PAINTED BY
JAMES ORROCK, R.I.
(See pp. [44] , and [60] to [70] )
Briefly, the headlines of Carlisle's history are these. Founded originally by the Britons, it was held by the Romans for close on four centuries. Many Roman remains (coins, medals, altars, etc.) have been unearthed, and Hadrian's big Wall (murus and vallum) is still traceable in several quarters. A sad spoliation by Pict and Scot followed the Roman withdrawal. They scarcely left one stone on another. Then came the Saxon supremacy under the good King Egfrith, with the spiritual oversight under Saint Cuthbert, to whom and his successors at Lindisfarne were bestowed in perpetuity the city with fifteen miles around it. But for Egfrith's death fighting the Picts on the far-off moorland of Nechtansmere (Dunnichen in Forfarshire) Carlisle might have risen early and rapidly to a sure place as one of the leading cities in the land. From 685, however, to the Conquest (1066) the place was virtually extinct. It was only then that a new epoch arose for the broken city as for the whole of England. The Conqueror himself is said to have commenced the rebuilding of Carlisle, but the town owes its restoration rather to his son William the Red, who, on his return from Alnwick, after concluding a peace treaty with the King of Scotland in 1092, "observed the pleasantness of its situation, and resolved to raise it from its ruins." The Castle, the Priory, the once massive city walls, were all the work of the Rufus regime, completed by Henry I., who gave cathedral dignity to the church at Carlisle. David I., the "Sair Sanct," raided Carlisle in 1136, and kept court for a time within its walls, which he heightened. It was at Carlisle that his death took place in 1153. From that date to the 'Forty-five, Carlisle's history is mainly that of a kind of "buffer-state" between the two kingdoms. Few cities recall so many martial memories. It was Edward's base of operations in his Scottish wars. It was besieged by Wallace in 1298, by Bruce in 1315—the year after Bannockburn, and again in 1322. Queen Mary's captivity at Carlisle in 1568; Buccleuch's daring and gallant rescue of Kinmont Willie in 1596, immortalised in the best of the Border ballads; the protracted siege by General Leslie in 1644 during the Parliamentary War; and the Pretender's short-lived triumph—these are the rest of its leading events.
Of the historic Carlisle little is left, the Castle, the Cathedral, and the Guildhall being almost the sole relics of a long and notable past. Yet how vastly changed the place is from the quiet little Border town of a century ago even! Then it had barely ten thousand inhabitants, now there are over forty thousand. As the county town of Cumberland, and next to Newcastle the greatest railway centre in the north of England, its prosperity has grown by leaps and bounds. It is the terminus of no fewer than eight different lines, and its busy, never-at-rest Citadel Station is known all the world over. Gates and walls have long since vanished from "Merrie Carlisle." The streets are wide and airy, and altogether it presents a most comfortable and thriving appearance. At 40, English Street, the chief thoroughfare, Prince Charlie slept for four nights during the '45. And from 79 to 83, Castle Street, the corner building (now a solicitor's office), between Castle Street and the Green-market, Scott led Miss Carpenter to the altar. Carlisle Castle, a huge, irregular reddish-brown stone structure, grim and defiant, with its almost perfect specimen of a Norman Keep, and battlements frowning towards the north, is still a place to see.
But it is the Cathedral which is Carlisle's chief glory. Rising in the centre of the city, high above all other buildings except the factory chimneys, there is an air of importance about it not altogether justifiable. The building is small and not of very great account, the reason being that Carlisle was only erected into a See in 1133, and then out of Durham. The result was that the parish church was promoted to the dignity of a cathedral. Nevertheless, it has several striking features—a delightful Early English choir and magnificent east window, reputed to be unsurpassed by any other in the kingdom, if indeed in the world. From 1092, the date of the original building, to 1400-19, in Bishop Strickland's time, when the north transept was restored and the central tower rebuilt, and down to the present day, the edifice contains every variety of style, from Norman to Perpendicular, with admirable specimens of nineteenth century work. Of the original Norman minster the only parts remaining are two bays of the nave, the south transept, and the piers of the tower. How long the church remained in its pristine state it is impossible to say. The first alteration was probably the enlargement of the choir, towards the middle and close of the thirteenth century, immediately before the great fire of 1292, the worst the cathedral has experienced in its four burnings. The work of reconstruction after 1292 appears to have been somewhat slow, so slow that little was done till the year 1352, when Bishop Welton and his successor set themselves in earnest to the task. "The king, the city treasury, and the leading families of the neighbourhood contributed towards the restoration, in response to the urgent appeals of the bishops and to the indulgences issued for the remission of forty days' penance to such laity as should by money, materials, or labour, contribute to the pious work." Towards the close of the reign of Edward III. the renovated pile rose from it ruins. To this period belongs the entire east end, with its grand window, the triforium, the carved capitals of the arches, and the Decorated windows of the clerestory. The ceiling was painted and gilded and panelled, the intersections glowing with the armorial bearings of the rich donors by whose liberality the work had been carried to completion. The windows were filled with stained glass, and the nine lights of the east window with figures.