The "minister" so clearly obnoxious to the registrar may have been a visitor to the valley.
When a stranger entered the church in 1827 and asked the clerk if there were any Dissenters in the neighbourhood, he was told that there were none nearer than Keswick, where were some who called themselves Presbyterians; and of these the clerk professed so little knowledge that he hazarded the suggestion that they were a kind of "papishes." The clerk aforesaid was old George Mackereth,[193] forgetful alike of the Colthouse Meeting-House and the small Baptist Chapel at Hawkshead Hill, built in 1678? For about the first clustered a few families who clung to the faith of their fathers; though the latter (of which little seems to be known) may have dropped out of use.
Dissent had never existed in Ambleside. The men of that town, who managed the affairs of their chapel, had no real leanings towards it, and the Restoration found them all churchmen again. The only man of the town-division who could be taxed as a non-communicant in 1675 was Roger Borwick, and he was a disreputable inn-keeper at Miller Bridge, a Roman Catholic who had once been a personal servant of the ill-fated heir of Squire John Fleming.
The Little Bell
Recast at the Expence of Mrs Dorothy Knott, 1809 T. Mears & Son of London Fecit