The Good, The Sad, and the Crafty

As I follow the River Kent to its source in the rugged wilderness of Hall Cove, high in the fells that ring Kentmere Head, I discover old tales of tragedy and criminal cunning.

Crag Quarter

Primeval boulders slumber like fossilised dinosaurs, uprooted by ice ages to litter irregular pastures. Here and there, they combine in the neat alignment of dry stone walls, scavenging gateposts from green slate, before reverting back into tumbledown disarray. Higgledy piggledy sheep walks are green with succulent grass, plumped with late summer rain, and hemmed with rowan trees, resplendent with berries—vibrant bunches of scarlet against the ordered symmetry of pinnate leaves. As Kentmere’s Green Quarter gives way to its Crag Quarter, Calfhowe Crag stands like an rough-hewn dome, a lumpen tower of ancient stone toward which everything appears to lead. On another day, the crag might be revealed as a mere foot soldier in the massed ranks of rock that rise to the heady heights of Yoke, but today, low cloud conspires to veil its overlord, shrinking the world and crowning Calfhowe Crag king.

Calfhowe Crag, Cowsty Crag, Ewe Crag, Goat House Scar, Rams Slack—a mountain landscape named for the animal husbandry conducted in its shadow. Yet for one Kentmere farmer’s son and promising poet, the relationship ran deeper. The fate of Charles Williams was foretold by a boulder.

The Poet of Kentmere

At the very hour the boy was born, a large rock dislodged itself from Wallow Crag, in neighbouring Mardale, and rolled down the slope to submerge itself in Haweswater. Those versed in science might explain such happenings as the effects of frost and thaw, but to the old women of Kentmere, it was a portent. An ill omen. The boy was born to drown.

In proud defiance of such superstition, Charles grew into a fine youth, healthy of body and enquiring of mind, spending much of his free time roaming the valley and engaging in scientific experiment—diverting the course of a stream to make a mini-waterworks, constructing a windmill from scavenged stone and timber. But all such pursuits were rapidly abandoned the day he rescued Maria from an marauding bull. Snatching an umbrella from the girl’s hand, Charles opened it in the animal’s face, stopping the bull in its tracks and giving it cause to change course. 

Maria had been a childhood friend, but that afternoon, as he walked her home, Charles looked at Maria with fresh eyes—sixteen-year-old eyes—and something within him stirred. The attraction proved mutual and they began spending much time together. The upswell of emotion bubbling inside the lad first found expression through his pen, and he scribbled a succession of promising love poems. Happily, when he eventually plucked up the courage to profess his feelings to her face, Maria bashfully agreed to become his wife, just as soon as she turned twenty-one.

Sadly, it seems that boulders don’t dislodge from Wallow Crag to presage marital bliss. As Maria entered her twenty first year, she was struck down by a strange illness that confounded her doctors. Perpetually at her bedside, eager to see signs of improvement where there were none, Charles was powerless to stop the life draining from her. When she died, all prospect of his own happiness died with her.

His poetry became darker and more profound. Only the beauty of the Kentmere landscape afforded any sort of relief: 

“I seem a moment to have lost
The sense of former pain;
As if my peace had ne’er been crost,
Or joy could spring again.”

…but the escape was ever fleeting: 

“But ah! ‘it’s there!—the pang is there;
Maria breathes no more!
So fond, so constant, kind, and fair,
Her reign of love is o’er. ”

His brooding moods would birth the blackest notions:

“I feel the cold night’s gathering gloom
Infect my throbbing breast
It tells me that the friendly tomb
Alone can give me rest.”

It was Charles’s custom to return from his ramblings before dark, so when he failed to show one evening at dusk, his parents panicked. Friends and neighbours formed search parties. The stricken youth had been spotted on Harter Fell, earlier in the afternoon, so their efforts extended into Mardale, where their worst fears were confirmed. Charles was found drowned in Haweswater, right at the foot of Wallow Crag.

Reservoir Dogs

For a short while, I handrail the River Kent. In years past, I have waded its estuary on the mudflats of Morecambe Bay; and I have often meandered along its banks in Kendal, before the opulent Georgian splendour of Abbot Hall; but today, I will follow its course up into the rugged bowl of Hall Cove where it springs into life. First, I must leave its bank and follow a footpath across these stone strewn pastures to the old reservoir road.

The reservoir was built in 1846 to provide a steady water supply to the woollen mills, paper mills, gunpowder mills, and flour mills further down the valley. With the coming of the railways and the ready availability of coal, it’s usefulness was quickly superseded. Eventually, the James Cropper paper mill became the sole owner. The mill still maintains the reservoir even though it no longer uses the water.

Beyond the farm at Hartrigg, the metalled  road becomes a footpath, and nearer to the reservoir itself, the landscape bears the scars of old industry, the chiselled entrance to a quarry emerging from the mist that hides the majestic heights of Ill Bell. Heaps of spoil surround the old reservoir cottage and the barracks, built to house quarry workers. By 1900, there were eight working quarries in the valley, with only one hostelry in which the quarrymen could slake their thirst. The scenes of rowdy drunkenness outside the Lowbridge Inn became so notorious that Kendal magistrates refused to renew its license, and the valley has been without a pub ever since. Both cottage and barracks are now bunkhouses under the collective management of the Kentmere Residential Centre. They cater for activity groups, but not for stag or hen parties, apparently. The moral quest for temperance persists, it seems.

The reservoir itself nestles at the head of the valley, surrounded by a horseshoe of high fells: Ill Bell, Froswick, Thornthwaite Crag, and Mardale Ill Bell. A wispy veil of cotton cloud hides their summits, leaving only their bracken-clad slopes sweeping upward into nothingness, a realm of ephemeral mystery like an Ancient Greek vision of Olympus. Only the spur of Lingmell End reveals its full extent, a stately pyramid of purple crag and yellow scrub, which casts a long shadowy reflection on the dark, lugubrious waters. The reservoir is filled with the waters of the Kent, whose nascent stream comes crashing down from the wilds of Hall Cove, lurking in the ethereal mists above.

Hall Cove—Source of the Kent

I circle the shore and pick up a sketchy path beside the infall, treading over boggy ground at first, but soon finding firmer footing on scrubby grass, a swathe of yellow-green, brightened occasionally by sparse sprigs of purple heather. As I ascend slowly towards the veil of chiffon cloud, the stream hisses and chatters. Grey boulders frequently break its flow, splitting its course into white cascades, plunging in parallel down rocky steps. Jets of white water collect in limpid pools, green or the iron-red of mineral ores.

I’ve not seen a soul since leaving Kentmere village, and the mist contrives to hide any sense of a wider world. It’s just me and the stream, climbing gently into a tranquil wilderness, now far removed from the signs of human industry. The fizz and swish of the water becomes a walking meditation, at once soothing and stimulating. Ahead, the thinning and whitening of the mist hints at the cloud lifting; slowly; at walking pace; as if with every contour I enter another chapter in the unraveling of a mystery.

Like a harbinger of autumn, a fallen sheaf of dead bracken forms a copper arch over a round boulder, green with moss and flanked with twin cascades—a natural work of art. I sense I’m being watched, and look up to see a cow, the colour of the red bracken, eyeing me with curiosity—unused to seeing humans, aside from the farmer, perhaps.

Beyond an old sheepfold, a craggy outcrop pushes me away from the water. The hiss amplifies into a crashing roar, and I sense a hidden waterfall.  I scramble over the top to peer down into a steep-sided bowl, into which the stream pours in a crashing torrent over a sheer wall of granite, rendered vivid green with moss.

Beyond the waterfall, I find myself in the rugged amphitheatre of Hall Cove. Here the Kent splits into five slender feeder streams. One descends from Thornthwaite Crag down a ravine which has gouged a dramatic course between the twin ramparts of Gavel Crag and Bleathwaite Crag. Two more fall from the steep wall of Bleathwaite Crag itself (one of these bears the distinction of being the river’s official source). Two more descend the grassy slope of Lingmell End, whose top is now clear of cloud. I opt to follow the second of these, ascending over rough pathless terrain, whose scrubby appearance belies the severity of the gradient. With aching calves, I reach the source of the stream—a subsidiary source of the Kent itself—and haul myself up to the ridge line. I walk along to the cairn at the end, and look down over the reservoir and the verdant pastures of the valley.

The Mock Tithe Commissioner

For centuries, farmers here, as everywhere, would have paid tithes to the church. Tithes were paid in kind as one tenth of all produce from the land: wheat, eggs, milk, timber and such like. With the dissolution of the monasteries and the enclosure acts, large tracts of land fell into private ownership. The landlords inherited the right to receive tithes, but to many, receiving payments in kind was an inconvenience. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 replaced tithes with monetary payments, known as corn-rent. Tithe commissioners were appointed to oversee the process, and they employed gangs of surveyors to carry out the unpopular work of determining who owed what to whom. The presence of tithe surveyors in Kentmere created an opportunity for one cunning and unscrupulous individual.

On the July 9th, 1836, The Kendal Mercury reported that a stranger in a striking moleskin coat had appeared at the inn in Staveley. After drinking his fill of ale and rum, he asked whether payment might be deferred until his return from Kentmere. Witnesses not privy to the exact exchange of words were surprised when the landlord agreed. En route to Kentmere, he made the same request at a Jerry shop. (Jerry shops were informal, and often disreputable, drinking dens, named for Jerry Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom—the original Tom and Jerry—a fictional pair, whose rakish exploits featured in a popular monthly journal). Here however, the reason for the stranger’s easy access to credit was discovered. He announced that he was none other than Mr Watson of Snow Hill, the Tithe Commissioner. He had no change, but would settle his bill after paying his surveyors.

When he chanced upon said surveyors, in a field further up the valley, he told a different story, however, claiming to be a fellow itinerant labourer, fresh from working on the railways. As he was yet to be paid for his travails, he wondered whether the surveyors could lend him a little money; but the men revealed they too were awaiting payment and were subsisting on the credit of Jonathan, a yeoman who was giving them bed and board.

Next, the man in the moleskin coat turned up at Jonathan’s house, once more introducing himself as Mr Watson, come to pay his surveyors, but unable to find anyone in the valley who could give him change for a note. Jonathan was said to be as “cunning as a Yankee”, but so frustrated was he at the inability of his lodgers to pay their bills, he fell over himself to lend the Tithe Commissioner half a crown.

That evening, when the surveyors returned, Jonathan demanded that they settle their account, declaring that he knew full well they had been paid, having met Mr Watson in person.

“Pooh!” said the Surveyer, “that wasn’t Mr. Watson but a poor broken-down fellow, begging for relief on his road.”

At this, “fresh light dawned upon Jonathan’s mind—the conviction went through his heart like a pistol bullet—he had been done.”

Arming himself with “a strong sapling of about two yards in length” and recruiting the assistance of his neighbour, Gilpin. He set off on the trail of the mock commissioner. On hearing that a stranger had been spotted heading over the Nan Bield Pass (that crosses between Lingmell End and Harter Fell, linking Kentmere with Mardale), the pair gave pursuit, arriving at Mardale’s Dun Bull Inn at about midnight.

When the landlord confirmed that a gentleman matching the description was indeed lodging there that night, Jonathan demanded, “then let us in; we want him; he is a rogue, a housebreaker, and a robber”

Once inside, it dawned on Jonathan that he had no warrant or power to take the imposter in to custody, but spying his moleskin jacket on a chair in front of the fire, he resolved to take the coat instead.

After fortifying themselves with gin and ale, the vigilantes arrived home at about 3 o’clock. To Jonathan’s surprise, he was roused the next morning by a constable at his door, accompanied by the mock commissioner. At this, the yeoman flew into a rage and insisted the constable apprehend the imposter, but it was not the imposter who was facing arrest. Indeed, the pretended Mr Watson remained “cool as a cucumber”:

“I borrowed half a crown of you, I admit—you leant it freely, and I will return it to you in time—then where is the reason, Sir, that you should come in the night and steal my clothes?”

To avoid custody and charges, Jonathan obeyed the constable’s orders and returned the coat, with the borrowed half crown still in its pocket. Left to brood over its loss, the hard fact that his lodgers’ bills remained outstanding, his own wasted nocturnal journey, and the realisation that he was now the laughing stock of his neighbours, Jonathan calculated the whole affair had cost him exactly six-and-eightpence—at the time, the going rate for an attorney.

Sources/Further Reading

For more on the history of the reservoir and the story of the quarrymen, magistrates, and the Lowbridge Inn, see A Brief History of Kentmere by Iain Johnston on the Kentmere.org website

https://kentmere.org/wp-content/uploads/A-brief-history-of-Kentmere.pdf

The story of Charles Williams, The Poet of Kentmere, comes from Wilson Armistead’s 1891 book, Tales and Legends of the English Lakes, London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co; Glasgow: Thomas D Morison; (reissued by Forgotten Books).

The story of the Mock Tithe Commissioner was reported in the Kendal Mercury on July 9th, 1836.