However Skiddaw came to be laid down, it is quite certain that it took an immeasurable number of years to build.  Geologists speak of six millions of years as possible for its growth, and think this new world began to be evolved from an older continent more than sixty millions of years ago.  It is also quite certain that it was gradually upheaved out of the water, and that millions of years may have intervened before, by some sudden buckling of the earth perhaps and great upheaval of its strata, the volcanoes that gave birth to the Lake District south of Skiddaw came into activity. (pp. 3-4)….

People who are interested in geology, if they walk up the small ghyll that descends from Castlerigg Fell to Causeway foot, may actually see the ashes of the later geological era, which gave us the Lake District to the south, overlying the Skiddaw slate at the fault.  At Castle Head in the quiet sunshine to-day, we can hardly imagine the stormy cataclysms that gave birth to this serene landscape. (p. 5)

But it is not only fire that has been at work in this Keswick vale.  The very mound upon which Crosthwaite Church stands is a moraine mound, and the ice plow of a glacier age as it passed downward towards the south has written its characters plainly on the rocks, not only in Borrowdale, but in the Vale of St. John’s. (p. 5)

And who were the people who lived hereabouts in the days that followed the glacier age?  They were Brigantes or Brigands of a Neolithic time, who, from at least 3,000 B.C., made their stone axes in the valley from the fine chert which they got from Scafell.  They tamed the wild goat and the long-fronted ox, and lived for the most part on the tops of the hills, in order to avoid the beasts of prey and enemies in the forest below them.  They shepherded their goats without the help of dogs, for the dog had not yet been tamed; they grew corn which they ground in stone querns, and, knowing nothing of iron or bronze, worked with wooden hoes and horn rakes, and when they died buried their dead in long barrows. (pp. 5-6)

Anyone who visits the museum at the Fitz Park will find exquisite specimens of the stone axe and hammer, with the querns or handmills which these people used.  We, who are only just beginning to return to stone-ground flour, know less than these men did of wherein consisted the staff of life.  What masters they were of the art of stone cutting and polishing we know, and how laboriously they worked with sand and wood to bore the holes for the haft in their stone hammers. (p. 6)….

Perhaps a thousand years ago B.C. there appeared in the valley another race, men of larger stature with fair hair and blue eyes and round heads, who had spears in their hands, and when they went to cut down the forest trees, laughed to scorn the stone axe of the original inhabitants, for they knew the use of iron and bronze, and wore upon their arms, and perhaps upon their necks, twisted ornaments of bronze, and sometimes round their necks torques of gold.  You will see two of these armlets, worn by a woman probably, in the Fitz Park Museum.  Silver work was unknown to them. (p. 7)

Dogs, too, were at their side when they hunted the wolf, or when they shepherded their goats.  They dispossessed the Long-heads, and made them their servants.  They, too, dwelt in the villages of the Long-heads on Threlkeld Knott and Bleaberry Fell, and these men appear to have used beehive dwellings, and seem to have been sun-worshippers, for they lit a small fire upon the bodies of those they buried.  It is possible that they were the builders of the Druids’ Circle on Castrigg Fell. (p. 7)

With huge labour they dragged the stones in memory of the great chieftains and stood them in the stone circle, and built the little sanctuary to the east, and set the stone in the middle to make that circle a sun clock; and kept time and calendar by the stars as they rose above this or that upstanding stone.  Little did they think that their stone circle would be some day used as a doomring, court of judgement, and place of tribal meeting by another race, larger of limb, and fairer of hair, and bluer of eye, the Vikings from over the sea. (pp. 7-8)

But between the coming of these Round-heads and the invasion of the Norsemen, another race was seen in the valley.  These were the Romans, who, after running their road by the sea coast in the first century, built their Roman Wall, and made their military roads along High Street and over Shap fell and Stainmoor to Old Carlisle.  These dark-eyed foreigners were obliged for security’s sake to have their camps and signalling places throughout the Lake District.  They have left very little behind them in this neighbourhood, but Castrigg Fell preserves to us a memory of their camping ground, and traces of a Roman road have been discovered on Armboth Fell, while Causey Pike by its name suggests that the Roman road ran at its foot, and one or two bronze tripod kettles and several Roman coins have been found that speak to us of their existence hereabout. (p. 8)….

But how did we get the name of Keswick?  I believe that we got it from the Norsemen somewhere between 870 and 950 A.D.  These forefathers of the dalesmen of our day came over under their leaders Ingolf and Thorolf in two invasions.  One of these men was Ketel, son of Ormr.  He came up the Derwent, and ran his boast ashore at the wyke, which was thence called Ketel’s Wyke.  That Ketel’s Wyke became Kelsick or Keswick.  He probably did not settle here because, a Norseman born, he would be attracted by the Falls of Lodore.  He would love the sound of falling water, and the flash of the torrent would remind him of his native home, so he would move thither; and Ketel’s Well in the meadow near Lodore, perhaps, remains to us as a memory of the love of his native country. (p. 9)

In whatever direction we look we find traces in the place names of this Norse occupation.  Here immediately to our left, is Walla Crag, the Crag of Walla.  Away to the south rises Honig Stadhr, the farm of Honig the Viking, Honister of to-day.  Right opposite is Swinside, the seat or high camp of Sweyn or Svein.  Across the fell a little further to the north is Thornthwaite, which means ‘the clearing’ of Thornig.  Nearer lies a farm called the Howe, which keeps in mind the Heough or High Place, a raised mound made by some farmer Viking for the burial of his dead, and from the top of which he could look out for his enemies.  There under Skiddaw is Ormathwaite, the thwaite or ‘clearing in the wood’ of Ormr, perhaps the father of Ketel. (pp. 9-10)….

Close at my side as in fancy I stand on Latrigg to gaze over the country with its ghylls and howes and thwaites and dodds and kelds and forces (i.e. fosses) that remind me of that Norseman age, the Herdwick sheep are pasturing.  They were the sheep, as I believe, that were brought over by these Norse farmers, sheep of mountain breed, as hardy as the hardy Norseman himself.  It is quite clear that wherever these herdwicks came from, they came from a country where snow abounded, for the ruffs of the sheep, more hair than wool, and the thick woollen covering upon their legs show that they were meant to find their food in snowy places. (pp. 10-11) 

Herdwick mutton is the sweetest in the world, and deserves to be much better known than it is.  As one eats it, one seems to be eating game, but how little its characteristic flavour and goodness are known, may be guessed from the fact that when I go to reside in Carlisle, I am unable to obtain it from the butchers there.  The Herdwick sheep supplied our Norse farmer folk of old times and their descendants with their hodden grey, and those who will take the trouble to have it woven into woollen cloth will not only find themselves clad in the ‘cwoat sea grey’ that John Peel wore when he went out hunting, but will find it pleasant in colour and very serviceable against the storm. (p. 11)

Our farmer folk of later time used seldom to kill mutton for fresh meat, though mutton ham, that is, the mutton salted down and dried in the chimney smoke, was a dainty indulged in, in winter time.  The staple food used to be ‘poddish,’ cheese and ‘haver bread,’ and their fine teeth and their large bones were the result.  Thirty years ago one could not enter a farmhouse without finding this ‘haver bread’ in the basket upon the table at meal times, and the sooner we return to those good old days the better will it be for the people’s health.  This ‘haver bread,’ as I believe, came originally from Norway, and was the ‘flat brod’ of our Norse invaders. (p. 12)

If we go into the Keswick market place on Saturday, we shall meet with the sons of these Vikings.  Men with long limbs, long arms, long noses, grey eyes, big square set jaws, so little altered by the lapse of centuries in feature and form, that if you attend any fair in Norway or Sweden to-day, you would believe that you were among Cumberland folk.  Still also may you hear as they talk, echoes of their Norseman tongue.  Such words as ‘rake’ for sheep that move one after another across the fell, such words as ‘ingle’ for the ingle nook, or seat by the fireplace at the farm; such words as ‘throng’ in the sense of busy, and ‘elding’ for firewood, all bespeak the place of their birth.(pp. 12-13)

And echoes of that Northern faith, their faith in Thor and Odin and faith in Baldr, still survive in the place names and even in the herbs they planted and cared for.  The old fashion of giving ‘arvel’ bread to those who had attended a funeral is a Norse one, and the Balderwort or ‘Bald-money’ grew within memory upon the Vicarage Hill.  It is believed that this plant was always planted near a Viking sanctuary. (p. 13)

If we go into the farmhouse dairy and ask to be shown the cream pot, we shall see the cream stick in it made of rowan-tree wood; a stick made of any other wood would not prevent the cream going sour too soon, but why the Viking farmer’s wife should pin her faith on rowan wood she has forgotten.  The Igdrasil was the holy tree of the Vikings, and the rowan wood was the ‘holy azil,’ or holy ash, sacred to the gods, so the good wife would place her cream pot in the charge of a divine Providence, and would see that as a charm for her butter making, nothing but the holy wood of the rowan should stir her cream pot. (p. 13)

There is one other Norse custom which tradition has handed on from those Viking times among the people.  It is the use of nicknames.  Most people grow up with some such name by which they are known throughout the neighbourhood.  Sometimes it is given because of a peculiarity in the shape of a nose, such as ‘Nebby’; sometimes because of their work, ‘Clocky,’ e.g. watchmaker; sometimes because of the mere height of a person, he or she will be known as ‘Lang Tom’ or ‘Lang Sarah.’  Sometimes a person known to be a gossip going from house to house, will be called ‘Clashy betty,’ ‘Clashy Sally.’  Whatever the nickname may be given to them in early days, it sticks to them through life, and this, as readers of Sagas know, was the Norseman’s way. (pp. 13-14)….

One other thing remains as an inheritance from the Norse times.  It is the love of hard work.  A people accustomed from far-off generations to wrestling with Nature in its wildest moods, have never forgotten the powers they have inherited to go on wrestling still.  Wrestlers in their games as they are, they are wrestlers in their work also, and the secret of success wherever our Cumbrians go, either as colonists abroad, or as shopmen into the great houses of commerce in our cities, lies in their indefatigable effort to work and their thrifty will to save. (p. 15)

There has been one other invasion of the Keswick valley by a foreign race since the time the Vikings came hither.  Of this invasion my dear old friend, the late Fisher Crosthwaite, has been the chief historian.  In the year 1561, Queen Elizabeth conferred through her secretary Cecil, with John Steynbergh, a German, and James Thurland, Master of the Savoy, upon warrant for the incorporation of a company for the working of mines in England. Three years after, these grants for working mines and minerals in England and Wales were transferred to another German, a certain Daniel Hecksterrer.  In May of 1565 copper ore said to contain silver was found in certain places in Cumberland, and the Queen was requested to grant warrant to bring three hundred or four hundred foreign workmen to work it.  On the 20th September of the same year, the first contingent of German miners, twenty in number, came to Keswick. (pp. 15-16)….

The works of the mines in this country were destroyed, we are told, by Cromwell’s army.  Many of the miners were slain in the Civil Wars, and the copper mines, both at Coniston and Keswick, were closed. (p. 18)….

It is quite true that they have left behind them some facial characteristics.  The broad square head of the German may still be seen both in boys and girls in Keswick, who come from the mixed stock of Norse and German.  But as to the language, except for the words, ‘forebye’ and ‘clem,’ which are in constant use, not a trace of the German tongue remains. (p. 19)

(By Fell and Dale at the English Lakes, pp. 1-19)

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We left the fields where Tell the archer bent
        The bow whose twanging yet has never died,
        And high along the Reuss’s rushing tide,
Behind the steamy dragon, up we went.
Chasms were bridged, the very rocks were rent
        To let us pass.  Aloud the monster cried,
        And coiling on itself in earth would glide
By marvellous gyres to gain a higher vent.

Then through the mist of hail and blinding snow
    We roared into the tunnel sulphurous, long,
        And the head reeled—we almost felt the pain
        Of that fierce snorting dragon’s forward strain;
    Forth leapt the light; blue heaven was ours, and
            song,
And old Italia lay in sun below.

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 46)

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The otter had been too swift for the hounds.  A splash down stream, a flash of a brown body that looked like a seal’s cub, a cat, a beaver, and gigantic water-vole in one, was all I saw; and away the hunt—dog, man, otter-hound, terrier, yeoman, gamekeeper, huntsman, and whip—tore down the beck towards the river. (p. 28)

I made for the bridge—the most picturesque, but the worst bridge for its particular purpose between Keswick and Windermere.  Who does not know that bridge?—how many hearts have leapt into how many mouths as to the cry of “Sit hard, gentlemen!” the coachy has dashed at the narrow, crooked, low-parapeted viaduct, and gone with a crack of his whip at a hand gallop up the steep pitch beyond. (pp. 28-29)

Running round I stood on a kind of miniature escarpment beneath a long-tasselled flowery poplar, and saw the hounds dive into the dark pool, struggle up against the stream, then turn, and with their mouths full of water-stifled music, allow themselves to be swept back to the bank. (p. 29)

Then a fleck of silver whiteness rose under the bridge, and a cry of “Forrard on!” came through the archway, and the dogs dashed and swam on forward, and their melody died away.  I stayed on the bridge, with a good view of the river pools either side, and scarce had the hounds owned the drag in the meadow below Bridge-End House, and seemed to be going away beyond the stepping-stones and the tiny-arched upper bridge in the direction of Raven Crag and the Thirlmere thickets, than I noticed bubbles rise—‘beaded bubbles,’ not ‘winking at the brim,’ but breaking in long line across the still backwater of the current.  Another moment, and a shadowy something that seemed almost like a black fish—might have been a seal—shot through the pool, and a brown body, swift as light, hustled along under the overhanging brow of the bank, and with a flop dived into the pool higher up. (pp. 29-30)

I confess I had no heart to halloo for the hounds; my sympathies were with the ‘game.’  It was, as one analysed one’s feelings after, not the chance of being in at the death of an otter that had brought one out into the glories of a May dawn, but the chance of a sight of one of these ancient dwellers from primitive times in the old valley of St. John’s. (p. 30)

(A Rambler’s Notebook at the English Lakes, pp. 13-32)

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The Navvy’s Cross

I, wandering up by steep St. Jacomo,
        Where, swift for Barbarossa’s ancient halls
        The Liro leaps, and fills the valley walls
With thunder, thought how hither long ago
Macdonald pushed his cannon through the snow,
        Battling with winter; heard his bugle-calls,
        Saw regiments swept to death by avalanche falls,
Men mad for fear, who quailed not at the foe.

Fame of thy deed, Macdonald, shall not cease
    While men praise war; but lo! this iron cross
        Tells how some simple labourer toiling died:
        You hewed a mountain path in warrior pride—
    His venture was a nobler thing—his loss
Dear life, in service of the way of Peace.

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 80)

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With the belief that the country village must be the starting-place for industrial art movements, and the country house fireside the cradle of enthusiasm for artistic skill; with the feeling that no great amount of interest was likely to be taken by the country people in art handicraft till they could realize the skill of their own hands, and feel its gladness a reality in their own lives, we made an experiment at Keswick in the autumn of 1884. (p. 758)

The promoters aimed at bringing the designer and workman into such relation as that they should become identified; they stated that their object was to teach men and boys some artistic handicraft that would give interesting and elevating occupation for leisure hours, and for times when ordinary work could not be got.  The conditions of success were probable, because Keswick, owing to its tourist season’s needs, has many idle hands in winter. (p. 758)….

A small local Committee, a Parish Mission-room put at their disposal, was our working staff, and the stock-in-trade at the start.  The Committee undertook all risk; all work executed was their property; they were responsible for its sale.  The success of the sale of such work, seeing that the shops were crammed with machine-pressed brass-work and imitation repoussé and machine-pressed wood-carving panels also, would lie largely in the worth of the design. The Committee looked to this; the pupils could not be expected to produce designs. These must be procured, or adapted. (p. 759)….

Expenses were heavy at the start.  The stock of tools and all the necessities of the workshop cost something.  The wood-carving lessons, conducted by an amateur first, and afterwards by a lady instructress from the Albert Hall School of Wood-carving, were a heavy item; but an amateur class of ladies and gentlemen in the neighbourhood, which was conducted in the daytime, enabled us to meet our liabilities for the evening classes. (pp. 759-60)….

The next session [the second] commenced in November 1885.  We had no permanent shop, but met as before in the Parish-room.  We had no amateur class to help us in meeting expenses, and only asked for local subscriptions to the amount of £11, to help us to defray the heavy cost of a teacher of wood-carving, who came to us once a week from Carlisle, a distance of sixty miles off. (p. 760)

The number of workers in brass and copper, and silver and wood-carving, remained the same as the year before.  Many applications were made, but our room could not accommodate more than a certain number, and the wood-carving and brass-hammering went on side by side under one roof. (p. 760)

At the end of the session the working expenses of the school were found to have been £147; but by means of the work sold we had met the liabilities of the previous session, and had a balance of assets estimated at £62. (p. 760)

At the end of the session, a local exhibit was made in the Town Hall of the work done, which surprised those of the inhabitants who had not realised the efforts of the school. (p. 760)

The third session commenced in October 1886.  By this time our work was pretty widely known.  A friend of the firm of Messrs. Howell and James had entered into business arrangements with us that admitted us to their show-rooms.  Bazaars and local industrial exhibitions, and the annual exhibition in London which the Home Arts and Industries Association undertakes for all those individual art classes in connection with it had helped us to a name, and so many orders had come in, that we were busy till Christmas in executing them. (p. 760)

There were now such numerous applicants for place at the repoussé table, or wood-carving stool, that an old stable near the Parish-room was rented and turned into a wood-carver’s workshop. (p. 760)….

[By the end of the third session, Easter 1887] the little School of Industrial Art was self-supporting. (p. 761)

The number of hands had increased, and stood at 44.  Fifteen of them worked in wood, the rest in metal.  Now not one of these was an incompetent workman.  Yet a glance at their ordinary occupations showed that there was little in their previous training to fit them specially for delicate handiwork.  Varying in age from fifteen to fifty years, they had been occupied in the pencil-mills, in tallow-chandling, in carpentry, in blacksmithery, in driving, in boating, in the linen-drapers’ and grocers’ shops.  Here were men and boys executing in spare hours, by most congenial occupation, and good designs, sconces, offertory dishes, ornamental dishes, tea-trays, bellows, brush-backs, menu-holders in copper or brass or silver, and carving lampstands, jardinieres, table-tops, milking-stools, blotting-cases, paper cases, potato-bowls. (p. 761)….

Best of all, these workmen had learned how to fill vacant hours with something more satisfying than public-house chaff, and more lasting than the pleasure of a glass. (p. 762)….

A lady, who is the residing genius of the whole school, has just come through the blinding snow-storm from the little drawing-school and wood-carvers’ class close by; she is at once appealed to, to say whether this or that tendril or flower-stalk of an old Renaissance pattern is sufficiently raised, or what particular frosting there is to be used in this or that part of an intricate arabesque design. (p. 762)

She settles the matter in a moment, and in another is deciding which hand shall work the handsome offertory dish that has just been ordered.  “You see,” she says, “every worker has some individuality, some different touch of tracing and frosting too; one can be trusted to work a design flat for tea-tray use; another will best work a raised design for an ornamental candle-sconce.  One works copper better than brass; another excels in delicate silver-work.” (pp. 762-3)….

 [At an exhibition in Manchester someone asks Hardwicke] “Has your experiment done more than give a rational amusement?  Has it produced designers, or a feeling for design?”  We answer:

 It has done this; it has made a possible focus for artistic feeling in the little country town.  It has called the attention of a whole neighbourhood to the moral and educational worth of such School of Art handicraft in their midst.  It has shown how easily the hands and eyes of English men and boys can be trained to certain manipulation of wood and of metal.  You cannot train a negro’s hand in thirty years as these English hands have been trained in three….  Amongst the workers it has developed a certain sense of true design….  They have discovered, too, a great secret, that good art work must be slow and painstaking work.  That it is intrinsic merit, not money’s worth, that in their little domain of industrial art is to be sought after. (p. 764)

Doubtless the workers in the Keswick School have laboured under disadvantages.  They have no regular shop to work in; they pathetically enough have often wished that there was a permanent room whither on each evening of the week instead of two nights only they might go for company’s sake, as they labour with carving or repoussé tool.  But they have, in spite of this, rejoiced in their common leisure-hour labour, and have stuck together.  The Keswick School of Industrial Arts has proved a blessing to them, and they are proud of it. (p. 764)….

All this points one way.  There is a spirit abroad that has already found out that machine-made England is not a happy England after all.  That the souls of the righteous are not content with mere machine-print, or machine-patterns, as the mode of their expression of their best thoughts and their highest desires.  That the hand of the British workman was made for something else than merely to stand by and feed a hopper or turn a lever.  That the home of the labourer, as much as the home of the lord, needs the ennoblement of simple taste.  That the leisure hours of the artisan, if only his eyes can be taught to perceive beauty, and his hand trained to execute his perception may be filled with a recreative happiness, on terms that insist on effort, and which with effort bring restful change of task and of thought, and the joy of permanent result. (p. 765)

The suggestions that our observation of the working of the Industrial Art experiment in Keswick gave rise to are briefly 

  • That our national educators should undertake the task of training the eyes of the three million and a half of children in the elementary schools to much more accurate observation…. That drawing should be made an obligatory subject. (pp. 765-6)….
  • That on Saturday afternoon, or on one evening in a week, in a properly certified room or workman’s shop, the hands of children above a certain standard should be instructed in some simple manual training…. The village forge and the village shop might surely be utilised for such a purpose. (p. 766)….
  • That first-rate typical examples of manual work of an artistic order, sculpture, wood-carving, stone-carving, metal-work reproduced by photo-gravure, or some enduring carbon process, should be prepared, with short explanations of the date and history and special worth of the example submitted; that these should be issued cheaply by Government for the use of our National School class-rooms; and with them should be prepared illustrations of a live and dead design side by side, and examples of natural growth adapted to the use of the sculptor, the wood and metal-worker, the decorator and designer of ornament. Our children’s eyes need accustoming to some such objects all England over. (pp. 766-7)
  • That an attempt should be made by joint Chambers of Commerce, City Councils and Guilds, to provide on a national scale teachers of art, industries, and masters of manual training. (p. 767)
  • That the Government should issue a report of the present local endeavours of Industrial Art Schools in the country, and endeavour to enlist and utilise the sporadic and experimental efforts, and the willingness of volunteers to forward the work, by putting school buildings in the country out of school hours at their disposal for classes, and by subsidising local efforts which have approved themselves by some merit grant on the pupils taught, or results obtained. (p. 767)

Take our Keswick school effort as an example.  We are hampered for want of a workshop room; a log hut would do, an iron room would be a help.  We can get neither; we are poor; and yet if a Government or national fund existed, the work turned out might possibly warrant some grant that should meet and call forth local aid in the procuring of such accommodation as is needed for a national end. (p. 767)

(Murray’s Magazine, 2 (December 1887), 756-68)

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  1. Orange-Flowers at Baveno
  2. Oor Lad Wha Nobbut Cooms I’ Dreams
  3. Oor Jack he cam’ fra ower t’ sea
  4. On the Schilthorn, June 21, 1896