The Book of Coniston

by W. G. Collingwood

In Furness Fells long time they were
Boasting of their misdeed,
In more mischief contriving there
How they might yet proceed.

They seem to have been here until 1363 or later—a gang of brigands; which shows how little grip the abbey had so far laid upon its hinterland.

But gradually new farms were created and held by native families who acknowledged the abbot as their lord, and provided men for military duty or for various "boons," such as a day's work in harvest. These new farms are now known as "grounds." In Monk Coniston we find Rawlinson, Atkinson, Knipe, Bank, and Holme Grounds; and in the list of abbey "tenants" of 1532, "from the Ravenstie upwards" (the path from Dale Park by Ravencrag to Hawkshead), are Robert Atkyns, Robert Knype, Robert Bank, Rainold and Robert Holme. The Kirkbys of the Thwaite and the Pennys of Penny House also signed. Rawlinson is not on this list, but on that of 1509 giving the "tenants" "from the Ravenstie downwards," i. e., south part of High Furness. The lists do not state that, for example, the Bankes lived at Bank Ground, but prove that the families were then in the immediate neighbourhood.

At Bank Ground are the ruins of a house which was of some pretentions, judging from carved stones lying there. Local tradition makes it the site of a religious house, with a healing well. Dr. Gibson supplies a monk, "Father Brian," and tells a tradition of a witch living opposite (where the gondola station is) who came to the monk and confessed that she had sold herself to the devil. The monk set her a penance, and promised absolution. So when the devil came to claim his own she fled up Yewdale Beck, calling on "Father Brian and St. Herbert," and the devil's hoof stuck fast in the Bannockstone, a rock below the wooden bridge in Mr. George Fleming's field. The hole is there. Many rocks have such holes, from the weathering out of nodules. Mediævals may have called them devil's footprints; moderns often call them "cup-markings," in equal error.

It may be that a hermit lived where the Bankes afterwards built their homestead; it is possible that there was a "cell" for the abbey's Monk Coniston representative at the Waterhead. But the final list of abbey estates (1535), while mentioning Watsyde Parke, Lawson Parke, and Parkamore among granges and parks, puts "Watterhed et (Monk) Connyngston, £10-19-5-1/4" in the rental of tenants, as if the farm were then let to a tenant, as Hawkshead Hall was in 1512. The old Waterhead mansion, however, is known as Monk Coniston par excellence, and behind the modern Gothic front are ancient rooms with thick walls and massive beams, said by Mr. Marshall, the owner, to be part of the original monks' house.

There are few actual relics of this period in the way of archæological finds, so that the discovery of a tiny key of lead, with trefles on the ring, cast in a double mould, at Tent Cottage, where it was found under a stone, is worth remark. Mr. H. S. Cowper thought it a pilgrim's badge of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, and the site was one of the "grounds" of the abbey "tenants."

The list of "tenants" referred to is in an agreement of 1532 to prevent "improvement." They had "inclosed common pasture more largelie than they ought to doe, under the colour of one bargaine called Bounding of the pasture," and this sort of "improvement" was thenceforth forbidden. But five years later the abbey was dissolved, to the great harm and regret of the country side. Though a bad abbot did, for a time, give trouble by making deer parks, the abbey rule, on the whole, was good. Monk Coniston made slow but sure progress, and reached a point beyond which it did not advance for the next three hundred years.

What it was like when the abbey gave it up may be gathered from the report of Henry VIII.'s commissioners:—"There is moche wood growing in Furneysfelles in the mounteynes there, as Byrk, Holey, Asshe, Ellers, Lyng, lytell short Okes, and other Undrewood, but no Tymber of any valewe;" they mention also "Hasells." That there had been timber is proved by the massive oak beams of many a farmhouse and old hall, but the forests were all by this time cleared, and coppice had taken their place. "There is another yerely profytte comming and growing of the said woods, called Grenehewe, Bastyng, Bleching, bynding, making of Sadeltrees, Cartwheles, cuppes, disshes, and many other thynges wrought by Cowpers and Turners" (the beginning of well-known local industries) "with making of Coles (charcoal) and pannage of Hoggs."

After the dissolution the manor remained in the Crown until 1662, when Charles II. granted it to General Monk, Duke of Albemarle, whose descendant Elizabeth, daughter of George, Duke of Montague (whence the other name of Peel Island), married Henry, third Duke of Buccleugh, whose representative is now lord of the manor.

Monk Coniston remained separate from Church Coniston, both ecclesiastically and politically, until the Local Government Act of 1894 establishing Parish Councils gave occasion for the union of the two shores of the lake into one civil parish. But Monk Coniston is still in the ecclesiastical parish of Hawkshead.