On the building now an infants’ school is the inscription “WIL. ROBINSON, CIVISLONDANNO 1670,” oddly spaced, and over the entrance to an alley the initials “R. E. L. 1697,” with sculptured shears above; probably a relic of the Langhorn family, cloth-merchants, whose earliest memento in this sort is the inscription “T. E. L. 1584.”
OLD DOORWAY, PENRITH.
XXIV
TO CARLISLE
The Boer War of 1899-1902 has left a wayside memorial at the approach to Penrith, and another, in the shape of a beautiful bronze statue, personifying Victory conferring honour upon the fallen, stands by Middlegate, as you leave for the north. “Scotland Road,” confronting you, indicates the not far distant Border, and then, at the “White Ox” inn, the ways divide: on the right the Old Carlisle Road, on the left the new. Very steep and rough goes the old road for one mile. Prince Charlie marched it, and has my heartfelt sympathy. After passing the “Inglewood” inn, which seems forlornly to wonder what has become of the traffic, it rejoins the existing highway—which runs along the traces of an ancient Roman road—at Stony Beck. To the left hand, near Plumpton station, are some traces of the Roman station of Voreda, known as Castlesteads, or Old Penrith. It has yielded many relics. Of the ancient Inglewood Forest, and the alarming wild boars that frequented it, there are no signs, and the road—as excellent a road as one would wish to find—goes with little incident away into Carlisle itself, the Petterill Brook on the left hand. The “Pack Horse” inn stands at the cross-road to Lazonby, where Salkeld toll-gate once stood, and then, two miles from High Hesket, on the left hand, rises the hill known suggestively as Thiefside: the thieves in question, no doubt, the old horse-thieves, cattle-raiders, and moss-trooping vagabonds of the Border. High Hesket is a tiny wayside village of the rough stone houses, generally whitewashed, that henceforward are the feature of the road, through Cumberland and into Dumfriesshire. The church of High Hesket, quite a humble little building, with bellcote in lieu of tower, stands, shamefaced in a coating of compo, by the way, near another dilapidated old “White Ox” inn, once busy with the traffic of a bygone day. The motor-cars disregard it, or merely halt for that last indignity to an inn, a pail of water wherewith to cool their engines. Dropping downhill to Low Hesket, the road comes quickly to Carleton and then, by the frowzy street of Botchergate, into the midst of Carlisle.
THIEFSIDE
CARLISLE
Carlisle was the first and stoutest bulwark gainst the northern foe, and maintained that character for close upon sixteen hundred years, from the remote time of the Roman dominion until the union of the kingdoms under James the First. The place, standing as it does upon a rocky bluff, overlooking the levels of the Solway and the Eden, was, it would almost seem, intended by Nature for this office, and here accordingly the Roman wall of Hadrian was traced, running from sea to sea, from Wallsend near Newcastle, to Carlisle, and ending on the Solway Firth at Bowness. Here they found an early Celtic settlement, “Caer Lywelydd”; but it was not the site of Carlisle, but rather Stanwix, its northern suburb, on the opposite bank of the Eden, that formed the Roman military station of Luguvallum, i.e. the “station on the wall.” What is now Carlisle was the civil settlement. When the Romans withdrew, to defend their decaying Empire nearer home, Luguvallum, peopled with half-breed Romano-British, who could not retire with them, made for years a hopeless fight with the savages out of Scotland on the one hand, and with the Saxons on the other. The Saxons, as almost everywhere else, prevailed in the end, and the town became in their tongue, “Caer Luel”; whence the transition to “Carlisle” is one of the easiest.