THE LONELIEST MONUMENT IN ENGLAND? EDWARD I MEMORIAL, BURGH MARSH
Photograph by Bill Birkett
This sandstone pillar, set upon the wide expanse of Burgh Marsh, is said to be the loneliest monument in England. It marks the place where in July 1307, Edward I, the most irascible of all mediaeval kings, drew his final breath. I first visited this place many years ago; it was late November, a leaden sky, redwings rattling through the bare hedges and crows crying ill omens across the endless acres of marsh. It was the landscape of Peter Grimes - ‘Thus by himself compell'd to live each day/To wait for certain hours the tide's delay/At the same times the same dull vies to see/The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree’. Since then I have come to realise that even on the darkest of winter days this stark coastline with its eerie ever-changing mudflats and vast skies is in fact awash with life.
Known as Longshanks, for his height, and the Hammer of the Scots for his relentless pursuit of supremacy in Scotland, Edward was now nearing 70 years of age, his hair had turned to the ‘whiteness of a swan’ and his health was failing. He had spent the cold winter of 1306 at Lanercost Priory with Parliament that Spring held in Carlisle. From here on 27th June, he raised the dragon banner and set forth to wage war in Scotland. Arriving at Burgh by Sands on the 5th of July his army camped on Burgh Marsh. The route before them lay across two fords, Stonywath and Sulwath. It was in this bleak and lonely setting that the great Plantagenet king succumbed to that most common of camp diseases, dysentery.
On visiting the monument in 1774, the Welsh naturalist, writer and antiquarian Thomas Pennant commented that, ‘Thus died the greatest, the best, and the wisest of the English monarchs… yet …when the conquest of Scotland became the favourite object of that end, the dictates of equity and the feelings of humanity were totally eradicated.’
News of the king’s death was surpressed to avoid desertion amongst his army or worse, an opportunistic attack from the Scots. His body was first brought to the 12th century Burgh Church where it lay in state for ten days. From here, the Lanercost Chronicle records ‘a great crowd accompanied the royal corpse some way on its journey southwards, money and wax being bestowed on the churches passed and especially where it rested at night’. The cortege eventually arrived at Waltham Abbey in Essex where the old king lay, before his funeral at Westminster Abbey on the 27th of October. He was placed in an austere tomb of black Purbeck marble and at some time in the 16th century, the words ‘Edwardus Primus Scottorum Malleus Hic Est’ (Edward the First Hammer of the Scots is here), were added.
Daniel Defoe in his 1724-26 ‘Tour through England and Wales’ informs us that the place where Edward died was first marked ‘by the country people, or perhaps by the soldiers of his army, by a great heap of stones rolled together… ’. The monument, a square sandstone column bearing the inscription ‘Edward I fought a long bitter campaign to conquer Scotland. Old and sick he made camp on these marshes whilst preparing to subdue his enemy Robert the Bruce. He died here on July 7 1307’, was first erected on the site in 1685. It was rebuilt in 1803 after it had collapsed eight years earlier, then restored again in 1876. More recently in 2000, the memorial which had begun to sink, almost as though the marsh was again trying swallow the memory, was rescued and restored.
Before the establishment of the Abbey at Holme Cultrum, which steadily became prosperous, acquiring lands in north Cumberland and undertaking reclamation work along the Solway, it had been a relatively inhospitable and unfrequented place. On Burgh Marsh land was drained and put to the plough, forming the present velvety green corduroy of rigg and furrow which surrounds the monument. At the fringes of the marshes, the small irregular fields with their raised hedge banks known as ‘kests’ are one of the defining features of this landscape. These centuries old boundaries are constructed of turf and stone encasing an earth core and are a perfect habitat for much wildlife. William Hutchinson in his 1794 History of Cumberland 1794 saw much to admire, describing the marsh as ‘level and beautiful’ with the enclosed lands forming ‘easy swells’. He does however concede that the valleys, ‘where one would expect good meadow are swampy and sower’.
Farming in the area has been defined by the relationship between land held in individual tenancies and rights of common grazing on the marshes. Since at least the 16th century, shares or ‘stints’, the intriguing traditional unfenced boundaries of the saltmarshes, have been managed according to strict rules laid down by the marsh committees. In 1794 Hutchinson remarked on the excellent quality of the marsh grazing with its unique mix of salt tolerant plants including sea milkwort, scurvy grass and pillows of thrift, flowering in the spring and summer. In his day it grazed 792 head of cattle and horses many of which were sold at Carlisle fair in August and September. He also mentions that formerly races were held upon the marsh for ‘purses of gold and a silver cup, to be run for by the tenant’s cart-horses. The course is yet marked out by posts and is about a mile in length’.
Life here is constantly in flux, driven by the twice daily ebb and flow of the tide, while the tides themselves vary in height and frequency. It is also an area driven by the seasons. Breeding birds like shelduck, snipe, lapwing, redshank are a constant feature of the spring and summer. While in the winter there are the spectacular flights of waders and wildfowl. The total population of the Svalbard breeding barnacle goose winter on the saltmarshes surrounding the estuary. Pink footed geese, whooper swans and various dabbling ducks such as pintail, wigeon, and shoveller are found throughout the inner estuary along with flocks of dunlin, oystercatcher, golden and grey plover, turnstone and curlew. Birds of prey are common and include peregrine, merlin, short eared owls and hen harriers which sweep the rough pasture and hedgerows at the margins of the marsh. The wide emptiness of land, sea and sky could not be more full of life.
The marshes, mud and sand flats at Burgh are amongst the most important saltmarsh systems in Britain, designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Protection Area and part of the wider Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The Solway is recognised as one of the least-industrialised and most natural large estuaries in Europe and therefore of international importance for wildlife.
It is a curious fact that in the same year as Pennant’s visit to Burgh Marsh, Edward I's tomb was opened, by an inquisitive dean of Westminster in the presence of a select group of Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries. The body was found to be almost perfectly preserved, wrapped in a waxed linen cloth and wearing royal robes of red and gold with a crimson mantle. Measuring six foot two inches tall, the nickname ‘Longshanks’ had clearly been no exaggeration. A drawing of the contents of the tomb was made by an apprentice to the Society's engraver, a young man by the name of William Blake.
A handsbreadth from Scotland which had plagued him for so long, this monument commemorates the man who epitomised the ideal of mediaeval kingship; a towering European figure who in death cast a long shadow over his successors. Unintentionally also, it is a symbol of his doomed hopes.
Walking back up the hill towards Burgh by Sands on a day of almost hypnotic calm, I wondered about this old man, his life ebbing away into those liminal margins. Perhaps the last sounds he heard were the waters filling the spaces between Sulwath and Stoneywath, the almost supernatural polyphony of breaking waves and the relentless rush of the incoming tide over the mudflats. Then as now the Solway, its borders as fluid as its history, continues to undermine our efforts and erode our memory.
This article was first published in ‘Cumbria’ magazine in January 2023.