The Book of Coniston

by W. G. Collingwood

The old Thwaite Cottage, below the house, was tenanted by the Gaskarths after the death of David Kirkby, Esq., the last of the former owners, in 1814; and then for many years it was the home of Miss Harriette S. Rigbye, daughter of Major E. W. Rigbye of Bank Ground, and an accomplished amateur of landscape painting. She died in 1894, aged 82, and is buried beside her friends the Beevers in Coniston Churchyard. The Thwaite Cottage was then let to Professor J. B. Cohen of the Leeds University, whose works on organic chemistry are well known.

The Waterhead estate was bought in the eighteenth century from the Thompsons by William Ford of Monk Coniston (see Mr. H. S. Cowper's History of Hawkshead, p. xvi.), and came to George Knott (d. 1784) by marriage with a Miss Ford. Mr. Knott was mentioned by Father West as having "made many beautiful improvements on his estate." In 1822 a view of the modern "Gothic" front of the house, now called Monk Coniston Hall, was given in the Lonsdale Magazine. The poet Wordsworth is said to have advised in the laying out of the gardens. From Mr. Michael Knott the place was bought by James Garth Marshall, Esq., M.P. for Leeds, whose son, Victor Marshall, Esq., J.P., still holds it.

Holywath was built by Mr. John Barratt, the manager of the mines in their prosperous days, and afterwards held by his daughter, the wife of Colonel Bousfield. Mr. William Barratt, his cousin, built Holly How on the site of an old cottage; it was afterwards tenanted by Mrs. Benson, and is now occupied by Mrs. Kennington. Mr. William Barratt's son, James W. H. Barratt, Esq., J.P., now lives at Holywath.

In 1848 Miss Creighton of Bank Ground built Lanehead, on the site of the old Half-penny Alehouse, for Dr. Bywater, who tenanted it for many years. Miss Creighton left the estate to the Rev. H. A. Starkie; the house was occupied later by Mrs. Melly, and since 1892 by W. G. Collingwood.

Coniston Bank replaces the old homestead of Townend. It was held in 1819 by Thomas North, Esq.; in 1849, by Henry Smith, Esq.; in 1855, by Wordsworth Smith, Esq.; subsequently by Major Benson Harrison, who let it for a time to George W. Goodison, Esq., C.E., J.P., and then to Thomas Docksey, Esq. In 1897 it was sold to Mrs. Arthur Severn, who sold it to its present occupant, H. P. Kershaw, Esq.

Brantwood, that is to say the nucleus of the present house, was built at the end of the eighteenth century by Mr. Woodville on a site bought from the Gaskarths. It was sold to Edward Copley, Esq., of Doncaster, whose widow died there in 1830. In 1849 it was in the occupation of Josiah Hudson, Esq., and the early home of his son, the Rev. Charles Hudson, a founder of the Alpine Club, and one of the party of young Englishmen who first climbed Mont Blanc without guides. He joined in the first ascent of the Matterhorn, 1865, and was killed in the accident on the descent.

The next resident was an artist, poet, and politician. Mr. William James Linton was born at Mile-End Road in the east of London in 1812; his father was of Scotch extraction. After apprenticeship to a wood engraver at Kennington, he worked for the Illustrated London News, and mixed with artists and authors of the Liberal and advanced party, becoming known as a writer, editor, and lecturer of much energy on the Radical side. In 1849 he left London for Miteside in West Cumberland, and in May, 1852, moved to Brantwood; after a year's tenancy he bought the little house and estate of ten acres, to which on the enclosure of the common six acres more were added. At Brantwood he also rented the garden and field between the house and the lake, and kept cows, sheep, and poultry; he anticipated Ruskin in clearing part of the land and cultivating it; in his volume of Memories (Lawrence & Bullen, 1895) he records the pleasures of his country life, as well as some of the trials of that period. He had been editing, and publishing at his own expense, a monthly magazine called The English Republic, and this was taken up again in 1854. Two young printers and a gardener came to Brantwood and offered their services, as assistants in this work; and with their help the magazine was printed in the outhouse, which he decorated with mottoes, such as "God and the People"—still to be traced in the roughcast on the wall. But its cost, however economically produced, was more than he could afford, and the magazine was dropped in April, 1855, after which he was employed on the woodcuts for the edition of Tennyson's poems illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, and other artists of the period. He tells how Moxon came to call on him and hasten the work, but could not be received into the house owing to serious illness; and how thankful he was for a ten-pound note put into his hand by the considerate publisher as they stood at the gate. At Brantwood Miss Eliza Lynn came to nurse the first Mrs. Linton in her fatal illness, and married Mr. Linton in 1858. At Brantwood she wrote her novels Lizzie Lorton, Sowing the Wind, and Grasp your Nettle; also The Lake Country, published in 1864. Mr. Linton, in 1865, published The Ferns of the Lake Country, but for some years he had not lived continuously at Brantwood, and in 1866 he went to America, where he died in 1898. Mrs. Lynn Linton's best known work was Joshua Davidson, written later than her Coniston period; she died in London in 1898, and was buried at Crosthwaite, Keswick. Portraits and relics of the Lintons are to be seen in the Museum at Coniston.

Another poet, Gerald Massey, lived for a time at Brantwood, and dated the dedication of a volume of his poems from that address in May, 1860. He, like Linton, is known for his advocacy of democratic opinions; indeed, it is said that George Eliot took him for model in Felix Holt the Radical.

During the later years of Mr. Linton's ownership, Brantwood was taken for the summer by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, now Dean of Durham. In 1871, however, Mr. Linton sold the house to Prof. Ruskin.