CONISTON WATER (p. [294]).
Her Majesty Catherine Parr, who had the good fortune to escape the peril of burning as a heretic, and the loving attention which was fatal to other wives of Bluff Harry, was born on the banks of the Kent, in the castle whose ruins are a prominent object in the scenery of which Kendal is the centre. Wordsworth sketches it in happy terms:—
“A straggling burgh, of ancient charter proud,
And dignified by battlements and towers
Of a stern castle, mouldering on the brow
Of a green hill.”
Shakespeare and others refer to Kendal in connection with an industry established by the Flemings, who settled there under Edward III. They became famous for their woollens, and their special “line” was the cloth termed “Kendals” in trade parlance, and “Kendal-green” by the outlaws and their critics. This was the colour of the clothes worn by the “three misbegotten knaves” whose exploits upon Falstaff were denounced by Prince Henry as lies “gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” The foresters’ cloth made by the Flemings was deservedly popular; but cotton superseded woollens in the last century, and this in time gave place to other textile fabrics.
The GILPIN flows into the head of the long and crooked estuary a mile or so away from the mouth of the Kent river; and, further south, the viaduct carrying the railway to Grange crosses from Arnside. The isolated conical hill, Castle Head (or Castle Hill), is prettily brightened by foliage, and it is a significant survival of the old landmarks. The waves used to wash the base of this now high and dry eminence, for the plain traversed by the river WINSTER is mostly land reclaimed from the sea at different times, but most extensively for the construction of the railway. Holme Island is opposite and near the mouth of the Winster, and has not been inaptly described as a marine paradise made by the art and industry of man from a rude, isolated rock upon which previously nothing better than whins and brambles struggled for precarious roothold. The causeway which joins this beautiful little realm of a few acres to the mainland makes it an island only in name, but the name abides. Upon the Cartmel peninsula is the wooded domain of Holker Hall, which was the favourite autumnal resort of the late Duke of Devonshire.
The much more spacious peninsula of Furness—with Ulverston as its central town, the great docks and shipbuilding yards of Barrow marking modern progress, and the ruins of Furness Abbey pointing to a distant past—is divided from Cartmel by the estuary of the Leven. Leven from our point of consideration means Windermere and entrance to the unchanging beauty of Lakeland. The river Leven, however, is but a conclusion; in other words, it is the final link of the chain of water-pictures which have inspired many a poet; and to arrive at the first we must leave for a moment the sands of Morecambe Bay and take a new departure away beyond Grasmere, where the river ROTHAY (or Rotha) is formed by a congregation of murmuring becks or gills. One of the feeders of the Rothay comes from the tiny Codale Tarn and the larger Easedale Tarn, well known to tourists from the rattling little waterfall, Sourmilk Force. Codale lies pretty high in the world, rising to an altitude considerably over 2,000 feet. Easedale is a basin somewhat down hill, and is in these days much better known than when Wordsworth strolled beside its outpouring stream, and confessed to having composed thousands of verses in the solitude of the vale. The conspicuous headland of Helm Crag is an essential part of the scenery, and it is climbed for the sake of the view over Grasmere, Windermere, Esthwaite Tarn, Helvellyn, and Fairfield.