Skiddaw House, Great Calva, Bakestall, Skiddaw

How Skiddaw spawned the world’s first rock band; why England’s loneliest dwelling sparked a constitutional crisis; the tragic death of a child at a shepherds’ meet; and the night a founder member of the National Trust set Skiddaw’s summit ablaze.  I walk over Great Calva and Bakestall to one Lakeland’s highest peaks in search of Skiddaw stories.

Music of the Stones

The Skiddaw Rock Band live at the Victoria Hall, Keswick all sounds a bit Spinal Tap until you notice the byeline says “musical stones” not “musical stoners” and the date is 22nd September 1891. The “rock band” in question was a large lithophone—think xylophone or glockenspiel but with strips of stone rather than wood or metal. It was assembled by Joseph Richardson, a Cumbrian stonemason, using hornfel stones he collected from a quarry on Skiddaw. Hornfels are produced when the extreme heat of volcanic lava bakes the surrounding rock, metamorphosing it into a fine-grained, crystalline form. The name derives from the German meaning horn-stone, a reference to its tough and durable nature, reminiscent of animal horns. When struck with wooden mallets, hornfels produce a musical sound, superior in tone to the slates more commonly used in lithopones. 

It took Richardson thirteen years to diligently collect, shape, and assemble his lithophone. It was not the first Lakeland example: in 1785, Peter Crosthwaite, founder of the Crosthwaite museum, a forerunner of Keswick museum, collected a set of “musical stones” from the sand beds of the River Greta. Thirty years later, a Mr Todhunter of Kendal assembled a second set. But Richardson’s was the most impressive, spanning a full eight octaves. The work consumed him and plunged his family into poverty. From 1837, however, the finished Rock Band would start to bring Richardson and his sons significant renown as musicians, as they toured Britain and the Continent. By 1848, the lithophone had been augmented with steel plates and Swiss bells, and one year later, the Richardsons would perform selections from Rossini and Handel for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.

Joseph Richardson died in 1855, but the Rock Band’s appeal endured, hence the advert for a concert at the Victoria Hall, which appeared in an 1891 edition of the English Lakes Visitor. The lithophone is now housed at Keswick Museum. In recent years, Brian Dewan and Jamie Barnes, transported it to the shore of Coniston Water to perform a new work, composed by Dewan, for the Coniston Water Festival. The performance was broadcast on the radio and repeated in 2006 in both Leeds and Liverpool. In January of that year, BBC Radio 4 aired a documentary about the stones, titled, “The World’s First Rock Band”, presented by percussionist, Evelyn Glennie.

Now, the door is open for Richardson’s sounds to grace cutting edge electronica, courtesy of Virtual instrument developers, Soniccouture, who have sampled the lithophone to create a sound library for electronic music composers. Their website offers some intriguing demo pieces: the tones are transporting, beautiful and haunting: they evoke wide open spaces, air, light, spiritual exuberance; the lonely majesty of mountain landscapes. As Soniccouture themselves note, they sound ancient, far older than the lithophone itself—but of course, the lithophone was built from little strips of Skiddaw, and Skiddaw is 500 million years old.

Skiddaw – The Treeless Forest

Lonely is perhaps not a word anyone making the steep climb over Jenkin Hill on a weekend would associate with Skiddaw. But there is more than one way up this mountain, and a long trek along its eastern flank, following a section of the Cumbria Way, to tackle it from the north via Bakestall, is one you’re much more likely to have to yourself.

I leave the small Gale Road parking area at 7:30 am (with Lakeland acting as post lockdown magnet, I bagged the last space). I start up the Tourist Route toward the Hawell memorial, a fine Celtic cross, commemorating three members of a shepherding family respected for their Herdwicks which grazed these slopes. The inscription includes a verse by National Trust founder, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley:

“Great Shepherd of thy Heavenly Flock
These men have left our hill
Their feet were on the living rock
Oh guide and bless them still.”

Shortly before the cross, the Cumbria Way parts company with the beaten track to cross a beck and skirt the toe of Lonscale Fell. It soon rounds the foot and heads along the eastern flank, looking down on Glenderaterra Beck, which cuts a narrow gorge between the Skiddaw massif and Blencathra. The sky is clear, the September sun making good on its promise of an Indian summer, but the seasons are starting to turn: the Green Man’s face is already ruddy with the first blushes of Autumn, russetting large swathes of bracken and turning the heather brown. These treeless slopes are known as Skiddaw Forest. Wainwright describes it as “a place incredibly wild and desolate and bare, its loneliness accentuated by the solitary dwellings of Skiddaw House, yet strongly appealing and, in certain lights, often strangely beautiful”. It is a place of pyramids. Ahead, over the yellowing shoulder of Burnt Horse ridge, Great Calva rises like a shaded pencil impression of Giza’s great tomb. From the foot of the ridge, Lonscale Fell’s pointed eastern peak commands the rear view—a soaring mass of sculpted slate, nearly five times as high as Egypt’s man-made imitation.

A Cenotaph

Skiddaw’s mines and quarries yielded more than slate and musical hornfels. In the years following WW2, Harold Robinson of Threlkeld climbed Blencathra many times. On each occasion, he filled his pockets with pieces of white quartz from the lead mine where he worked. He used the stones to build a large cross on the Saddle as a memorial to his friend, Mr Straughan, who was killed in active service in 1942. Straughan had been the gamekeeper at Skiddaw House, perhaps England’s most secluded dwelling, now visible ahead, among a Spartan stand of trees.

Skiddaw House – England’s Loneliest Dwelling

Skiddaw House was built in 1829 as a shooting lodge for George Wyndham, Earl of Egremont.  The building was divided in two. The gamekeeper lived in one half and the shepherd in the other. It also had rooms for the Earl and his shooting parties. Wyndham’s descendants became the Lords Leconfield. One of these, George Henry Wyndham, the 3rd Baron Leconfield, resumed his military career (after a 19 year break) to fight in WW1. In 1919, he put part of his estate, Scafell Pike, in the custody of the National Trust in commemoration of those who died in the Great War. And so it is that two of Lakeland’s best known mountain memorials have links to this lonely hostel.

So sequestered is Skiddaw House that it caused a constitutional crisis in 1890. On September 6th of that year, the Westmorland Gazette published the following article:

“THE SHEPHERD OF SKIDDAW FOREST

A Constitutional Nut to Crack

The remote township of Skiddaw, in Cumberland, is the scene of a constitutional struggle. In Skiddaw, there is no church, no post office, no police station, and indeed no population save the solitary occupant of the only house of which the population boasts. It is by and on behalf of this individual that the struggle with the state is being carried on. He is the shepherd of what is known as Skiddaw Forest, although the term is used to designate a region that is destitute of anything that may be called a tree. Being neither a pauper, a criminal, nor a lunatic, living in his tenement continuously, and at peace with himself, he claims the right of a British citizen to exercise the franchise. It is here that the difficulty has arisen. There are no overseers of Skiddaw to make out a voters’ list, and, further, there is no place of worship or public building whereon to post it. Overseers of adjoining townships decline to meddle in the matter and the result is deadlock. In ordinary circumstances a refusal to pay taxes would probably elicit from some quarter or another some ingenious solution of the difficulty. But unfortunately the rates appear to be paid by the landlord’s agent to the Cockermouth Union, so that our luckless shepherd makes no direct payment that might be witheld. In the old days had he been possessed of resources, not to say local influence with himself, he might have bribed himself, voted for himself, and unanimously lent himself to sit in Parliament for Skiddaw. But this royal road was long ago closed for repairs, and has never been reopened. Under these circumstances, it is not easy to see what the shepherd of Skiddaw Forest is to do. If he were to get himself appointed as a local census clerk, to count himself next April, then his house, where this operation would be conducted, might perhaps at a stretch be called a populous place within the meaning of the Act. But even then there would be no overseer to post his name upon it, and he would have to remain without the privilege and the dignity of the franchise unless he could be made an overseer as well. It is to be feared that the noble British Constitution has been framed in ignorance of the needs of Skiddaw.”

Demoralization and Neglect – a Tragic Death

In 1863, Skiddaw House made the news for an altogether sadder reason. On August 6^th, the Whitehaven News carried a story about “The shocking death of a boy from intoxicating liquor”. Lord Leconfield’s gamekeeper, Donald Grant, had hosted a shepherds’ meet at which the drink flowed a little too freely. Grant’s 10 year old son, Peter, was cross-examined at the inquest, and told how the shepherds had encouraged him and his friend, Thomas Hodgson, to drink rum and gin. The shepherds denied this, although one did admit to giving Hodgson gin and water when he asked for it. The quantity Thomas imbibed proved fatal, and the examining doctor had “no hesitation in saying that he died from the effects of drinking intoxicating liquors producing congestion on the brain”. The shepherds were spared manslaughter charges because the Coroner was unable to trust any of the evidence—all present (including little Peter) had been drinking, so their recollections were unreliable. The paper reported the Coroner’s concluding remarks: “(he said) it was a sad thing to think that boys of such tender years should be allowed to take drink, and he thought it showed that those who had given the drink to the boys were in a sad state of demoralization… They had killed the deceased through sheer neglect”.

The Hostel

In 1957, the Leconfield estate was broken up and Skiddaw House sold to a local farmer. Shepherd, Pearson Dalton, stayed on to work for the owner and, for twelve years, lived in Skiddaw House alone (except for goats, a cat and five dogs). His residency earned him a rare human cameo in Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Northern Fells.

John Bothamley leased Skiddaw House in 1986. He renovated it, and it was run as a hostel by the YHA until 2002, after which, it fell into disrepair. It was rescued by a registered charity, the Skiddaw House Foundation, and reopened as independent hostel associated with YHA. In a recent episode of the excellent Countrystride podcast, former wardens, Martin Webster and Marie-Pierre Gaudez, talk to host Mark Richards about their many years in residence there, recalling operating by candlelight, even after installing a generator, and clearing snow from the beds before the roof was fixed. So strong was their attachment, Marie-Pierre becomes quite emotional in recalling their eventual, difficult decision to move on.

Watchtowers – Great Calva and Bakestall

Just past Skiddaw House, a wooden footbridge crosses the stripling River Caldew to the heather-clad flank of Great Calva, the purple of its summer pomp already faded to the chocolate brown of approaching winter.  Wainwright describes the heather on these lower slopes as “troublesome” and advises that burnt patches give the easiest passages, but with the gamekeepers long-gone, these are no longer to be found. The path soon peters out, and although we’re out of season for ground-nesting birds, my instinct not to disturb drives me to affect a gait straight from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks, taking long looping strides in order to land on sparse patches of bare earth. It makes for a tiring ascent, and, nearing the top, the reappearance of a path is a cause for celebration.

Wainwright describes Great Calva as “the watchtower of Skiddaw Forest”, and draws attention to its pre-eminent position at the head of a huge geological fault, which creates a trough through Lakeland, running from the foot of the fell, down the Glenderaterra Valley, through St John’s in the Vale, over Dunmail Raise to cradle the waters of Grasmere, Rydal Water and Windermere.  Although AW is somewhat sniffy about it, the northern aspect is inspiring too: it looks out over Binsey, the last bastion of Lakeland, to the Solway Firth and to Scotland. What arrests my eye, however, is the western view of Skiddaw itself. The mountain presents a benign face here, trading grassy slopes for the steep scree and craggy drama it displays to the west; but there is one notable exception: the scooped bowl of Dead Crags, delineating the massif’s northern outpost, Bakestall. Here, it is if the ground has been gauged away leaving sheer cliffs of chiselled granite, buttressed with mighty towers of imposing rock and riven with dark plunging gullies.  This is where I head, descending Great Calva’s western slope, to the cascading glory of Dash Falls, and from there, on up the stiff pull of Birkett Edge, which skirts the southern rim of the bowl, affording magnificent views of the crags. The top of Bakestall is another fine viewpoint for the flatlands beyond the fells, but today it is proving a little too popular with a swarm of flying ants. I retreat a long the ridge, gently climbing to the summit of Skiddaw itself.

Summit Smoke

Today, Lakeland’s fourth highest top is basking in sunshine, but on a June evening in 1887, this and several surrounding summits were ablaze with beacons. In the last pomp of empire, and somewhat against the wishes of the Queen herself, Britain pulled out all the stops to celebrate Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of Crosthwaite, passionate conservationist, poet, and eulogiser of Skiddaw shepherds, was also a big fan of bonfires. The jubilee gave him ample excuse to organise a relay of fell-top bonfires and fireworks with Skiddaw at its centre.  The Annadale Observer published this eye-witness account:

“As I got on top of Skiddaw, the last vestige of a smoke-wreath cloud curled away from the top of Pillar Mountain, and far and wide the hills of Cumberland and Westmoreland stood, grey purple, against an almost cloudless sky. The Solway burnt like a flood of gold flushed with rose, for an after-glow of great beauty lay upon the waters… Then I saw torch touch the pile, and in an instant the whole mass leapt into a flame and flung out a great flag of fiery vapour, a perfect sheet of rich gold light that followed just behind a cloud of pitchy black smoke. At the same moment I heard the National Anthem pealing round the fire, and learned afterwards that it was heard in the Crosthwaite valley far below, a weird aerial music that made the folk wonder. I ran towards the top. Ere I had got down the incline and up the rise the Low Man had been enkindled. Grisedale Pike had fired three rockets and was ablaze; Swinside stood out like a pillar of flame, and Catbells was gloriously alight. Far up Borrowdale two more beacons glared; one shone above Manisty on Maiden Moor. Blencathra leapt up into golden tongues of fire, and as I gazed what seemed like a flood of molten lava poured down Catbells towards Newlands, and gleamed in streams of liquid gold; a pretty kettle of tar upset there I suspect.”

For the second time in her reign, music born of Skiddaw had honoured Queen Victoria.

Further Reading/Listening

Countrystride Skiddaw House episode:

https://www.countrystride.co.uk/single-post/countrystride-51-skiddaw-house-loneliest-house-in-england

Soniccouture Skiddaw Stones Sound Library demos:

https://www.soniccouture.com/en/products/35-rare-and-unique/g4-the-skiddaw-stones/

More on the history of Skiddaw House from their own website:

https://www.skiddawhouse.co.uk/history

Evelyn Glennie gets involved with building a successor to Richardson’s lithophone

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/aug/18/stone-xylophone-evelyn-glennie

Information on Harold Robinson and the Blencathra cross comes from The English Lakes – Tales from History, Legend and Folklore by David Ramshaw (P3 Publications, Carlisle, 1996)