CONCANGIOS. Water-crook.
Through a very hard road, but not an unpleasant country, we entered Westmorland. The river Can is very rapid, and full of cataracts, as running chiefly over the rock, and having a great descent. It is strange that the salmon coming up these rivers from the sea to lay their spawn, when obstructed by these places, leap over them with a surprizing force; and there they lie in wait to catch them with nets laid on the upper edge. A mile below Kendal this river takes a circling course, and makes a sort of peninsula, called Water-crook, where I found the old city: its name signifies the valley upon the water Can. It is a fine large valley, and very pleasant. Either with a cut, or by nature, the river ran quite round the city. Mr. Tho. Guy is the possessor of it. As soon as I came into the yard, I saw a large altar placed by some steps: I believe it dedicate to Bacchus, because of grapes and festoons on it: it is above three foot high: the festoons are on three sides; the back is plain. All the house and out-houses are built of Roman stone, dug up in the old city. The top of an altar is put into a corner of that stable where the altar stands. At the end of the house is a large statue or bas relief of Cupid: the gavel end fell down some time ago, and knocked off his head and arms; but it is well cut. In the garden, at the end of an out-house, is a very long inscription on a stone. He showed me a little portable altar, but 7-1/4 Roman inches high: the dedicatory inscription is obliterated by using it as a whet-stone; but it is prettily adorned, has two scrolls and the discus at top. Innumerable antiquities have been found here; great arches and ruins of buildings: they never plough but somewhat is found. The father of Mr. Guy saved many, which are since lost: this gentleman found many brass, silver, and gold coins here; but all are dispersed, except a large brass Faustina: he showed me an intaglia of Mercury set in gold for a ring: another with three faces to a head; the foremost, Mars with a helmet on; a woman’s face on each side: a paste of a light onyx colour, with a head: a sepulchral lamp. He told me of a large brass urn with bones in it found here: it had two ears to it, and was used forty years ago, in the family, as a kettle, and is now at his sister’s, Mrs. Herring, at Wall near Hexam.
The town of Kendal is very large, lying under a great hill to the west; the river to the east. Upon the rise of the hill is a place called Castle-low hill, which has been a castle raised in Saxon times, fortified with a ditch where not naturally steep, and a keep or artificial mount; a sorry way of encampment: the keep is narrow at top, and cannot contain above forty people: they are much too high to offend an enemy, and have no ground to defend. Above this are great scars, or mountains, of a hard kind of stone like porphyry, that will yield to no tool: they break it up in small shivers, for building, by the force of a heavy gaveloc and sledge-hammer. I saw several pretty springs running out of little hollows of the rock, especially toward the upper part; and most of the strata thereabouts drip continually: the workmen told me, that those cracks where the springs are go a great length into the mountain; and that the strata all round the hill lie declining with the side of the hill; that some strata are soft and porous, which lets the water strain through them; whilst others by their hardness stop it, and turn it all into the cracks and fissures; that these springs run very sparingly in dry weather: this shows that they are made only of the rain and dews falling upon the hill, and collected into these channels, which being generally perpetual, and in sufficient quantity one time with another, render the springs so. There is a spring on the top of Penigent hill, the highest in these parts. In this country vast stones like the grey weathers in Wiltshire, lie upon the surface, and by the sides of the hills, which are no part of the quarry, being of a different stone. On the other side of the town eastward, and over the river, is Kendal castle; a large stone building on a solitary apex, but not extraordinary high: it is fenced with a wall and ditch: they report that queen Catharine Parr was born here. This town has been built mostly with pent-houses and galleries over them all along the streets, somewhat like Chester. The carts or carriages of this country are small machines, with two wheels each, made of three pieces of timber, fastened to a cross axle-tree, which turns with the wheels: the cart is laid upon these wheels pro tempore, kept from slipping off the axle-tree by two pins underneath: they are drawn by one horse.[1] They say these carriages, of a light burthen and with one horse, answer better in this stony country than heavier, which are shook to pieces presently: hence Nature makes the horses of this country small in bulk. Here is an anchorite’s house with a very fine spring: near was a chapel of St. Mary, Abbot’s hall, and some other ruins of religious places. The church is a handsome and very large structure, consisting of five ailes: a good organ: several ancient chapels in it, with the tombs of the founders; one of Roos. The parishes of this country are generally of great extent, having several chapels of ease. This was, I believe, the county-town before Appleby, as rising immediately after the destruction of the Roman city. In the church is a monument of a judge, who died at the Assizes here in queen Elizabeth’s time.
The city of Concangios is much better situate than Kendal in several respects; because good land for a considerable way quite round it, as far as the valley reaches: the river, which may well be called spumosus, incompasses it like a horse-shoe: it is deeper, broader, and smoother, here than any where else: it is indeed a place incomparably well chosen for a small city: the ground is sufficiently high, even in floods; but floods render it an island, for it is low ground before the entrance, but not marshy. Across the entrance there are plain marks of a ditch north of the house; and Mr. Guy told me there was a wall all along, an apparent rampire on the inside of it; that his father dug up vast quantities of stone there: he showed me a place in the city, where a hypocaust was found, all arched with Roman brick, and paved with square bricks; that they covered it up again without demolishing it. I saw a brass Antoninus, found here; and a stone, somewhat like the capital of a small pillar, hexangular. Beyond the low ground which lies before the entrance of the city, is a Roman tumulus. Upon a slope of high ground, and in a pasture behind it, is another very large hill, partly natural, and partly artificial, by cutting away the roots of it, and rendering it more steep, as it appeared to me: there is an ash-tree planted on it: when it was ploughed, they discovered stones with mortar on them. I conjecture there was a building upon it; probably an outguard, or lodge, for the soldiers that stood upon the watch: for here was placed the numerus vigilum in the Notitia; and this place takes in a larger view than the city, as being higher. The city contains about 14 acres of ground, or more: it consists of two closes, one of twelve acres, another of four; but the fortified part took not in intirely the twelve acres: the ditch goes along the partition-fence visibly enough; the remainder was suburbs to the castle, which was 500 foot one way, 600 another. The inscription I spoke of at the end of the barn has not yet been described. Thus Mr. Gale read it.
Publius Ælius Publii filius Sergio Basso Decurioni legionis vicesimæ valeriæ Victricis vixit annos et privatus libertis et herm miles emeritus legionis sextæ victricis fecerunt. Si quis sepulchro alium mortuum intulerit mulctam ferat fisco Dominorum nostrorum, &c.
A great woollen manufactory at Kendal, especially of such stuffs as are proper for hangings. Winander meer, near here, is ten miles long, remarkable for a fish called char, which they pot, and send all over the kingdom. This country is exceedingly obnoxious to rain, and some of the hill-tops on one side or other are perpetually covered with clouds: I imagine the vast solidity of the stone that composed them attracts the clouds big with water at some considerable distance, and then the winds break and dash them into rain. This is another furtherance of hills being supplied with fountains.
The city of Concangios is placed on the highest plot of the Chersonese: the four acres westward are more meadow-like, but far from low. A great ridge of hills runs north and south-eastward of this place, called Hag-fell, of a fine downy nature, and good riding on the southern point of it. About a mile and half off the city was the castrum exploratorum, or watch-tower: it is a mere tip of very high ground, like a narrow tongue, and very steep, especially side ways: it is called Castle-steed: it is sixty foot broad, 120 long: the sides being thus steep needed no ditch; but on the south end are two ditches, on the north three: I suppose it was walled about: it is of the common cliff of the country; and in one place the ditch has been cut through the rock. At the bottom of this hill is a large spring, which immediately falls into a cavity of the earth again, and so I suppose rises lower in another place. From hence is a fine prospect to the mouths of the rivers Can and Lune, and all over this coast. The Westmorland hills raise themselves into a new and more romantic appearance than before, and the place well answered the purpose of an espial.
About a mile north of Kendal is a cave in the rock near a wood, called Hells-fell Nab, or the Fairy-hole: they talk of organs, pillars, flitches of bacon, and the like matters here, as at Poole’s Hole in Derbyshire.