By this time the fashion of visiting the lakes was coming in, enough to give employment to a guide—Creighton, whom Captain Budworth, about 1790, described as a self-taught scholar, claiming descent from a noble family in Scotland, and fond of bragging about the nobility he had taken up the fells. His son William was something of a genius; he was found here by John Southern of Soho drawing a map of the world with home-made mathematical instruments, but using them with immense skill. Mr. Southern took him into his drawing office, and young Creighton, by hard study, became a considerable linguist, astronomer, and cartographer.
To the old Black Bull, De Quincey came from Oxford in 1806 to see Wordsworth. Next year William Green, the artist and guide-book writer, was there, and went up Walna Scar with Robinson. Mrs. Robinson died in extreme old age, and afterwards Adam Bell was landlord (1849); in 1855, Edward Barrow.
The tourist business made more hotels necessary. In 1819 the old Waterhead Inn was called the New Inn as distinguished from the Black Bull. It stood at the head of the lake, where now is the plantation between the letter-box and the sign-post. In Holland's aquatint view (1792), a rambling farmhouse is shown there, but not called an inn. This became a favourite stopping place for tourists. John Ruskin's father was fond of it, and often stayed there alone or with his family. But John Ruskin, returning in 1867, wrote—"Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing in the boats, exists no more." The present hotel was built by Mr. Marshall in 1848-49, and tenanted by Mr. Atkinson, afterwards by Mr. and Mrs. Sly, and now by Mr. Joseph Tyson.
In 1849 the landlord of the Crown was Isaac Massicks. The Ship, in 1849, was kept by John Aitkin; the Rising Sun, in 1855, by James Harker. The old Half-penny Alehouse was pulled down in 1848 to build Lanehead.
To tell the story of the many "worthies" of Coniston, and to trace the fortunes of 'statesman families often wandering far into the world, and winning a fair share of renown, would need a volume to itself. One or two names we can hardly omit—such as Lieut. Oldfield of Haws Bank, who piloted the fleet into Copenhagen, and received his commission from Nelson for that deed; and Sailor Dixon, who fought under Howe on the first of June and under Duncan at Camperdown; twice taken prisoner, once retaken and once escaping from Dunkirk; implicated in the great mutiny of 1797, and yet acquitted by court martial, he lived at Coniston to the age of 71.
With these might be mentioned the soldier John Jackson, whose records of foreign service in the Crimea and elsewhere are still extant. His cousin, the late Roger Bownass, left many papers of interest to the student of Old Coniston. The first of his family came in 1710 from Little Langdale, and bought from William Fleming of Catbank for thirteen pounds odd the smith's shop at the place called Chapel Syke, i.e., where the Crown Inn bar is now; a stream rising above the Parsonage used to cross the road there, whence the name. He bought also the old Catbank Farmhouse and its land now covered with cottages. His son was about twelve or fourteen in 1745, and told the writer of the manuscript history of the family that he remembered taking a cartload of cannon balls, forged at the smithy, to Kendal for the Duke of Cumberland's army.
By 1773 a new site was needed for the smithy, and it was moved to Bridge End, where the Post Office now stands, on land bought from William Pennington of Kendal, wool comber, by George Bownass, son of the original blacksmith who by this time had died at the age of 87. Here a large business was carried on in quarry and edge tools, employing a number of men and apprentices; and profitable enough to enable the owner to buy many plots of land round about, to which his son William, who inherited the business, added other purchases, and still managed to save £100 a year. William Bownass died in 1818, and was the first person buried after the rebuilding of the church; of his seven children, Isaac, of Queen's College, Cambridge, became a successful schoolmaster, but died at the age of 28, and Roger, for 45 years postmaster at Coniston, died in 1889. Old George Bownass, the second of the name, died a year later than his son William; one of his daughters married a Coniston man, William Gelderd, who became the first mayor of Kendal after the passing of the new Municipal Act.
In the Christmas number, 1864, of the old Liverpool Porcupine is a short story by Dr. Gibson which, if we read Bownass for "Forness," Spedding for "Pedder," and Coniston for "Odinsmere," as the writer certainly intended, becomes a very vivid and interesting picture of Coniston folk and their surroundings at the beginning of the last century. It describes the smith "George Forness" as the well-to-do and industrious craftsman, in his busy workshop, surrounded by the village gossips at Candlemas. To him enters "old Matthew Pedder," bound next morning for Ulverston, to settle accounts. The smith entrusts him with money to pay his iron bill at Newlands, and save himself a journey. The next scene shows us a lane through the deerpark before dawn; Matthew on his half-broken mare attacked by a wastrel who has overheard the conversation, and now tries his unaccustomed hand at highway robbery. The mare throws him down, and Matthew gallops away believing his unknown assailant to be dead. Ten months later Matthew is called from his house in Tilberthwaite to the death-bed of Tom Bratton, and comes back subdued and silent. "What did he want wi' yee?" his family clamoured. "To ex me to forgive him." "Then it was him 'at tried to rob ye?" "Niver ye mind wha tried to rob me—neahbody did rob me!" "And what did ye say till him?" "I ext him to forgive me, and we yan forgev t'udder."
The slackness of anything like police in those days is illustrated by a document in possession of Mr. John Bell, which is an agreement dated 1791 on the part of leading villagers to form a sort of Trades Defence Association to preserve their property from "the Depredation of Highwaymen, Robbers, Housebreakers and other Offenders." It is signed by Edward Jackson, Isaac Tubman, Geo. Bownas (the smith), James Robinson, George Dixon, John Gelderd, David Kirkby, John Dawson, and by Thomas Dixon for Mr. John Armstrong, each of whom subscribed eighteen pence to found the association, and resolves in strictly legal form to stand by his neighbours in all manner of eventualities.
The smith's ledger, already quoted, gives also a number of farmer's names in 1770-74, which may be worth recording as a contribution to the history of Coniston folk. At Littlearrow lived John Fleming and Wm. Ion; at Spone How (Spoon Hall), Geo. Dixon; at Heathwaite, John Fleming; at Bowmanstead, T. Dixon and T. Parke; at Dixon Ground, John Ashburner; at Catbank, Roger Tyson; at Brow, T. Bainbridge; at Bove Beck, Wm. Dixon; at Far End, Wm. Parke; at Tarnhouse (Tarn Hows), John Johnson; at "Utree," Geo. Walker; at Oxenfell, Christopher Huertson; at Tilberthwaite, John Jackson; at Holme Ground, Wm. Jackson; at Lane End, Henry Dawson; at Waterhead, Anthony Sawrey; at Hollin Bank, John Suert; at Bank Ground, John Wilson; at Howhead, Eliz. Harrison; at Town End (Coniston Bank), Ed. Barrow and Wm. Edrington; at Lowsanparke (Lawson Park), Wm. Adinson. Other well-known names are Adam Bell (Black Bull), John Bell, John Geldart, T. Gasketh, G. Knott, David Kirkby, Matthew Spedding, T. and W. Towers. Many of these names are still represented in the neighbourhood, but the old 'statesman holdings have nearly all passed into alien hands.