The Summer Outing 2013 — A Day around Penrith

Leader - David S. Johnson — 13 June 2013

JOURNAL
2014

North Craven
Heritage Trust

The focus of this outing was Little Salkeld and Edenhall, to the north-east of Penrith, and Yanwath to the south. The group met at Little Salkeld to start the outing.

Little Salkeld Watermill

Sunnygill Beck flows through the southern end of the tiny village of Little Salkeld and feeds a water-powered corn mill which produces organic flour, and has been in use since the 1760s. It has two water wheels. Our guide, the owner Mr Nick Jones, gave us an interesting and informative introductory talk about the mill and milling. The millstones are complex items, requiring skill in their making with different patterns of grooves in the convex-concave stone surfaces and in the annual dressing to renew the grinding surfaces which deteriorate with wear. The current stones are French from a quarry near Paris, producing the highest available quality stones which will last 100 years. Oats and wheat show different hardness of husk requiring different grinding techniques. Slower grinding means better quality of flour at the expense of high throughput. Oat ears hang down when ripe and are not subject to holding water, whereas wheat ears are erect and can hold water after rain and then rot. Thus oats are grown more in northern climes. A wide range of flours and bran are produced according to the grinding process and subsequent sieving.

We then drove northwards to the magnificent megalithic monument of ...

Long Meg and Her Daughters

Possibly erected around 3000BC, but thought by some to be even older, it is one of several monuments in the area, including Little Meg, a possible cursus and burial cairns. It is one of the largest stone circles in Britain, having a diameter of about 100m, though it is slightly oval in plan form. There are 51 stones, of which 27 still stand upright, but there were originally about 70. Long Meg itself is a 3.8m-high megalith of New Red Sandstone detached from the circle: it is rich in intricate rock art and was erected perhaps earlier than the circle stones. Most of the area within the circle is overlain by medieval ridge and furrow. Abutting the circle is a large enclosure.

St Cuthbert’s Church, Edenhall

This was the centre of a substantial estate belonging to the Musgrave baronets. They came over with the Conqueror and (apparently) first held lands at Musgrave in Westmorland; had their main seat at Hartley Castle near Kirkby Stephen from the time of Edward III; came to possess Edenhall by a judicious marriage c.1461; and Sir Philip was gifted Kempton Park by an uncle in 1746. The hall was demolished in 1934 but most other estate buildings still stand. A 14th-century Islamic glass beaker, called the Luck of Edenhall, belonged to the family until it was loaned to the V&A in 1926, where it still stands.

St Cuthbert’s lies within Edenhall Park. It is (reputedly) one of the places where the Saint’s body rested on its journey fleeing from Danish incursions along the east coast in 875. The first documentary reference to a church here is from a charter of 1240 but the external masonry of the nave is clearly much older than that, and the walls bear signs of re-building and re-modelling. Some of the masonry looks pre-Norman; there is an Anglo-Saxon-style window on the north wall, and a carved Anglo-Saxon cross in the same wall. Much of the fabric dates from a 12th-century re-build, though it was ‘restored’ in 1834. The porch is 13th century, windows date from the 14th, and the tower is from 1450: this has four carved stone shields of the Musgraves, Viteripont, Stapleton and Hilton families, who all had connections to the manor. Other alterations date from 1662 (repairs to the chancel), 1774 (new roof) and 1834 (oak gallery added, chancel ceiling inserted, bane roof plastered). It is small but quite a gem.

On the way to Yanwath, near Eamont Bridge, is Arthur’s Round Table, a probable Neolithic earthwork henge.

Yanwath Hall

The Hall is a splendid example of an intact tower-house or pele tower, thought to have been first built by Johannes de Sutton when marriage brought the manor into his hands in 1322. It commanded a ford across the River Eamont, then the only crossing point in the Penrith area. (Is the name Yanwath a corruption of John’s Ford?) The 3-storey tower is c.11m by 9m, with walls between 1.6m and 2m thick. It has a vaulted basement and a narrow spiral staircase to the upper floors, each floor being accessed from the stairway through a short lobby. The first floor contains the hall, with Tudor windows, a fireplace, garderobe, ambry, and a ceiling dated to 1586. Above this floor is the solarium with windows on all sides, 2 garderobes (one with a stone sink), 3 ambries and a fireplace. There is disagreement as to the age of the upper part of the tower, whether Elizabethan or earlier.

A south range was added to the tower, dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, containing a kitchen at the east end and a hall. It was altered in the 16th and 17th centuries but retains its basic original form. The timber roof, of 15th-century date, is magnificent.

The east range was added in the 15th century, containing offices, with a mini-tower at its north end which may have served as a lookout position to control the ford. It may also have housed a chapel. The entrance through this range is relatively modern, and the buildings now all have agricultural functions. The north range is 17th century and had a gatehouse leading into the now-enclosed barmkin (courtyard). Machell, the noted 17th-century observer, wrote of Yanwath having a ‘delicate prospect when you are at it, and hath the grace of a little castle when you depart from it’. After the demise of the Sutton family, it was possessed by the Threlkelds and passed by marriage to Lord Dudley in the early 1520s. It was purchased by the Lowthers in 1654 and still belongs to that estate. It is tenanted by Mr and Mrs David Altham, to whom we are most grateful for permitting this visit, arranged at short notice.