A Castle, “The Lakes”, and a Promenade : English Summer in Cumbria and Lancashire

When you grow up and live in The Colonies, a visit to England can feel like a cultural homecoming. So much is familiar! You recognise places you’ve never been, and half-remember stories you’ve never heard.

I had always wanted to visit the Lake District: images of that pastoral countryside had somehow taken on a mythical quality in my mind. And of course, like any good English child of the mid-twentieth century, I had copies of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabit and Jemima Puddle Duck long before I had ever heard of Dr Suess. Then – many many years later – I saw the 2006 film Miss Potter on an airplane, and my desires to visit were rekindled.

The world has a funny way of drawing circles: I was born in Liverpool (UK); my children were born very near to Liverpool (AUS). My daughter met, and was about to marry a man from Liverpool (UK), and so my husband and I were travelling from Australia to England for the wedding and an extended stay.

Finally I had my chance to visit/revisit the northwest of England.

My search for reasonably affordable accommodation led me not to the Lakes itself, but to Carnforth, a small town in the north of Lancashire, within a stone’s throw of Yorkshire and Cumbria. This turned out to be the perfect location for us: our resort was well enough equipped to give us things to do (morning walks and afternoon kayaks) as we recovered from the long days of travel, and it was set within easy reach of rich historical treasures and wonderfully pastoral scenery once we were ready to explore.

It was a half hour’s drive to the Yorkshire Dales, where we walked through woods and fields, over stone bridges, and past numerous waterfalls, singing “All things bright and beautiful” to all the sheep we met – in honour of James Herriot, the original “Yorkshire Vet” and author of the delightful All Creatures Great and Small (see:Ingleton Waterfalls Trail).

Our vist to Lancaster Castle the next day was a complete contrast. This rambling medieval fortress is one of Europe’s longest running prisons and one of England’s best preserved castles. For a time, it was the only Assize Court for the county, and it is still in use as as a Crown Court. No pictures are allowed inside, and although the entrance to the courtyard is free, if you want to go into the building itself, you have to pay to join a tour.

As frustrating as I find walking around with my cameras and not being able to use them, the tour was well worth our time and money. I’m sure all the guides are well trained: ours was certainly a wealth of fascinating historical information and amusing anecdotes. I was intrigued by the stories of “Hansbrow’s Hotel”, as the debtor’s prison was colloquially named for the Governor of the Castle (1833-1862) Captain James Hansbrow. As this name suggests, conditions were not too bad for some inmates! However, this was not the case for the founder of Quakerism, George Fox, who was incarcerated on numerous occasions: he wrote about his tower room in Lancaster where the cold, damp, and smoke adversely impacted his health.

In August 1612 the Lancaster Castle Summer Assize convicted ten people of witchcraft and they were hanged on the moors above the town. The Clerk of the Court published his account of the trials the following year, giving us a unique insight into the thinking of the day. For example, the origin of the modern word “haggard” comes from the trial of Margaret Pearson who was convicted of riding a horse to its death (“Hag Ridden”) .

There were many grim tales of hangings within the castle, and the sight of the original branding iron, used to burn an M into a convicted person’s hand, marking them a as a ‘malefactor’, gave me pause. But the stories that most caught my attention were those of transportation, for it was here that the connection to Australia came back into play. It was in Lancaster Castle’s courts that large numbers of prisoners in the 18th and 19th Centuries were sentenced to Transportation to Australia.

Among the 688 convicts who landed in Australia in January 1788 as part of the First Fleet were Elizabeth Youngson, age 13, and her brother George, age 12. Both confessed to their crime of breaking into a silk warehouse and stealing fourty-seven shillings and ninepence. Although originally sentenced to hang, their sentences were reduced to seven years transportation. All the prisoners walked in chains from Lancaster Prison to the small ships at Portsmouth – a distance of some 260 miles (418km). We got to handle the heavy chains, and it is impossible to imagine walking the 90 or so hours it would have taken, wearing them.

We certainly needed some lighter entertainment the next day, so we headed to the beautiful Lake Windermere in Cumbria. We stopped in at The World of Beatrix Potter (no photos allowed!), lunched on the lake, and to appease my huband’s love of classic cars, spent time in the Lakeland Motor Museum.

Any fan of old British television will remember the comedy double-act of Morecambe and Wise. It turns out that Eric Morecambe took his stage name from the seaside town that he grew up in. As Morecambe was only fifteen minutes away, we stopped in for a walk along their ‘award winning’ promenade.

Everywhere we went, there were links to personal memories and shared history.

Those fishing boats weren’t going anywhere for a while!

It was time, however, for us to move on – and leave the northwest behind.

Until next time,

Happy Travels!

Photos: 15-17July2015