Photograph by Bill Birkett

Standing high above the Duddon, dark and jagged against the skyline, the ruins of Frith Hall lie within the shadowy territory of the Gothic novel. From late mediaeval hunting lodge to farmstead and hostelry of infamous repute finally crumbling into picturesque ruin, its history remains elusive, the subject of speculation, tall tales, rumours of smuggling, intrigue and death. Situated on the northern shoulder of Ulpha Park, overlooking the middle and lower sections of the Duddon and northwards to the grey ramparts of the high fells, it gives the impression of having emerged from the native rock, its west gable with towering chimney stack rising defiantly to three storeys.

Built probably in the late 16th century by the Huddleston family of Millom Castle, it served as a hunting lodge, overlooking the deer park of Ulpha, which itself was established considerably earlier. The first recorded mention is in the schedule of the property of Alicia de Hudleston, in 1337, in which it is stated, ‘Alice holds the Manor of Millom of the said John (her son) . . . including a Park and another Park called Ulpha.’ The name ‘frith’ in Old English refers to a wood or a clearing in a wood. It is also linked to ‘keeping frith’ the practise of giving fields a rest by taking animals to rough frith fields for a time in the spring.

Ulpha Park was part of the great Forest of Millom which covered the entire Duddon valley, extending from Hardknott, under Scafell Pike to where it marched with the Forest of Copeland. However, by the 18th century the process of woodland clearance was well advanced. The antiquarians Joseph Nicholson and Richard Burn, in their 1777 account of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, describe the ground to the west of Frith Hall, the manor and township of Thwaites, as being mountainous and stony ‘but in several parts and parcels… inclosed by the inhabitants from the barren waste of the fells… and were of old called thwaites, sometimes with the addition of their quality, as Brackentwaite, of bracken or ferns growing there, Sieveythwaite, of sieves or rushes, and such like: and in general denotes any parcel of land from which the wood has been grubbed up, inclosed and converted into tillage.’ Even so, the remaining forest was still extensive and provided the raw materials for a number of important industries.

The absence of records relating to Frith Hall have caused some debate amongst historians, not least concerning its relationship with Ulpha Old Hall, the ruins of which lie a kilometre to the north west, strategically situated above the ravine of Holehouse Gill at the foot of the Dunnerdale Fells. The Old Hall was probably built in the early 16th century, later than the days of the pele towers, but bearing some echo of their form. All that now remains is an east-facing wall with doorway and three other walls at ground floor level only. It is possible that Frith Hall replaced Ulpha Old Hall when the later became too old and austere for comfort.

The wide and unchallenged power of the Huddlestons as lords of Millom and masters of Ulpha Park came to an end with the victory of the Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War. Their Royalist sympathies resulted in a sudden and severe decline in their fortunes. By the close of the 17th century Frith Hall was occupied as a farmhouse and tavern for traffic on the packhorse roads, while Ulpha Old Hall became a quarry for new buildings in the area. Members of the locally important Casson family are recorded as being established at Frith Hall in the early 18th century and in 1756 William Singleton leased Commonwood Quarry and gave his residence as Frith Hall. At this time Singleton held the lordship of the manor and the manorial court was held at Frith Hall ‘the hostelry on the old coach road from Mill Bridge at the bottom of Holehouse Gill to Millom’.

It is curious that a bridle way that leaves the Duddon Valley below Frith Hall and winds its way over the shoulder of Great Stickle to Broughton Mills is termed Gauger Gate on the Ordnance Survey map of 1860. A ‘gauger’ was the 18th century name for a collector of taxes, particularly associated with the tax on whiskey, and suggests that this was the route taken between the Blacksmiths Arms and Frith Hall. Like all routes to and from the coast, it was used by smugglers as well as honest carriers. The main commodity was wool but many diversified into contraband. The Isle of Man was then a notorious centre for smugglers presenting the Board of HM Customs with an impossible task in defending the more isolated stretches of the Cumbrian coastline from the persistent and ingenious approaches of the denizens of that 'warehouse of frauds'. The Board's Whitehaven representative reported that the town and country were 'mostly supplied with brandy, rum, tea, tobacco, soap and other high duty goods illegally imported'. It is therefore safe to assume that strong drink was liberally and cheaply available at Frith Hall, with accounts that midnight revels occasionally descended into violence. In 1736 it is reported that ‘William Marshall, sojourner, dyed at Frith Hall on the 10th October’. By all accounts his death was either the result of a drunken brawl or murder, with popular belief favouring the latter. Rumours that his remains had failed to reach consecrated ground in Ulpha churchyard, but instead had been unceremoniously deposited close to the Hall, inevitably led to whispers that his inebriate spirit now haunts the spot.

Frith Hall had also gained notoriety as a local ‘Gretna Green’ where runaway marriages were casually performed. The origins of this probably lie in the well-known story of how, in 1730, a parson gathered together seventeen couples at Frith Hall to perform the wedding ceremony. Rather than elopements, this suggests that an earlier customary practice of forming marriage contracts, without the participation of the church, was still in full swing in the fells of Furness and indeed elsewhere, and was no doubt compounded by the fact that Ulpha was one of the poorest curacies in north west England. In a letter from Henry Holmes of Drigg to the Bishop of Chester he reports that the church at Ulpha ‘…has been without a curate for the space of ten months past, during which time (I hear) the Sabbath has not been kept so holy as it ought but many of the inhabitants (as I am informed) have lived more like heathens than Christians’. Wordsworth speaks of Ulpha as ‘an unwealthy mountain benefice’ where parsons eked out their stipend by a little farming and teaching, and Harriet Martineau as late as 1860 described Ulpha as ‘one of those primitive places where the old manners of the district may be traced more clearly than in most roadside settlements.’ By this date, however, Frith Hall had been long abandoned.

Standing within the ruins of Frith Hall today, it is difficult to imagine the fine 16th century house, its rendered walls rising to three storeys, surrounded by native woodland from which the gentlemen of the Huddleston clan rode out to the chase. Perhaps less so the Frith Hall of the 18th century, windows glowing with the light from the vast fireplaces. No doubt by now a little decrepit, but a welcome sight to the overladen packhorses arriving under cloak of darkness. Slow decades of decay followed and by the mid 19th century the slates had fallen and the masonry been plundered. The roofless shell has since been colonization by ivy and elder, jackdaws nest in the alcoves and wrens creep mouselike through the spaces in the walls. A place that was three centuries ago central to the community now sits at the margins, not only an intriguing relic, but also a quiet and compelling presence within the landscape.

First published in ’Cumbria’ magazine January 2023.

Photograph by Bill Birkett

In a remote corner of a remote parish known chiefly for its association with the most famous of all fox hunters, is one of the most remarkable and unfrequented buildings in the county, Ireby Old Church. Extraordinary, beautiful and beleaguered, it has stood in isolation surrounded by pasture and water-meadows for over 700 years. There is no direct road to it. It is reached from a narrow lane which runs between Ireby and Torpenhow, and from there on foot across the fields. The rectangular chancel, which sits heavy and squat, like a grounded ship within the remnants of an 18th century landscape, is all that remains of the medieval parish church. Described in 1965 as ‘unrecorded, completely unvisited, neglected and practically forgotten’ with even its dedication lost to memory, it is a remnant of what must, in its entirety, have been a very remarkable building.

 The situation of the old church is singular. The parish of Ireby consists of the villages of Ireby, High Ireby and the hamlet of Ruthwaite along with a few scattered houses and farms. It stands not only at some distance from any of these settlements but also on the very confines of the parish, separated from the parish of Torpenhow by a nearby stream. Three hundred years ago Dr John Waugh, chancellor of the diocese, remarked: ‘This church stands a mile from the town (a very poor, forsaken ancient market town) and nearer Uldale Church than their own … I have often gone by this church which looks very decent on the outside, but it is so far from any homes that I never got into it.’

Although it is now difficult to account for this isolation, the reasons having disappeared with the passing of so many centuries, the choice of site must have been a very deliberate one. A clue might lie in the presence of two cross bases within the graveyard, which pre-date the present mid-12th century building. The possibility that an early foundation had been established at Ireby and that an earlier church existed on the site remains. Cults associated with those semi-mythical 5th and 6th century Irish saints, Ninian, Patrick, Brigit and Bega had taken root in the area, and holy wells associated with them often became the sites of the first churches. At nearby Caldbeck the parish church of St Kentigern lies on the site of an earlier 6th century church and holy well dedicated to St. Mungo. But sadly, without the unearthing of the dedication of Ireby Old Church in some previously overlooked medieval document, we are unlikely ever to know.

In fact, little is known about the church until the early 18th century. Bishop Nicholson who visited in 1703, described it as brushed up in expectation of his visit, but still very tawdry. ‘There are no rails; and the floor is not half levell’d. There are in it three clumsie seats for the improprietor and the tenants of Prior Hall’. He continues, ‘The body of the church is pretty well seated; and somewhat beautify'd of late. The font stands in a corner; But order'd to be remov'd. The books are good. They want a flaggon for the wine at sacraments, and a platter for the bread. No book of homilies. One bell they have good; the other being broken and lost. Mr Ballantine petitions for a gallery; But will be slow in erecting it.’

The church records themselves provide us with no more than a list of the transgressions of the churchwardens who were reported as being in want of, amongst other things, books, a chest for alms, a coffer for the register book, and a ‘Bible of the new translation’. Other crimes included: the ploughing up of the churchyard, spreading of manure on the Lord’s Day and disturbing the minister ‘in time of divine service’, although with no indication of what form this took.

 At the end of the 18th century, the parishes’ most famous resident was John Peel, hunter of foxes, pine martens and the occasional blameless hare. Although baptised, married and buried at Caldbeck, John and his wife lived at Ruthwaite within the parish of Ireby and are likely from time to time to have attended this church. Better known for his regular attendance at the ‘Sun Inn’ in Ireby we can assume he was not a regular member of the congregation.

In 1846, when the new parish church of St James was built in the village of Ireby, the nave and north aisle of the old church were demolished and the stones from the nave reused to build the new church. The fabulous Norman font, piscina and some carvings were also removed to the new church and two nave arcade columns were taken to serve as gateposts in the village. After limited excavations in the 1930s to establish the plan of the building, the original column bases were uncovered and, in 1977, the octagonal monoliths of the N arcade were reinstated on their original medieval bases ‘as though awaiting Simeon the Stylite’ as Nickolaus Pevsner observed in his Buildings of England series.

 Unfortunately, what remained of the church, the chancel, underwent a drastic "restoration" at the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1880, and a good deal of the architectural history of the fabric obliterated. What has survived, and remains its outstanding feature is a beautiful late 12th century arcade in the east wall. This is an important example of the fleeting ‘Transitional’ period of architecture combining the semi-circular arch, a lingering relic of the departing Norman tradition, with the slender colonettes, capitals and bases of the Early English style.

Another fortunate survivor within the church is an early 17th-century tomb which piqued the curiosity not only of Bishop Nicolson in the early 18th century but also the antiquarians Joseph Nicholson and Richard Burn half a century later. It is divided into three panels, the centre one of which bears a shield with a heraldic device. Dated 1626, the inscription carved on its outer panels reads:

GEORGE CRAGE DE PRIOUR HALL. GENT. WHO FAITHFULLY SERVED QUEENE ELIZABETH, KING JAMES, PRINCE HENRY AND KING CHARLES, KING OF ENGLAND. 1626.

The somewhat unintended interest of this memorial lies less in the longevity and service of George Crage and more in its production and workmanship. There can be little doubt that it was carved by a local stonemason, who had limited experience of this type of work. The lettering is clumsy, the lines not having been set out in advance. The words, in some cases incomplete at the end of a line have had to be split and continued on the next. It is at first difficult to decipher and yet this is part of the charm of such individual memorials. Perhaps buried somewhere near to George Crage is the man who carved his tomb, though we are unlikely ever to know his name.

When we visited in the late summer, the surviving memorials within the graveyard, mostly fine 18th century headstones, with their attendant cherubs, scrolls, bosses and broken pediments, were drowned in deep grasses, nettles, meadowsweet and hemlock. These are the memorials to the Gilbanks family of Scawthwaite Close, the Walkers of Ruthwaite, the families of the tenants of Prior Hall and many others now indecipherable, their fine lines and formality softened by three centuries of rain and sun. Ireby Old Church is a remarkable place for many reasons, for its antiquity and architecture, its mystery and remoteness, its Orphean peace. If there are places which seem to sit outside our time, caught in a fold, unaffected by modernity and the breathless speed of change, places with an immersive stillness, this is one of them. In 1972 it was finally declared redundant and is now, thankfully, in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

First published in Cumbria magazine December 2022.

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.

Last month we walked over from Tilberthwaite towards Little Langdale through the ancient woodland of sessile oak and hazel, the ground a wash of bluebells. Our intent was on Moss Rigg, an abandoned green slate quarry some 300ft. above the valley, last worked in 1984.

Back in 1949 Norman Nicholson, a man who knew much about the legacy of heavy industry, wrote of the scars left by quarrying in the Coniston-Tilberthwaite-Langdale fells. Describing them as true to the nature of the rock, introducing nothing alien and soon mossed over by the seasons, he saw little to deplore. Seventy years on we can see the truth of this. In the older quarries the buildings, always of slate, are quietly settling back into the scree. Water seeps through the empty levels as gorse, rowan, and tangles of briars are closing up the mouths of the shafts and ferns colonise the damp sunless margins. The older quarry heaps have disappeared under the creep of moss. Relentless seasons blunt the edges of the slate.

But at Moss Rigg things are still raw, and the ring of loose slate loud underfoot. Forty years have seen the pioneers, the silver birch, emerge in quiet legions from the slate clitter of the working floors, followed by larch and grey willow, while a crab apple blossoms in the shelter of the last remaining building. Close to the ground patches of the bitter wood sage and dove’s foot cranesbill appear with the crimson stemmed herb robert and wild Strawberry snaking through the chippings. Cushions of moss fur the low walls sheltering spidery maidenhair spleenwort. Reclamation is indeed in full swing.

A few miles away at Elterwater, one of the last remaining green slate quarries is winding down for closure. If the present owners have their way, it will be transformed into what they somewhat inelegantly term ‘a zip wire adventure tourism experience’. Meanwhile here, high on the quarry face at Moss Rigg, a peregrine guards her eyrie, filling the space with raw energy.

In the beginning…

 This is the beginning of a journey. In some ways it feels like walking into the unknown - in others, a return to things that have always been familiar. During my previous decade as Curator of the Armitt Museum here in Ambleside, I learned much about change and contingency, primarily through the items in my care. These were objects which had come to us through a variety of routes. What they shared was the principle that someone, at some time, had valued them and wished to give them a future. Now, as museum artifacts, dislocated from their origins they had altered, developed new significance and associations – the ability to shift and slide. 

 An article by Francis Gooding in the London Review of Books (10.02.2022) about a recent exhibition at the British Museum Peru: A Journey in Time, explained how historically in Andean culture, perception of time was quite different from our own, represented not by a continuous relentless flow, but by three simultaneous strands or realities. Future and past generations were as fully alive in Andean time, living on with the same immediacy as we do in our present. Things and places could move between the strands, be present in more than one and forge connections between them. This seemed familiar as, of course, no one lives entirely in the present. Our thoughts move seamlessly between past, present and imagined future. Listening to interviews from the Ambleside Oral History Archive, I had a sense of how powerfully the sound of a voice can resurrect memory. They could have been those of my grandparents or great aunts or the old man down the road who lost his leg in the Great War. They were the voices of people I had known - as disconcerting in their familiarity as in their absence. 

 This adventure is unashamedly about the local, about a sense of place and a sense of being in that place, in its past, present and future – simultaneously. 

My great-aunts, Kendal 1916