Lawkland Hall Estate

The walk commenced at the Hall and the first stop was made at the nearby large Bank Barn with a datestone 1763 and a doorhead carrying the initials IS I (John Ingilby). However, the barn is perhaps as much as 100 years older as suggested by one of the party. The Ingilby (or Ingleby) family occupied the hall from the middle of the 16th C. The barn has a fine old oak beam roof but the roof was re-slated recently and continues in use. One gable end has fine set of mullioned windows suggesting occupancy by a tenant. The party crossed the road and walked across a field to the slate bridge over a small stream and then to and alongside Fen Beck. One of the fields (previously meadow land as noted on an estate map dated 1847) has been left undrained and has a cover of rushes; it is now an SSSI with resident snipe and other marsh-loving birds - curlews and hen harrier. The distant woodland and scrub on the edge of the estate is part of Lawkland Moss, now very wet and overgrown but probably with good paths in earlier times. Fen Beck some years ago was dredged to improve flow and drainage of farm land. We inspected a second barn near Lawkland Hall wood, undated, but kept in very good order by the estate despite the lack of need of such barns in modern farm practice. There is a fine roof and a slated elevated floor and provision for nesting birds. The walk continued eastwards around the estate noting the original water supply point at Knott Coppy and the railway embankment and potential problems of water drainage. We walked along the lane and across Stalpes Beck towards Lawkland Green (maybe part of the old route to Kendal) then across the road and uphill to gain better views of the hills before returning to the barn near the Hall.

[Bank Barn is described by Hartley and Ingilby (1986) who note that it is an Elizabethan rebuilding taking its name from the Bankes family. It was extended in 1763 by John Stephen Ingleby. The very similar Bark Barn nearby was demolished in 1988 - see walk report in 2003 Journal].

Hartley, M. and Ingilby, J., 1986. Publ. Dalesman Books, Clapham.