The Citizens’ League has shown such public spirit in the past that I venture to bring before them a scheme which, if they adopt it, would, I feel, in the years to come, not only help the city, but redound to their credit.  I do not ask them to swallow the scheme whole, and I am quite willing that it should be amended and bettered.  I take as my text these words of Browning:-

O Earth as God made it all is beauty,
And knowing this is love, and Love is Duty.

And solemnly believing as I do that the duty of the citizen is to foster a patriotic love of the Homeland, and to make it possible for every man, woman, and child in Carlisle to feel that this old Border City has some peculiar attraction which haunts them for life, that gives them a pride in it and a homing instinct, which wherever they are obliges them to return in thought to it, I ask myself what we are doing to encourage this patriotic love, and how best we can minister to it.  The Loss of Natural Beauty. I believe the first thing we ought to do is to realise that every child born into our city and trained in our schools has a natural aptitude for love of the beautiful in form and colour; that this natural love can be dwarfed and in the long run killed by unlovely surroundings, but that on the contrary the natural beauty of earth and sky, of bird, flower, and tree life, the beauty of form in buildings are all educators to right thought and good life, and that a healthy love of these things ministers to the happiness of every individual.  I believe the curse of our manufacturing towns to-day is that not only they destroy the health-giving power of sunlight but they rob the working people of the happiness which was intended for them by killing the very power of the soul to enjoy beauty and to obtain rest and peace in its enjoyment.  I feel that for all of us whose lives have been brightened and bettered by our sense of the beautiful it is a duty to hand on the great heritage of natural beauty that is ours in Great Britain, both in town and country, undiminished to those who come after us, and to do all in our power to work for this common good and leave the world, not less fair, but fairer than we found it.  One thing I am certain of is that to love the beautiful when we see it implies education, and the sooner we set about such education the better….  After careful inquiry as to what is being done elsewhere, at Middlesbrough, at Oldham, Leicester, Warrington, and Manchester, I feel justified in urging that a “Beautiful Carlisle Society” should be set on foot:—

1. To preserve existing beauty which adds to the attractiveness of the city, and to endeavour to minimise all that is unsightly.
2. To utilise waste and open spaces for tree-planting, gardening, etc.
3. To encourage the cultivation of flowers in spaces adjoining public buildings, schools, mills, houses, backyards, etc.
4. To encourage window gardening.
5. To cultivate the love of tree and flower life amongst school children.
6. To educate young and old as to the selfishness of the litter nuisance.

I am not without hope that such a Society would succeed, for there is an awakening to the love of the natural beauty not only amongst our school children but in the homes of the workers.  There is hardly a house in some quarters in which the “aspidistra,” that forgiving plant which survives neglect, is not to be seen.  And there are other signs of improvement. Messrs. W. H. Smith and Sons have shown us throughout England the value of right lettering on the name-sign of their shop fronts, and we are all indebted to the Liquor Control Board for the dignified decoration of their houses and the beautiful Roman lettering with which they, as well as Messrs. W. H. Smith, have enriched the city, bringing back Roman art from Trojan’s Column again to its ancient home.  Good things grow from small beginnings.

(Carlisle Journal, 12 December 1919, p. 6)

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Sir,—I hope I may be forgiven if I dare humbly to suggest to my brother-ministers in all the churches that next Sunday the noble hymn tune “Austria” should be used; they might thus enable their congregations to show national sympathy with a bereaved Royal House, a stricken King, and a sorrowing people.  I was present yesterday at a solemn litany service in the “Hof Kirche” at Innsbruck; the Kings and Queens who stood in bronze, head and shoulders above the people, seemed almost to be living presences sharing with sadden looks the national grief.  And when at a later service, at which many soldiers were present, the National Anthem was played, tears were on many faces.  The least sympathy seemed to be cared for.  I believe it would be some comfort to Austria to know that we in Great Britain thus simply, unofficially, and, naturally showed our condolence with them at this tragic time.

(Times, 2 July 1914, p. 9)

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We had determined to visit the most southerly of our possessions on the western coast, Barras Headland, at Tintagel, fifteen acres of which were obtained from the Earl of Wharncliffe in 1897 for the sum of £502. (p. 131)….

We drove by the old post-office, an ancient fourteenth-century building of very remarkable character, saw other crooked-roofed cottages that seemed to be of the same period, then entered the modern world of New Tintagel, and in a few minutes arrived at the most romantically placed fortress-like hotel, that stands high-perched above the Barras Headland. (pp. 137-138)

We went to rest that night with the sea on three sides of us, still gleaming from the long afterglow, and woke to find the whole land bathed in that glittering, dazzling sunshine which seems almost a peculiarity of the Cornish coast.  Down to the Barras Headland we strolled, its short turf scorched by the sun where the rock came near the surface, but for the rest green with soft grass, enamelled with great patches of thyme such as I had never seen, and golden with anthyllis. (p. 138)

The Headland, owned by the Trust, may roughly be divided into three parts, a horn-shaped hill to the north-east covered with gorse, an extensive slope of grass which narrows to a depression, and then a rise to the naked rock which forms the end of the promontory.  Its cliffs go sheer to the sea, and on the southern side form one horn of the far-famed Arthur’s Cove, beneath Tintagel Castle. (p. 138)

That old miner, the sea, has hollowed this cliff into mighty caverns, from which, when tides are high, come bellowings unutterable, as if rocks were groaning and travailing in pain.  All view of the sea to the south is blocked by the Castle rock, except just over the narrow isthmus between the mainland and the castle, where a glimpse of sapphire blue tells us how nearly the waters of Rocky Cove and Arthur’s Cove meet. (pp. 138-139)

Beyond the cove, on the landward side, is seen the steep roadway that leads up to the village inland; a path from where we stand drops down to the cove.  By the side of that path stands a stone, of grey Borrodale slate, which bears the following inscription:

THIS HEADLAND
THE PROPERT OF THE NATIONAL
TRUST FOR PLACES OF HISTORIC
INTEREST AND NATURAL BEAUTY
WAS PURCHASED IN 1896 BY PUBLIC
SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE USE AND
ENJOYMENT OF THE NATION.

“Hard by was great Tintagel’s table round
And there of old the flower of Arthur’s knights
Made fair beginning of a nobler time.”
(p. 139)….

It is an interesting village, this old village of Trevena that in old days was probably the nurseling of the ancient borough of Bossiney, which boasts a charter from the time of Richard, Duke of Cornwall, and which had for its few farmsteads the right to return two members of Parliament, till the Reform Act was passed.  At one time it boasted Sir Francis Drake as its representative, and elected mayors from 1551 to 1832 with mayoral seal and mace, which still exist.  But the village probably grew up beneath the shelter of the twelfth-century castle, and the Norman church, with its stone altar bearing consecration crosses upon it, and its very interesting font.  A Roman milestone, within the church, strikes a note of pre-Norman times.  The church stands in lonely dignity upon the cliff, a sea-mark for many miles, and is dedicated to St. Materiana or St. Madryn, which suggest a pre-Norman consecration; and, Celtic perhaps in origin, it takes us back to medieval days by reason of the remains of a stone bench round the south transept where the old people sat while the young people stood during worship. (pp. 148-149)

Here and there in the village are a few of the old Cornish houses of early times, with their hummocked roofs, their pleasant porches, and every available crevice giving root-hold to stone-crop or valerian.  But whether old or modern, the cottage of Trevena is made delightful by its tiny wall-enclosed garden plot, green with turf and gay with flowers.  The most interesting building in the village is the fourteenth-century manor-house, formerly the post-office, which stands almost opposite the present post-office.  It attracts attention at once by the extreme beauty of light and shade upon its uneven roof of grey-green slates, tufted with golden saxifrage and moss.  Its front is broken by an ample porch, a hooded window and projecting gable, and on the left of the main porch, by the lean-to roof which shelters the oven. (pp. 149-150)

We enter the little forecourt garden, gay with valerian and flowering mallow, and see through the house to a little garden paradise beyond, a blaze of rose-red valerian to-day.  We are welcomed by a grey-eyed old Cornish body, who graciously tells us that the owner of the cottage, a Miss Johns, will be very glad if we care to walk through it.  “You can go upstairs and downstairs, or wherever you will, and you had better step this way to the bedroom.” (p. 150)

It was furnished very simply, with good old cottage furniture, and going upstairs to a second bedroom we found a four-post bed, and from the stairway were able to look into the main living-room of the house which was open from floor to roof, with a gallery over one end of it.  We came down and passed through this main room to a quaint kitchen beyond, from which a stone staircase leads to the bedroom above, noting the tiny windows to allow of light in out-of-the-way corners, and noting also the old-fashioned ingle and huge oven by its side.  We realized then that this cottage, as it is called, was probably the house of a gentleman, who entertained many friends, and served much baked meats in his refectory.  He too, like the Norman Vicar of old at this church, seems to have known the worth of pigeon-pie.  Still in the vicarage garden stands the old Norman dovecote, and here in this fourteenth-century house is the pigeon loft of ancient time. (pp. 150-151)

The old housekeeper loved every stick and stone in the place, and spoke of the cottage as of a living thing.  “Of course, she be a bit draughty at times, and she makes a deal of dirt from old rafters and what not, and sometimes I say windows should be bigger, but she be a great favourite with the visitors, and them as comes to lodge here in the summer can’t say too much about her.” (p. 151)

The property, which has belonged to the National Trust since 1903, subject to the life-interest of Miss Johns, would probably not now be in existence but for her love of old Cornish days.  She heard that it was to be sold, to be pulled down for the site of a modern building, and begging the Earl of Wharncliffe’s agent not to bid against her she went to the sale.  He, a wise man in his generation, refused to give a fancy price for a semi-ruinous building, and Miss Johns thus became the possessor in 1893.  Unable to put it in repair, she called in the help of the National Trust, who secured the advice of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and a well-known architect, Detmar Blow, who with knowledge and skill put the cottage in substantial repair, and preserved for us its original features, and there is no reason now why the cottage should not stand a monument of fourteenth-century architecture to delight beholders for many generations. (pp. 151-152)

But the interest of a stay at Tintagel does not consist only in National Trust property and the Arthurian legend.  We sojourn here among a grey-eyed, well-mannered and kindly people by the seaside, entirely unspoiled by the paraphernalia of an ordinary watering-place.  Every road that leads from the village takes you at easy distance to some remains of the old British kingdom of Lyonesse, or to some remembrance of early Celtic Christianity. (p. 152)

(A Nation’s Heritage, pp. 131-157)

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Beneath the yew by Rothay’s freeborn stream
    Filled with your music, crystal as your heart,
    To-day from all the world I go apart;
A hundred years roll backward as in dream,
All of yourself that doth immortal seem
    Comes from the grave to hear a patriot’s part,
    Your pealing clarion tuned by sonnet art
Sounds, and your brave song-banners forward
            gleam.

Wordsworth! an empire needs you at this hour,
    For now a second tyrant stands confest,
        A ruthless wide-world dominating foe;
    Oh! turn not, mighty spirit, to your rest,
        But bid us forth as happy warriors go
With freedom’s unimaginable power.

(The European War 1914-1915 Poems, p. 219)

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