in 1818, and was the first person buried after the rebuilding of the church; of his seven children, Isaac, of Queen's College, Cambridge, became a successful schoolmaster, but died at the age of 28, and Roger, for 45 years postmaster at Coniston, died in 1889. Old George Bownass, the second of the name, died a year later than his son William; one of his daughters married a Coniston man, William Gelderd, who became the first mayor of Kendal after the passing of the new Municipal Act.

In the Christmas number, 1864, of the old Liverpool Porcupine is a short story by Dr. Gibson which, if we read Bownass for "Forness," Spedding for "Pedder," and Coniston for "Odinsmere," as the writer certainly intended, becomes a very vivid and interesting picture of Coniston folk and their surroundings at the beginning of the last century. It describes the smith "George Forness" as the well-to-do and industrious craftsman, in his busy workshop, surrounded by the village gossips at Candlemas. To him enters "old Matthew Pedder," bound next morning for Ulverston, to settle accounts. The smith entrusts him with money to pay his iron bill at Newlands, and save himself a journey. The next scene shows us a lane through the deerpark before dawn; Matthew on his half-broken mare attacked by a wastrel who has overheard the conversation, and now tries his unaccustomed hand at highway robbery. The mare throws him down, and Matthew gallops away believing his unknown assailant to be dead. Ten months later Matthew is called from his house in Tilberthwaite to the death-bed of Tom Bratton, and comes back subdued and silent. "What did he want wi' yee?" his family clamoured. "To ex me to forgive him." "Then it was him 'at tried to rob ye?" "Niver ye mind wha tried to rob me—neahbody did rob me!" "And what did ye say till him?" "I ext him to forgive me, and we yan forgev t'udder."

The slackness of anything like police in those days is illustrated by a document in possession of Mr. John Bell, which is an agreement dated 1791 on the part of leading villagers to form a sort of Trades Defence Association to preserve their property from "the Depredation of Highwaymen, Robbers, Housebreakers and other Offenders." It is signed by Edward Jackson, Isaac Tubman, Geo. Bownas (the smith), James Robinson, George Dixon, John Gelderd, David Kirkby, John Dawson, and by Thomas Dixon for Mr. John Armstrong, each of whom subscribed eighteen pence to found the association, and resolves in strictly legal form to stand by his neighbours in all manner of eventualities.

The smith's ledger, already quoted, gives also a number of farmer's names in 1770-74, which may be worth recording as a contribution to the history of Coniston folk. At Littlearrow lived John Fleming and Wm. Ion; at Spone How (Spoon Hall), Geo. Dixon; at Heathwaite, John Fleming; at Bowmanstead, T. Dixon and T. Parke; at Dixon Ground, John Ashburner; at Catbank, Roger Tyson; at Brow, T. Bainbridge; at Bove Beck, Wm. Dixon; at Far End, Wm. Parke; at Tarnhouse (Tarn Hows), John Johnson; at "Utree," Geo. Walker; at Oxenfell, Christopher Huertson; at Tilberthwaite, John Jackson; at Holme Ground, Wm. Jackson; at Lane End, Henry Dawson; at Waterhead, Anthony Sawrey; at Hollin Bank, John Suert; at Bank Ground, John Wilson; at Howhead, Eliz. Harrison; at Town End (Coniston Bank), Ed. Barrow and Wm. Edrington; at Lowsanparke (Lawson Park), Wm. Adinson. Other well-known names are Adam Bell (Black Bull), John Bell, John Geldart, T. Gasketh, G. Knott, David Kirkby, Matthew Spedding, T. and W. Towers. Many of these names are still represented in the neighbourhood, but the old 'statesman holdings have nearly all passed into alien hands.

A list dated between 1830 and 1840 enumerates the acreage of fifty-three separate estates in Church Coniston, ranging from the Hall (Lady le Fleming's), over 397 acres, and Tilberthwaite (John Jackson's), over 135 acres, to Henry Braithwaite's plot of 15 perches. But of the whole number only twenty-five, or less than half, are smaller than ten acres. In 1841 the list of Parliamentary voters for Church Coniston gives twenty owners of house and land in their own occupation out of forty-six voters. In this list, James Garth Marshall of Leeds appears as owner of High Yewdale, occupied—no longer owned—by a Jackson; but there are very few non-resident landlords on the list.

So late as 1849 the directory mentions as 'statesmen owning their farms in Monk Coniston and Skelwith, Matthew Wilson of Hollin Bank, John Creighton of Low Park, and William Burns of Hodge Close; in Church Coniston, William Barrow of Little Arrow, William Dixon of Dixon Ground, Benjamin Dixon of Spoonhall, James Sanders of Outhwaite, and William Wilson of Low Beck.

But after the "discovery" of the lakes, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Coniston began to be the resort of strangers in search of retirement and scenery.

In 1801, Colonel George Smith, after losing a fortune in a bank failure, settled at Townson Ground, and some years later built Tent Lodge, so called from the tent his family had pitched on the spot before the house was built, as a kind of "station," as it was then called, for admiring the view. Here in the tent, they say, his daughter used to sit, dying of consumption, and looking her last on the favourite scene. Elizabeth Smith was a girl of great charm and unusual genius. Born in 1776, at thirteen she had learnt French, Italian, and mathematics; at fifteen, she taught herself German; at seventeen, she studied Arabic, Persian, and Spanish; and at eighteen, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. While living here she wrote much verse and many translations, of which her Book of Job was highly commended by scholars; the manuscript in her handwriting, with a copy of her portrait, may be seen in the Coniston Museum. She died in 1806, and is buried at Hawkshead.

After the death of Mrs. Smith, Tent Lodge was bought by Mr. Marshall, and occupied by Tennyson the poet on his honeymoon. His favourite point of view is still marked in the wood above by a seat now hidden among the trees. Later, the Misses Romney, descendants of the famous painter, lived at Tent Lodge; then it was taken by the late George Holt, Esq., of Liverpool.

At Colonel Smith's removal to the Lodge, Tent Cottage, as it is now called, was taken by Mrs. Fletcher, one of whose daughters became Lady Richardson and another married Dr. Davy, brother of Sir Humphrey Davy. Dr. Townson succeeded them at the Cottage; then Mr. Oxley of the sawmills; then the Gasgarths, on their removal from the Hall; then Mr. Evennett, agent to Mr. Marshall. Afterwards it was taken by Mr. Laurence Jermyn Hilliard, secretary to Mr. Ruskin. Mr. Hilliard died in 1887 just as he was beginning to be well known as an artist; he is commemorated in a brass tablet in the church, and some examples of his work are to be seen in the Museum. Since his death Tent Cottage has been tenanted by his brother and sister.

In 1819 Mr. Thomas Woodville bought from Sir D. Fleming a house called Yewdale Grove at Yewdale Bridge. In 1821 Mr. Binns of Bristol built the Thwaite House, and let it in 1827 to Mr. William Beever, a Manchester merchant, who died four years later, leaving two sons and four daughters, whose memory is very closely associated with Coniston. John, the eldest son, was a sportsman and naturalist; the author of a little volume entitled Practical Fly-fishing, published in 1849, and republished 1893, a memoir of the author (now again out of print). The pond behind the Thwaite was made by him, and stocked with fish; once a year he used to catch every member of his water colony, and examine it to note its growth. The picturesque "Gothic" boat house, now the gondola house, was built for his use. One of his hobbies was the improvement of fishing-rods, and Mr. William Bell (afterwards J.P. of Hawes Bank, who died in 1896) remembered helping Mr. Beever in this and other carpentering, turning, carving, and mosaic works, and in the construction of the printing press used for his sister's little books. John Beever died in 1859, aged 64. His brother Henry was a Manchester lawyer, and died 1840.

Of the four ladies of the Thwaite, Miss Anne Beever died in 1858, and is buried with her brothers at Hawkshead. Miss Margaret (d. 1874), Miss Mary (d. 1883), and Miss Susanna (d. 1893) are buried at Coniston; their graves are marked by white marble crosses close to Ruskin's. Indeed, though their local influence and studies, especially in botany (see, for example, Baxter's British Flowering Plants and Baker's Flora of the Lake District, to which they contributed, and the Rev. W. Tuckwell's Tongues in Trees and Sermons in Stones, describing their home), give them a claim to remembrance, their name is most widely known through Miss Susanna Beever's popular Frondes Agrestes, readings in "Modern Painters," and through the correspondence of Ruskin with Miss Mary and Miss Susanna published as Hortus Inclusus. In his preface to the last he spoke of them as "at once sources and loadstones of all good to the village in which they had their home, and to all loving people who cared for the village and its vale and secluded lake, and whatever remained in them, or around, of the former peace, beauty, and pride of English Shepherd Land."

The old Thwaite Cottage, below the house, was tenanted by the Gaskarths after the death of David Kirkby, Esq., the last of the former owners, in 1814; and then for many years it was the home of Miss Harriette S. Rigbye, daughter of Major E. W. Rigbye of Bank Ground, and an accomplished amateur of landscape painting. She died in 1894, aged 82, and is buried beside her friends the Beevers in Coniston Churchyard. The Thwaite Cottage was then let to Professor J. B. Cohen of the Leeds University, whose works on organic chemistry are well known.

The Waterhead estate was bought in the eighteenth century from the Thompsons by William Ford of Monk Coniston (see Mr. H. S. Cowper's History of Hawkshead, p. xvi.), and came to George Knott (d. 1784) by marriage with a Miss Ford. Mr. Knott was mentioned by Father West as having "made many beautiful improvements on his estate." In 1822 a view of the modern "Gothic" front of the house, now called Monk Coniston Hall, was given in the Lonsdale Magazine. The poet Wordsworth is said to have advised in the laying out of the gardens. From Mr. Michael Knott the place was bought by James Garth Marshall, Esq., M.P. for Leeds, whose son, Victor Marshall, Esq., J.P., still holds it.

Holywath was built by Mr. John Barratt, the manager of the mines in their prosperous days, and afterwards held by his daughter, the wife of Colonel Bousfield. Mr. William Barratt, his cousin, built Holly How on the site of an old cottage; it was afterwards tenanted by Mrs. Benson, and is now occupied by Mrs. Kennington. Mr. William Barratt's son, James W. H. Barratt, Esq., J.P., now lives at Holywath.

In 1848 Miss Creighton of Bank Ground built Lanehead, on the site of the old Half-penny Alehouse, for Dr. Bywater, who tenanted it for many years. Miss Creighton left the estate to the Rev. H. A. Starkie; the house was occupied later by Mrs. Melly, and since 1892 by W. G. Collingwood.

Coniston Bank replaces the old homestead of Townend. It was held in 1819 by Thomas North, Esq.; in 1849, by Henry Smith, Esq.; in 1855, by Wordsworth Smith, Esq.; subsequently by Major Benson Harrison, who let it for a time to George W. Goodison, Esq., C.E., J.P., and then to Thomas Docksey, Esq. In 1897 it was sold to Mrs. Arthur Severn, who sold it to its present occupant, H. P. Kershaw, Esq.

Brantwood, that is to say the nucleus of the present house, was built at the end of the eighteenth century by Mr. Woodville on a site bought from the Gaskarths. It was sold to Edward Copley, Esq., of Doncaster, whose widow died there in 1830. In 1849 it was in the occupation of Josiah Hudson, Esq., and the early home of his son, the Rev. Charles Hudson, a founder of the Alpine Club, and one of the party of young Englishmen who first climbed Mont Blanc without guides. He joined in the first ascent of the Matterhorn, 1865, and was killed in the accident on the descent.

The next resident was an artist, poet, and politician. Mr. William James Linton was born at Mile-End Road in the east of London in 1812; his father was of Scotch extraction. After apprenticeship to a wood engraver at Kennington, he worked for the Illustrated London News, and mixed with artists and authors of the Liberal and advanced party, becoming known as a writer, editor, and lecturer of much energy on the Radical side. In 1849 he left London for Miteside in West Cumberland, and in May, 1852, moved to Brantwood; after a year's tenancy he bought the little house and estate of ten acres, to which on the enclosure of the common six acres more were added. At Brantwood he also rented the garden and field between the house and the lake, and kept cows, sheep, and poultry; he anticipated Ruskin in clearing part of the land and cultivating it; in his volume of Memories (Lawrence & Bullen, 1895) he records the pleasures of his country life, as well as some of the trials of that period. He had been editing, and publishing at his own expense, a monthly magazine called The English Republic, and this was taken up again in 1854. Two young printers and a gardener came to Brantwood and offered their services, as assistants in this work; and with their help the magazine was printed in the outhouse, which he decorated with mottoes, such as "God and the People"—still to be traced in the roughcast on the wall. But its cost, however economically produced, was more than he could afford, and the magazine was dropped in April, 1855, after which he was employed on the woodcuts for the edition of Tennyson's poems illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, and other artists of the period. He tells how Moxon came to call on him and hasten the work, but could not be received into the house owing to serious illness; and how thankful he was for a ten-pound note put into his hand by the considerate publisher as they stood at the gate. At Brantwood Miss Eliza Lynn came to nurse the first Mrs. Linton in her fatal illness, and married Mr. Linton in 1858. At Brantwood she wrote her novels Lizzie Lorton, Sowing the Wind, and Grasp your Nettle; also The Lake Country, published in 1864. Mr. Linton, in 1865, published The Ferns of the Lake Country, but for some years he had not lived continuously at Brantwood, and in 1866 he went to America, where he died in 1898. Mrs. Lynn Linton's best known work was Joshua Davidson, written later than her Coniston period; she died in London in 1898, and was buried at Crosthwaite, Keswick. Portraits and relics of the Lintons are to be seen in the Museum at Coniston.

Another poet, Gerald Massey, lived for a time at Brantwood, and dated the dedication of a volume of his poems from that address in May, 1860. He, like Linton, is known for his advocacy of democratic opinions; indeed, it is said that George Eliot took him for model in Felix Holt the Radical.

During the later years of Mr. Linton's ownership, Brantwood was taken for the summer by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, now Dean of Durham. In 1871, however, Mr. Linton sold the house to Prof. Ruskin.

Ruskin as a child often visited Coniston, and in 1830 at the age of eleven made his first written mention of the place in a MS. journal now in the Museum. In his Iteriad, a rhymed description of the tour of that date, he gave the first hint of his wish to live in the Lake District, and in the winter of 1832-33, at the age of nearly fourteen, he wrote the well-known verses which stood first in the earliest collection of his poems:—