Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865 Find!
In 1865, Robert and Rachel Jackson of Waterend, Loweswater, wrote to their Quaker friends in Manchester and invited them to come to stay for a weekend. The invitation was accepted with great enthusiasm...by 44 people! Quite a house party by anyone's standards!
The group visited the Lakes in July 1865, staying for 3 days in total. As a thank you gift for their hosts, two ladies of the party - Mary Hodgson and Lydia Hunt - made a hand written album of their excursion containing both poetry and prose accounts of their visit, bound in gold-tooled leather and illustarted with pen-and-ink and water-colour pictures. This album was subsequently preserved and passed down through generations of Quaker families.
Sadly, today, nothing is known of authors, the other members of the party or Robert and Rachel Jackson, but, in 1987 the album itself was reproduced and published with an introduction by Christopher Newsom.
It is visually delighful and also an extremely illuminating book, giving great insight to what it was like to be a visitor to the area at a time when mass tourism was becoming established, but when travel was still challenging - done as it was by steam train and by horse and carriage.
Some members of the visiting group decided to set off for the Lakes on the Friday night, while the rest journeyed up on the very early Saturday morning train to Windermere meeting up with the others at Ambleside.
Some things don't change - even in 1865 the summer weather was extremely wet and soggy, but this did not deter the group and they were enthusiastic tourists taking in as many sights as they could en route.
They visited a waterfall at Ambleside (before breakfast!), travelled north through Grasmere and on into Keswick, then spent 3 hours at the hotel at Lodore which included lunch, rowing on the lake and viewing another waterfall, before getting to Loweswater via Honister Pass, at 7.10 in the evening.
After a meal and an early night, they got up the next morning and attended a Quaker meeting where they listened to a visiting minister from America, before setting off to walk some of the nearby hills and fells to look at the views.
Then another early night, before they set off on the journey home at 6am the next morning. On the way back they spent time in Keswick rowing on the lake, walking up more fells and having their photographs taken, and they also took in Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere before dinner and the 6 pm train back to Manchester from Windermere.
This was clearly not a trip for the faint hearted and must have required great stamina and energy to cope with the challenging travel and such a packed itinerary!
As an example of early tourism and travel writing it is fascinating and the descriptions are lovely. Another gem!
29 September 2009 from Helen
Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
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- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
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- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
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- Talk of the Town
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- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
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