RAW HEAD, GREAT LANGDALE: At the still point of a turning world.

Raw Head Cottage, whitewashed and neat with its vivid sage green window frames, exemplifies that little piece of perfection, the quintessential Lakeland farmhouse. The fellside of Langdale Edge rises steeply at its back where an outgang links with the Raw Head sled road used for gathering sheep and bringing down the peats. Beside it Scale Ghyll scrabbles amongst the rocks in short falls and sheep wander in the garths and shelter between the buildings. Yet within those walls, settled into this landscape for more than three hundred years, is something yet more remarkable, one of the best 17th century interiors in the Lakes.

 Entering the cottage on a summer’s day, one’s eyes take a while to adjust to the low-ceilinged dimness. The sitting room with its two south facing windows look out across valley, to the great wall of Lingmoor; but inside there is the warm glow of old oak, rich and stained by years of coal fires and before that, peat. With it comes that enveloping sense of time moving a little slower. It is a special place, cherished for the last 80 years by its present owners, the Fell and Rock Climbing Club.

 Tom Buntin, who farmed down the road at Robinson Place, described Raw Head cottage thirty years ago as ‘beautifully preserved inside and … very much as it was a few 100 years ago’. Yet of course there have been significant changes since Thomas Tyson farmed here in the 1670s, and the present house was built and furnished by the Harrison Family with its splendid press cupboard, a decade or so later. At this time, before the present road was built, it lay at the head of a lane called Row Lonning and like all of these farms, it has passed through many hands. In the 18th century, there were the Dawsons, Allinsons, Graves and Parkers amongst many others until it was bought by John Robinson of the Elterwater Hall estate in the mid 19th century. In 1944 it ceased to be run as a farm and was sold to Cyril and Sarah Bullmann of the Dungeon Ghyll Hotel. The cottage was leased to the Fell and Rock Climbing Club and eventually the cottage, barn and curtilage was sold to them in 1947.

 What is so remarkable about Raw Head is not only the survival of the original layout of the rooms, with fire-room, parlour, buttery and down-house, but also much of the original timberwork. The fire-house (or sitting room) retains the original heck, a timber partition to reduce the draught from the door. Originally a fire hood would have covered the ceiling space from the heck across to the front wall and forward to the fire beam (bressummer), the space lit by the small fire window. The peat fire on a slab under this hood would never be allowed to go out completely. When coal began to arrive through Whitehaven and Maryport in the late 18th century, fire hoods became redundant as coal did not require as much draught.

 But the focus of the room is elsewhere. On the facing wall to the fire is an elaborately carved press cupboard, a superb expression of place and permanence, bearing the initials and date ‘THH 1689’. Used to store the best plates, cups, pewter, silver as well as foodstuff such as haver or clap bread, the date is typical of those in the district and close to the date when the house was built, or possibly rebuilt on the same site.

Although virtually all rural houses of ‘middling’ status in England and Wales were furnished with press cupboards, only in the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland were they routinely built-in. Here also are the largest number of dateable examples. The renewed confidence that emerged with the legal confirmation of tenants’ rights under the system of border tenure seems to have been the motivating factor with widespread rebuilding of farmhouses throughout the Lake District in the 17th century. The built-in press cupboard is a symbol of that security and permanence and the glory of Lakeland farmhouse interiors.

An expert on local vernacular furniture and carving and a craftsman himself, Frank Wood of Windermere, once told me that in studying these pieces he felt an affinity with the maker. Understanding exactly which chisels he owned, usually very few, where he made mistakes and where he demonstrated his skill, each piece is unique, each glide of the chisel a signature. All the carvings on the Raw Head cupboard, were achieved using just four tools. On the frieze the carver had worked from left to right and on arriving at the right-hand end added a little baluster silhouette to fill the space. Devices like this are quite common, and entirely individual to a particular carver or workshop. In these details lie much of their fascination.

The Lake District style of carving is highly distinctive. At Raw Head the lettering on the date plate with its fish tail serifs and mid stem bulge, rather than being a 17th century style, has mediaeval origins. The patterns are complex and include the rare rose motif with a double ring of petals as well as leaf scroll designs which have very ancient origins and are probably the most common pattern in 17th century Cumbrian carving.

Press cupboards were made for about a hundred years; the earliest known example is dated 1628 and the latest 1735, reflecting the economic and social change which led to the gradual disappearance of the statesman farmer, as this 1797 report from the Board of Agriculture makes clear:

This class of men is daily decreasing. The turnpikes have brought the manners of the capital to this extremity of the kingdom. The simplicity of ancient times has gone. ... This change of manners combined with other circumstances which have taken place within the last 40 years, has compelled many a statesman to sell his property, and reduced him to the necessity of working as a labourer in those fields, which perhaps he and his ancestors had for many generations cultivated as their own.

What makes the Raw Head cupboard yet more significant is that it remains in its original position built into a partition with doors to each side between the firehouse and the parlour and buttery. Cupboards were very often made free standing when a house was altered. They became nothing more than pieces of furniture, moveable and sadly saleable, losing any sense of provenance or place. At the same time, the partition and associated doors were, more often than not, destroyed. At Raw Head the 17th century buttery door is constructed of four wide boards sealed by strips of wood with scratch mouldings, giving the appearance of a much more expensive panelled door. To the left of the cupboard is a fine example of a framed two panel late 18th century door hung on its original ‘L’ shaped hinges.

Of the other rooms, the buttery was always on the dark, cool side of the house and at Raw Head the original slate slab benches for salting pork, storage for milk, butter and cheese remain. Also still present are the ceiling hooks for hanging meat, a rare survival. The down-house, the work room of the farm, was usually built to the right of the fire-room. However, at Raw Head it was a later addition built onto the front probably at the same time the full first storey and the handsome 18th century dog-leg staircase, were added. A distinctive feature of the exterior of the down-house, set into the front wall, are a pair of recesses known as ‘bee-boles’ formed with slate slabs. At a time when the only sweetener was honey, they were created to encourage bees to build their hives. Skeps would be made from coils of straw or Ling (heather) to tempt the bees to settle in. There is much superstition relating to bee-keeping. In the Lakes it was the custom that when someone died, the hives were gently tapped, and the bees told who had passed away. Crumbs from the funeral feast were also fed to the bees for, it was believed, unless they shared in the mourning, they would fly away.

 Understandably, Tom Buntin lamented that ‘a good little farm holding had been broken up’. Raw Head had been the largest of the holdings along the row, originally carrying a flock of 350 sheep. The last tenant, William Park left in 1944. Before the Second World war his wife had established a refreshments hut in the front garden for passing walkers and cyclists and receipts found from Storms Farm Dairy at Keswick, indicate a good trade in lemonade and dandelion and burdock.

 There are many stories about the Fell and Rock Climbing Club’s early years in residence and in the years since, a new history has taken root. One tale often repeated is that on any really good rainy day the water would flow down the fellside and eventually tumble over into the kitchen. From here it would flow through and on into the sitting room before finding its way out of the front door. A Club version of pooh sticks was developed where paper boats would be folded and floated through the cottage, with marks awarded for distance travelled and most interesting route.

 The Langdale valleys are now awash with second homes, former farmhouses and cottages transformed into luxurious affectations of the original, where the lights are rarely on, and the life has gone out. Raw Head is a place loved by many, where, for the last 80 years, people have gathered around the fire. Although it makes no great claims to modern comforts it is rarely unoccupied. What changes have occurred have been in response to need rather than fashion, and indeed the fact that it has been owned by the Club for so long has saved it from much damage. As Frank Wood put it ‘Raw Head represents a wonderful example of a 17th century farmhouse in a most original state. It would be difficult to find a better one’. That ‘original state’ also includes its own unique sights and sounds, the scrapping of doors across the flagged floors, the resonating snap of 300-hundred-year-old snecks, and for the last 350 years the early morning light illuminating the Raw Head press cupboard. All these are as much a part of the place as the slate of the roof, or the stone of the walls. That it has survived is perhaps a matter of chance, that it will continue is, as far as the Fell and Rock Climbing Club are concerned, a matter of purpose.

 With special thanks to John Leigh (Fell and Rock Climbing Club) and Frank Wood.

First published in Cumbria and Lakeland Walker September 2024.