Lake country sketches

by H. D. Rawnsley

There was an old Norse ring about that word 'rake,' for the Icelanders still talk of their sheep 'rachan' just as our Cumberland shepherds do; when the sheep follow one after another along the mountain side, they are hereabouts said to be 'raking,' but though we were bent on a Norse chieftain's home we refused to ascend the Rake. It was very hot and sultry, and we preferred the shady woodland of Bassenthwaite 'parks,' and so drove forward. We passed the Vicarage house and the Bassenthwaite Church, crossed a small stream, and, turning sharply by a deserted chapel towards the village, drove by the village green, thence entering a kind of meadow road, were soon in shadow, and for more than a mile went, beneath bowery oak, and fragrant larch, and gleaming hazel, along this copse-lane sweet with wild woodruff and gay with lychnis, towards the hillside opposite the Dash, where stands Orthwaite or Overthwaite Hall. It is worth while turning for a backward gaze as we ascend the hill; Bassenthwaite and the fells that close round far Derwentwater look nowhere more beautiful than from here.

That little tarn on our left is not Overwater, but it has its history; one hundred sheep went on the ice one wintry day, broke through, and all were drowned. The current superstition is that the pike in that tarn are as large as donkeys; whether before or after the feast of plenty accorded by the mountain sheep is not told.

Here is Orthwaite or Allerthwaite Hall grim and grey, its little Elizabethan window mouldings, its diamond squares of glass, its quaint low-ceilinged dining room. There is a look of drear sadness and of pale sorrow about the quiet half-hall, half-farmstead, and there may well be, for its owner William George Browne, the traveller, went forth therefrom to explore Tartary and Bokhara in the year 1812, and being suspected by the Persian government of sinister design, was, under instruction from headquarters, taken captive beyond the Kizzil Ozan river, blindfolded and barbarously murdered. Poor Browne! he had better have stayed in sight of harmless Skiddaw, but his was the gipsy's mind, and though none knew quite why he journeyed, and his journeys in Africa, Egypt, and Syria show that he travelled more from love of wild roaming than for aught else, home for William George Browne had no attraction in its sound. His was the restless wanderer's heart.

Now we leave the carriage, and while it goes round to pick us up at Whitefield Cottage on the Uldale and Ireby road, we descend into the meadows and find ourselves gazing on a large square entrenchment, at the angles of which were once raised mounds, lying to the south-west of Overwater. No Roman camp this, for Romans did not place their camps in the bottoms, unless they had a secure look-out above them, or a fortified camp on a height near by; and Romans did not when they dug an entrenchment round their camp, throw the earth out to right and left and make an embankment either side their fosse, as it is plain was the case here; besides there is but one entrance to the camp, and that was not the Roman way. No, the camp we are looking upon was probably the kraal or stockaded farmstead of a Norse chieftain, any time between 874 and 950 A.D.

Its owner probably came up the Derwent with Ketel, son of Orme, with Sweyn and Honig or Hundhr, what time they harried Cumberland under Ingolf or Thorolf the Dane. For aught we know, he may have been tempted hither by some sudden surprise-peep he got of the Overwater tarn and neighbouring meadowland, from the heights of Skiddaw, the first time he clomb that double-fronted hill.

It is true that a Roman tripod kettle is said to have been discovered near, but the Romans were not the only nation on the earth that worked in bronze, and knew the advantage of putting legs to their kettles; and both in the museum of Copenhagen and Christiania such tripod kettles may be seen to-day that came from the hands of the Norsemen of old time.

As we gaze across the quiet meadow land to the north-east, we see the high raised hill, where it is more than probable that the Viking chieftains, who here had their steading, 'died into the ground,' as they expressed it, when the death hour came. At any rate that hill is called Latrigg, which may well mean the 'Hlad Rigg' or 'Ridge of the Dead,' and as at Keswick so here, the Vikings may have carried up their dead chieftains for their last long rest to yonder height. It is by some thought possible that the word Latrigg may come from Norse words that signify the 'Lair Ridge,' the ridge of the lair of wild beasts, and doubtless in those early days the farmer who built his stockade had cause to dread other wild beasts than such as now trouble the hen roosts beneath Skiddaw. Now on still nights the shepherd of Underskiddaw may hear the fox of Skiddaw calling across the waters of Bassenthwaite to the red-coated vixen at Barf, and hear her shrill bark answer to his cry, but then the wolf howled and the wild boar prowled, and there was need of stockade not only against man but against the creatures of the wild woodland.

We leave the meadow with its Viking memories, walk on to join our carriage at Whitefield Cottage, thence, driving along towards Uldale and Ireby, see, far off, the common of Ulph the Norseman that was often waked by John Peel's 'horn in the morning,' and, instead of descending into the valley that separates us from that long moor that stretches to Caldbeck, we turn sharply to the left, pass a lonely house of some pretension, and drive by a narrow lane through hedges covered with wild-rose; away to the west, upon surmounting the ridge, we suddenly come in sight of the littoral plain—all peacock green and blue, the Solway flashing in the distance—and the grey hills of bonnie Scotland beyond. We descend the hill and pull up at a lodge gate. "Snittle Garth," says the driver. The very name has a Scandinavian ring about it; we enter the Park and pull up at a pleasant-looking country house.

By courtesy of the owner we pass in front of the garden, gay with its flowers, and full of the sense and sweetness of an English country house. We can hardly gaze at the camp we have come to see, so fair and beautiful is the vision outstretched before us of Bassenthwaite laid in gleaming whiteness beneath the dark hills of Wythop and the purple vastness of Skiddaw, so exquisite the shadowy foldings of the blue hills that take the eye far up beyond the gates of Borrodale to Gimmer Crag, to Great-End and far Sea-fell. But when we look at the camp we have come to see we find ourselves standing on a high plateau, sheltered on north and east and west by rising ground. The site of the camp is rectangular, eighty-three feet by thirty-one; isolated by a trench with regular scarp and counter-scarp. This trench is twelve feet broad at the bottom, twenty feet at the top; the scarp and counter-scarp are each nine feet, and the depth is five feet. The work, to all appearance, is freshly done, and but for the fact that no pottery has been revealed, might well be work of Roman engineers. As we wonder at the quaint oblong island of green carved in the hill side, surrounded by its dry moat, we listen to what the sages say and archaeologists guess about its origin and intent.