Summer Outing 2010

Jill Sykes
 JOURNAL 
 2011 
 North Craven 
 Heritage Trust 

This year David Johnson arranged for us to visit a variety of interesting buildings around the Lancashire / Cumbria border. He entitled the day, Westward Ho!

After our rendezvous in a large A65 layby we regrouped and drove a short way down narrow lanes to Preston Patrick Hall not usually open to the public. Now overshadowed by the M6 motorway it has been the manor house of the area with origins as a hall house in the late 14th century, but remodelled a hundred years later as a five-bay central hall with east and west wings. The manor passed from the Curwen family to the Prestons (who was Patrick?) in 1523 hence the name of the hall and nearby village. In the 17th century the upper east wing became a court house where the lord of the manor sat in judgement on local issues and also tried a number of Quakers from the newly emerging religious group. The wheel turned full circle: in the 20th century the hall was owned by a Quaker family. Mrs. Armitage, the present owner who kindly allowed our visit, is a daughter of that family.

We looked around the court house with bare stone walls and open to the rafters, with documents laid out for us. Looking up we could see evidence of the alterations to the junction of roofs of the main house and east wing. We must have seemed a well-behaved group! Mrs. Armitage invited us through her house, now divided into smaller rooms, to view the back which still looks late medieval, while the front has Georgian- style windows but retains early stone tracery above some windows and doors. The fine farm buildings have recently been renovated, preserving cattle stalls, hay loft etc. although the farm has only had sheep since the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001. The whole farm complex is Grade 2* listed, deservedly so.

After leaving we had time for a coffee stop at The Old School built in 1775, now a tea-room, very cosy with lots of pictures and old photographs. Frankie Vaughan came to school here as a WW2 evacuee.

Our next visit was to Heron Corn Mill at Beetham, 2km south of Milnthorpe on the A6. There has been a mill on the site for 900 years, the present building dating from the mid 1700s. Water from the weir across the River Bela is led by a timber launder to a 4.3m diameter breast-shot water wheel which drives the 18th and 19th century iron, wood and stone machinery. There is a new ‘green’ water-driven turbine creating electricity for the buildings and the National Grid. We were shown all over the mill and the corn-drying kiln before eating our lunch in the refurbished education / social barn. The mill is often open to the public, staffed by volunteers, with the machinery turning when there is enough water, which is also used by the paper mill across the river. Medieval farmers and cottagers had to use the mill to grind their corn - most probably oats in this area - paying the miller with a share of the flour, who in turn paid rent to the local lord….likely to be living at Beetham Hall.

David had arranged for us to roam around the ruins here, only half a kilometre south of the village and again not open to the public.This has been a fortified manor house with tower, chapel, farm buildings and a surrounding high wall, much of which is still standing. We speculated that the chapel was half-way up the tower - no floors or roof remain after the buildings were sacked in 1644 by Republican forces. The present farmhouse is the rebuild of 1653. David’s notes say ‘No charge here…unless you want to stay for eternity’. Intriguing! Here is real diversification as the tidy farmyard and 19th century barn buildings are now a funeral director’s busines, so our various vehicles were parked alongside shiny funeral cars.

Now for the Stately Home…through Yealand Conyers and over the hill to Leighton Hall - very much open to the public. Behind a white stone 19th century Gothick façade there is an elegant Adam-style house of 1763, itself a rebuild of a traditional stone fortified house, first recorded in 1246 but sacked and burnt in the 1715 Jacobite rebellion. Members of the Gillow family have owned it for the last 200 years, and Mrs. Gillow Reynolds and her very able guides showed us and other groups round the house. There was wonderful Gillow furniture and a fantastic Art-Deco bathroom with black and turquoise Vitrolite walls and fittings, also a tea-room, peaceful garden and an old painting of a working lime kiln for David to photograph!

The Epilogue - those who had stayed the course were rewarded with the tranquillity of the yew-shadowed ruined 14th century Rectory at Warton at the southern end of the old coach road from Yealand. Stone walls of the hall house still stand full height, with a traceried window in the south gable and walls of service rooms to the north. Owned by English Heritage, this is always open with typical manicured grass and gravel paths. A surviving oak roof truss leans against a boundary wall.

Every building we visited was different although four of them had been late medieval ‘hall houses’, all a joy to experience. We were extremely grateful to David Johnson for all his research and excellent hand-out (on which I have drawn for this report), for his diligent arrangements with building owners and for his guidance and enthusiastic leadership during a memorable day.

Patrick.jpg
Peston Patrick Hall
rectory.jpg
Warton Old Rectory
Beetham.jpg
Beetham Hall
people.jpg
Leighton.jpg
Leighton Hall



Patrick.jpg
Peston Patrick Hall


rectory.jpg
Warton Old Rectory


Beetham.jpg
Beetham Hall


people.jpg


Leighton.jpg
Leighton Hall