History

England’s Landscape: The North West

by David Murray on February 10, 2012

This book, England’s Landscape: The North West by Angus Winchester and Alan Crosby was published in 2006 by English Heritage. It is No. 8 in a series covering the regions of England and includes chiefly the three historic (as distinct from current administrative) counties of Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland.

This is a comprehensive coverage of landscapes of many types. The region is blessed with an enormous diversity. The two main lowland areas of North Cumbria and West Lancashire could scarcely be different from the mountainous massif of the Lake District and the high moorland of the Pennines.

In addition to the rocks and rivers the human activity around them is surveyed, we read of men extracting coal and minerals from deep under the earth and leaving their mark above it in what we now see as fascinating industrial heritage. Buildings – houses and castles, churches and chapels, mills and mines – are all part of this story and their existence all flowed from the nature of the rock and earth beneath them.

The growth of agricultural villages, both lowland and upland, is explored and so is the more recent (ie. two hundred years or so) spread of industrial towns and cities based on iron, coal and plentiful soft water, along with the west coast ports and the development of the region’s extensive transportation networks – roads, canals, railways and back to roads.

England’s Landscape: The North West is beautifully illustrated with colour photography and also with maps, charts and diagrams to help the reader understand the way that the region has developed over the years through human settlement, economic activity and, more recently, conservation – of both the natural and built environment.

This is a book to be read by all who are seriously interested in the North West. How can we think constructively about our future if we do not understand how we came to be where we are?

Other Volumes in the “England’s Landscape” Series

More on the Landscape of the North West

The English Lakes: A History, by Ian Thompson

by David Murray on October 14, 2011

This beautifully produced book was published last year by Bloomsbury (ISBN 978-0-7475-9838-1) and is truly a “must” for lovers of the Lake District. From ancient geology through to Wainwright and the National Park the author follows the story of this most beautiful corner of England. The illustration is excellent. Indeed one might almost buy the book for the double-page photographic spreads.

If I were to criticise it would be to say that more prominence seems to be given to the three Ps (poetry, protest and protection) than to the genuine need of the local population to extract a living from their mountains – and yes, they were “theirs” long before they came to be seen as belonging to the rest of the nation. There is a tendency here to see the Lake District’s past through the eyes of outsiders and offcomers rather than to follow the experience of the native population battling to survive in a beautiful but frequently hostile terrain.

I wrote the last two paragraphs before re-reading the Introduction and highlighting (but not literally!) the author’s acknowledgement of the irony that the Lake District has become “in the eyes of many, a place to escape the ravages of industry, when in truth it had already been an industrial site for centuries.” Nevertheless I still sense the bias, and this tension will probably (must inevitably?) persist as the priorities of Cumbrian home versus visitors’ playground pull in different directions.

The English Lakes: A History is a superb book. Buy it and devour it. Then, to gain an even more comprehensive picture of the area and its history, read also The Lake Counties from the 1830s to the mid-twentieth century by Marshall and Walton.

The National Trust in the Lake District – Two Histories

by David Murray on October 3, 2011

Today I scarcely need to write anything to explain the subject of the books I’m listing. The National Trust is such a vital part of Lake District life, and has been for many decades, that it surely needs no introduction.

Bruce Thompson was for many years between the two world wars the agent for National Trust properties in the North of England. In 1945 he published these 223 pages of the history of the Trust’s involvement in the Lake District, with their agreement but also with freedom to express his own opinions.

Then in 1987 Elizabeth Battrick covered the next forty years. Her 185 pages describe each of the properties in eleven different areas of the Lake District, and in addition there are pages on other nearby properties elsewhere in Cumbria and also in Lancashire.

Click on the book images to find copies on Amazon.co.uk.

A Tour in Westmorland

September 26, 2011

Sir Clement Jones was a diplomat from around the time of the First World War who had a strong family connection with Westmorland. His mother was a Cropper, of the paper-making family in Burneside just outside Kendal. His father was Rector of Burneside Parish Church. For many years he and his wife owned Godmond Hall [...]

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A Lakeland Valley Through Time

September 22, 2011

A Lakeland Valley Through Time is the story of an area that most people pass by on their way from the M6 to Windermere, not realising the richness of history and landscape that they’re missing – Staveley, Kentmere and Ings – although the people of Staveley are no doubt pleased that most now pass by. [...]

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The Lowther Family, by Hugh Owen

September 19, 2011

The Lowther Family by Hugh Owen is a weighty work. It is an extensive family history packed with thoroughly researched material. It covers not only the Earls of Lonsdale responsible for Lowther Castle but many other branches. Lowthers played important roles not only in Cumberland and Westmorland but nationally and internationally from way back in [...]

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“Portrait of Kendal and the Kent Valley” by Michael Ffinch

August 26, 2011

This 189-page book was an outstanding 1983 contribution to the Robert Hale series of Portrait Books. Michael Ffinch also authored volumes in the same series on the Howgills and the Penrith area which I hope to cover here at a later date. Kendal comes first in the title, and its character and history are pictured [...]

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A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: The Lake Counties, by David Joy (1983)

August 24, 2011

David Joy’s 270-page volume on the railways of what is now Cumbria is a “must” for anyone seriously interested in either the general history of the Lake District county or the railway history of northern England. Published in 1983 by David & Charles of Newton Abbot it came as Volume 14 of the major series, [...]

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Historic Farmhouses in and around Westmorland

August 4, 2011

I bought this book, Historic Farmhouses in and around Westmorland, many years ago from the Westmorland Gazette office in Kendal. My interest was personal as it includes a description of Ashes Farm, Staveley, which was my maternal grandfather’s birthplace way back in the 1870s. His father before him was born in Longsleddale and farmed high [...]

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Delighted with Grasmere

August 1, 2011

The subtitle of this book is “An Idyll of the Vale” and the author, Jane West, says that she wrote it “to provide the reader, and visitors to Grasmere and the Lake District, with insight into the Wordsworths’ daily life at Dove Cottage.” The book does this, but for myself the greater interest was in [...]

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