Wainwright described the square mile between Tilberthwaite and Langdale as “one of the loveliest in Lakeland”. In the 1800’s it was home to a notorious bootlegger, famed for his ingenuity, audacity, and ability to outwit the authorities. I walk from Rhunestone Quarry, over Holme Fell, to Tarn Hows on the trail of Lanty Slee.
Mountain Dew
Over Little Langdale Tarn, Lingmoor extends a long flank, dressed in the earthy tones of winter scrub—ochre, umber, and maroon. Where its slopes fall to Blea Tarn, the shadowy Langdale Pikes rise like rough-hewn turrets, carved from the bedrock by elemental forces. To the northeast, low-lying cloud conspires to paint the curve of the Fairfield Horseshoe as the rim of a mighty volcano, plumes of white mist belching from its crater like ash and steam.
The illusion is fitting as these ancient hills were indeed spewed from the vent of a submarine volcano somewhere in the vicinity of the Scafells, then transported, submerged, compacted, pressured, exposed, and sculpted by the relentless effects of tectonic shifts, ice, and water over hundreds of millennia. As Ian Jackson explains so well in his book, Cumbria Rocks, it was this very journey that formed the rippling patterns which make Coniston green slate so alluring. They are the swirling imprint of tides and waves, the watermarks of the deep Ordovician ocean that once covered these hills.
Two centuries ago, quarrying here in Tilberthwaite was rife, excavating fellsides already peppered with copper mine levels, and creating the landscape that Wainwright described as “pierced and pitted with holes—caves, tunnels, shafts and excavations”. But these scars are not a blot. To quote Wainwright again: “Wetherlam is too vast and sturdy to be disfigured and weakened by man’s feeble scratchings… The square mile of territory between Tilberthwaite Gill and the Brathay is scenically one of the loveliest in Lakeland (in spite of the quarries) and surely one of the most interesting (because of the quarries)”.
Behind me, Rhunestone quarry on Betsy Crag has gouged a long gully in the fellside. After decades of disuse, nature is slowly reclaiming this cross-section, softening its splintered sides with speckles of lichen and sprouting foliage from its fissures. A grass walkway divides the gully into two distinct pits. The crumbled remains of buildings nestle beneath walls of stacked spoil, and a long flat slab provides the roof of an arch, the gateway to the higher reaches of the upper pit. But it’s this pit’s lower reaches that have drawn me here, for during a short spell in the mid 1800’s, they produced more than slate. I scramble down a grassy bank, and climb with care down a loose and shifting bed of slippery spoil, damp with morning dew. And I smile at the thought, because Morning Dew (or Mountain Dew) had another meaning here.
In the very bottom, lies a small opening, a cave entrance, crowned with mossy grass and overhung with the spindly branches of a rowan. It’s pitch dark inside, but torchlight reveals a sunken floor submerged in emerald water. In times gone-by, any water collected here would have been distilled into something altogether more potent, for in the tight confines of this cave, Lanty Slee made Mountain Dew.
Lanty Slee was a notorious bootlegger, and Mountain Dew or Morning Dew was slang for his whiskey—although to place an order you supposedly had to enquire whether he’d had a good crop of “tatties” (potatoes). He started operating in a small way in the early 1820’s, and by 1840, he was producing 400 to 500 gallons a year and supplying a good many residents of the Langdale, Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, and Colwith area—much to the consternation of the excise men whose duty it was to shut him down. To evade their clutches, his whiskey-still was constantly on the move, and several quarries and cottages in the area claim to have hosted it for a while.
Tee-total in Tilberthwaite
Indeed, last year as I was returning from a fell walk and approaching one such cottage, a scene reminiscent of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner unfolded—a gentleman with a “long grey beard and glittering eye” stopped me with a quizzical expression and engaged me in conversation. His was not a dark story of superstition and ancient curses, however, he was extremely convivial and excited to know which peaks I had visited. As a former fellwalker and quarryman, he was full of warm nostalgia for the higher ground, and when I admired his cottage, the conversation got really intriguing.
“Oh, I’ve had those history types round,” he said. “They reckon it’s where Lanty Slee had one of his stills. See those steps over there. There were pipes and all sorts under there, and the floor’s been concreted, but you can tell it’s moved. I’d love to know what used to be down there.”
In 1841, a similar cottage gave up its secret. On the 2nd October, the Kendal Mercury reported:
“On Tuesday last the Exciseman, having received information of a still being at work, proceeded with the Hawkshead police to a lonely cottage at Tilberthwaite, five miles from Hawkshead, the residence of Lancelot Slee to search for a hidden store, and after a careful examination they discovered the place of the works in a vault excavated under the stable, the entrance to which was by a trap-door at the head of the stall, under the horse’s fore feet.
The stall was kept well filled with straw, and if Lanty had occasion to go in or come out, he had nothing to do but to call the horse by name, and repeat the necessary word, and the docile animal would instantly stand off, or rise up, for the free ingress or egress of his master. The flue of the boiler was ingeniously carried underground into the chimney of the cottage.”
According to the Westmorland Gazette:
“All the traps were hoisted off to Ambleside, whiskey and all; and it is supposed that there were some of the strongest spirits that ever were made, for those that only smelled were sent half sensover. It is said that a Tee-total Society is going to be commenced by the mountaineers, for they say that they can be as good temperance chaps as any when Lanty’s whiskey is done, and he must make no more.”
Whatever they told the reporter, the dalesmen had other ideas. When the seizure of another Lanty’s stills made the papers, twelve years later, The Gazette’s Sawrey correspondent recalled what had happened previously: “A few years ago, when the worm and the still had been taken, and were lodged at Ambleside, a party of dalesmen went by night, broke into the warehouse that contained the apparatus, and, on the proprietor returning from a six month’s sojourn at the tread-mill, he was presented with his much-loved and valuable engines.” Another report suggests this pattern of events had happened at least three times before.
Hodge Close and Holme Fell
From Rhunestone quarry, I double back to the Tilberthwaite/Langdale track and take the footpath that skirts Moss Rigg Wood, detouring into the trees to take a look at Moss Rigg quarry. This is the rumoured location of another of Lanty’s stills. Great walls of chiselled slate rise like cubist sculptures from a deep pit lined with spoil. A screen of garnet and ginger twig—larch and silver birch—softens the angular stone, as nature, here too, reclaims what’s hers.
Beyond the wood, the path brings me to Slater bridge over the Brathay, which Wainwright describes as “the most picturesque footbridge in Lakeland, a slender arch constructed of slate from the quarries and built to give the quarrymen a shorter access from their homes”.
Two thirds of a mile from Stang End, I come to Hodge Close, where old quarry buildings have been repurposed as holiday lets, the Old Riving Shed still named for its former function. Here quarried boulders, known as clog, would be split along lines of weakness, called bate, by rivers working with hammer and chisel.
A few yards further on, the ground drops away dramatically to Tilberthwaite’s most celebrated and visited quarry pit. Sheer walls of slate, iron-red with haematite, plunge to a deep pool of copper green. A charcoal grey tunnel opening sits just above the water line like a huge skeletal eye socket. This feature has given rise to the name, Skull Cave, for when photographed along with its reflection in the water and the image turned on its side, the scene resembles a skull. The resemblance doesn’t stop there. From inside the cave, another opening, less prominent from above, resembles a second eye socket, and the narrow pillar of rock dividing them becomes a nose, giving the impression of standing inside a giant stone skull. No doubt these macabre illusions helped in the cave’s selection for location filming in Netflix serial, The Witcher.
Beyond the pit, a path leads up through the trees, past disused reservoirs, to the flanks of Holme Fell, its lower contours feathered with auburn-branched larches and tinted ginger with rusted bracken; its craggier tops are dressed in chocolate waistcoats of winter heather, like the fleeces of Herdwick yearlings. Norman Nicholson once described the Yewdale Fells as “vicious crags, not very high, but fanged like a tiger”. The image extends to their next-door-neighbour. Holme Fell’s southern face plunges to Yewdale in a series of steep rocky drops: Raven Crag, Calf Crag, Long Crag, and Ivy Crag; but if these are the bared teeth of an alpha predator, the gentle approach from the north is a stroll up the soft nape of its neck. The top of its head is the finest of viewpoints for a landscape washed in the earthen tones of winter: clay red, ochre, russet and charcoal, and hatched grey with spoil. Coniston Water snakes southwestward like a sliver of molten silver; the Langdale Pikes are a slate-grey castle, conjured from Middle Earth; and the old reservoir sparkles like a sapphire amongst the scrub.
Herdwicks and Mrs Heelis
A scramble down the summit rocks leads to the subsidiary peak of Ivy Crag, and a descent to Yew Dale Tarn, nestled below the trees of Harry Guards Wood. I pass Yewdale Farmhouse, with its seventeenth century spinning gallery, used for drying Herdwick wool. The farm was bequeathed to the National Trust by Herdwick Breed Association President-Elect, Mrs Heelis, better-known beyond these parts as Beatrix Potter.
Across the road, a path climbs through the trees beside the crystal cascades of Tom Heights—a hypnotic dance of wood and waterfall. At the top is Tarn Hows, landscaped by the Marshall family in the 1800’s. Along with Yew Tree Farm, it was part of the Monk Coniston estate, which Beatrix Potter bought from the Marshalls on behalf of the National Trust. Once the Trust had raised sufficient funds, it purchased part of the estate from her, but kept her on as estate manager, which led to some colourful clashes with their land agent. Beatrix bequeathed them the remainder in her will. Today, Tarn Hows is one of Lakeland’s top attractions, but for all its serene waters and arboreal splendour, it’s not my primary destination this afternoon. I’m still on Lanty’s trail and a little further up the Cumbria Way lies High Arnside Tarn. Its waters are a draw for anglers, but around 1853, they may have had another use too.
Contraband in Colwith
That year, the seizure of another of Lanty’s stills again made the papers. On Saturday 26th of March, the Westmorland Gazette reported:
“A remarkable discovery of a cave containing an illicit still and all the appurtenances for the illegal manufacture of whiskey was made on the 12th inst. by Mr. Bowden, officer of inland revenue of this town. The locale of this discovery was on the farm of Mr. Lancelot Slee, High Arnside, Colwith, Little Langdale, about five miles from Ambleside and six from Coniston. The secluded character of the place, and the crafty concealment of the cave, renders it a matter of some wonder how Mr. Bowden contrived to discover and find access to it.
The cave has been evidently hollowed out entirely by labour. It is situated near the edge of a somewhat precipitous bank, the abrupt natural fall of one field of the farm into another. The access to it is not at the side, but perpendicularly through a hole at the surface, covered with a flat stone or flag. This aperture, which no doubt did the double duty of a chimney as well as a door, was covered carefully over with brackens. On descending it was found that the sides and floor and roof of the cave were all flagged, the flags of the roof overlapping each other quite in a clever workmanlike style, so as to throw off the water towards the bank above-mentioned. Strong posts and rafters made this subterranean retreat secure from any danger of falling in. The size of this underground apartment is about three or four yards long by two or three yards broad, and at the end where the contraband work was transacted a man could stand up-right. The mode by which that indispensable requisite, water, was supplied for the distilling process formed part of the ingenious adaptation of the place. A little mountain rivulet was contrived, by a small dam about twenty or thirty yards from the cave, to aid in the illicit production of ‘mountain dew’. When it was wanted the little stream found its way to the cave under a covering of turf and brackens, and having done its office this Alpheus of the whiskey-still sank underground and re-appeared about four or five yards from the cave like any ordinary drain. When not wanted for distilling a stone just shifted at the dam turned it off to another field, as though for the simple purpose of irrigation.”
Local historian, Phil Burrows has made it his quest to seek out the locations of Lanty’s stills, and with the help of the current residents of High Arnside Farm, he thinks he has found the spot where Mr. Bowden triumphantly uncovered this cave. Without a full archeological dig, he cannot prove it, but if he’s right, the stream that Lanty so cunningly diverted would have been an outflow from High Arnside Tarn.
In 1897, The Lakes Herald reported the passing of exciseman, Mr. D. Flattely, and reminisced about the cunning of the bootleggers he’d made a career of chasing. Chief among them was Lanty, who it was claimed could produce a bottle of his whiskey within 5 minutes, anywhere within a 20 mile radius of his home. Indeed, one magistrate was foolish enough to believe he’d got the better of Slee on this score:
“It is related that upon one occasion when Lanty had been in durance over night, and appeared in the justice room next morning, one of the magistrates—I think it was Dr. Davy—said to him, ‘I am told that you are able to furnish your friends with a glass of spirit at any time when desired, but I think we have broken the spell this time.’ Considerable was the merriment as Lanty produced a full bottle from his capacious coat pocket, and holding it up replies, ‘Mappen’ ye’r rang. Will ye hev a touch’.”
While the excisemen occasionally uncovered his stills, they never found where Lanty stashed his bottles. And despite his best efforts, neither has Phil Burrows. In a landscape so potted with holes, perhaps it’s not surprising, but maybe, just maybe, everyone has been looking in the wrong place.
Matters of the Spirit
In 1916, Jonathan Denwood and John Denwood published a book called Idylls of a North Countrie Fair, in which they documented, in dialect, a series of recollections, stories and conversations with colourful local characters at Cumbrian fairs. The 8th August edition of the Penrith Observer carried a review. The reviewer is a little sniffy at the coarseness of some of the language used, concluding, “The introduction of these words and phrases—there are many of them—mars the pleasure of the reader, and will not let him leave the book lying about for his women folk to read.” However, some of the sketches are so entertaining that he overcomes his prudish distaste:
“the best of them is the account of Lakeland smugglers… This purports to be the reproduction of a ‘crack’ Mr. J. M. Denwood had more than twenty years ago with an old resident of Little Langdale, who professed to know Lanty Slee, a noted smuggler of his time; at any rate he told some capital stories about him which are chronicled in most readable style.
Then there was Whisky Walker, a Borrowdale quarryman, who was an adept both at distilling whisky, in illicit fashion, and in disposing it. He is described as a man who was ‘weel behaved, weel larned, an’ far travelled.’
Then there was this little dialogue about one of the characters of Lakeland whose supposed merits have often been written about, and quite as frequently discounted:
“Was he [Whisky Walker] any relation to Wondeful Walker, the famous Wasdale priest, John!
Ah couldn’t tell ye that.
Did you know Wondeful Walker, John!
No, but Ah knew his dowter at was weddit on t’lanlword at Cunniston, an Ah’ve hard it said he was wonnerfal oald scrat, ‘at nivver did a turn for any of his neighbors widoot he was weel paid. He hed a laal kurk, a laal salary, an’ a big lot o’ barnes, but he mannished to seave a fortun ‘at when he deid com to mair nor his wages he’d iver eddled.
(I knew his daughter who was married to the landlord at Coniston, and I’ve heard it said that he was a wonderful old penny-pincher, that never did a turn for any of his neighbours without being well-paid for it. He had a little church, a little salary, and a big lot of children, but he managed to save such a fortune that when he died it came to more than all the wages he’d ever earned).
Did he aid and abet the smugglers, John!
Ah’ll nut say that, but t’ meast of t’ kurks in them days war used as hidin’ pleaces by t’ smugglers an’ whisky makkers. Ah know a family vault in a country kurkyard ‘at Lanty Slee an’ me hev sleeped in an’ hidden stuff in mair nor yance or twice, fra daybrek till t’ neet fell again.
(…most of the churches in those days were used as hiding places by the smugglers and whisky makers. I know a family vault in a churchyard that Lanty Slee and me have slept in and hidden stuff in more than once or twice, from daybreak to nightfall.)
What, beside coffins, John!
Aye, it t’ wick fwok we war flate on, nut t’ deid uns.
(Aye, it was the living folk we were wary of, not the dead ones.)
Did the priests connive at your doings!
Weel, they war niver agean takkin owt they could git for nowt, nor agean buyin’ a sup spirits on t’ cheap.”
Never let it be said that the 19th century clergymen of Borrowdale and Langdale were anything less than dedicated to all matters of the spirit!
Sources/Further Reading
All these newspaper reports are available through the British Newspaper Archive, but for those without a subscription, local history writer, Raymond Greenhow has done a fine job of collating all the detail and more into a chronological portrait of Lanty, rooted in fact.
https://scafellhike.blogspot.com/2020/06/lanty-slee-and-his-mountain-dew.html
Phil Burrows has made an intriguing and highly entertaining video about his quest to uncover all of Lanty Slee’s hideouts and his theories about High Arnside Tarn. Well worth a watch:
Ian Jackson’s book, Cumbria Rocks is a fascinating guide to the geology of Cumbria, written by an expert but aimed at walkers. Accessible and readable, it is packed full of brilliant photographs and profits go to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. It is published by Northern Heritage and available from their website:
The following modern day interview on sirgordonbennett.com gives fascinating details insights into to the process of riving slate: