Many are the inscriptions found here from time to time: Dr. Leigh has seen them all. Now they are removed, lost, or spoiled: one great altar they told me was carried to Dunkin hall, the seat of lady Petre, with an inscription, a ram, and a knife; many taken away by the family of Warrens, living lately at Salesbury hall. I saw the fragment of a stone, in the corner of a house by the mill, cut with very fair large letters: under the next house is the frustum of a pillar, 20 inches diameter, made into a horse-block: I saw another flat stone at the town’s end, laid over a gutter, with a monumental moulding upon it.
Above the town half a mile is a noble bridge of four very large arches, built lately by the country: over this I went to Salesbury; but all the inscriptions are carried away, probably to Mr. Warren’s other seat, near Stockport in Cheshire. I found a large stone in the corner of the house, which has been a Roman monumental stone, foolishly placed there for the sake of the carving: there are three large figures upon it, sweetly performed, and good drapery, though half worn way by time; a man and woman holding hands, both half naked; somewhat roundish in the woman’s hand: at the end is Apollo resting on his harp, his head leaning on his hand, as melancholy for the loss of a votary; for such we may guess the deceased, either a poet, physician, or musician: probably there was more carving on those sides within the wall. This has been a very large seat, with a park. They told me there were some carved stones at Dinkley, another seat of Mr. Warren’s, a mile farther; but I found they were all carried elsewhere, save two altars, both obliterated, but well cut: one stood in a grass-plot in the garden, covered over with moss and weeds; another used in the house as a cheese-press. This is a romantic place, hanging over the river purling across the rocky falls, and covered with wood. The late Mr. Warren was very careful of these learned remnants. They told me that Ribchester was destroyed by the Scots. These are all the memoirs I could pick up in about five hours I staid there, & antiquum tenuerunt flumina nomen. Ovid. Met.
Dr. Leigh, in Lancaster, says a Roman way goes from Manchester to Ribchester by strange ways towards Bury: he gives a cut of a ruby found here; on it a soldier with spear and shield. I take the two altars I saw at Salesbury to be those described in Dr. Leigh’s Lancaster.
At Langho, Ardulf king of Northumberland gained a victory, anno 798.
LANCASTER.
Between Preston and this place we had the vast hills that part Yorkshire and Lancashire, all the way on our right. This is all sandy country to within three miles of Lancaster; then rock begins: the other has rock under it, but red and sandy; this is white. Where the castle and church stand is a high and steep hill, length east and west: this was the Roman castrum. I found a great piece of the wall at the north-east, in the garden of Clement Townsend; and so to Mr. Harrison’s summer-house, which stands upon it: it is made of the white stone of the country, and very hard mortar, and still very thick, though the facing on both sides is peeled off for the sake of the squared stone, which they used in building. A year or two ago a great parcel of it was destroyed with much labour. This reached quite to the bridge-lane, and hung over the street at the head of the precipice in a dreadful manner: from the summer-house it went round the verge of the close north of the church, and took in the whole circuit of the hill. The ditch on the outside of it is now to be seen. I suppose it originally inclosed the whole top of the hill where the church and castle stand, which is steep on all sides, and half inclosed by the river Lune; so that it was an excellent guard to this part of the sea-coast, and commands a very great prospect both by sea and land. Here was this great convenience too in the situation, that on the south side of the castle walls, under the tower, is a spring. All the space of ground north of the church is full of foundations of stone buildings, Roman, I believe; and much stone has been taken up there. To the west of the church is part of a partition wall left, of that time. This is a navigable river. The castle built since on this spot has been very strong; it suffered in the civil wars. The prospect hence takes in all the western sea, and sometimes reaches the isle of Man. The Cumberland and Westmorland hills are of such a nature as I never saw before: I took them for clouds at first, not only from their height, but figure; consisting not of long ridges, but pens, or sugar-loaves, suddenly breaking off. Eastward is Ingleborough, a very strange hill, having a flat place at top, like a table: they say there are some works upon it, and some stones placed like a bower: Camden takes notice of it as rising gradually eastward. Upon some of these hills it was that George Fox ascended to converse with the Holy Ghost, as he pretended; which he revealed to Nailor, and so began the sect of the Quakers, about sixty years ago.
There is a friery in the town, and the church of it was standing within memory. When they pulled down the Roman wall, they found many great toads alive in the thickness of it, and where in all appearance there could be no passage for them from without. The town of Lancaster lies upon the eastern declivity, before the castle.
CONCANGIOS. Water-crook.
Through a very hard road, but not an unpleasant country, we entered Westmorland. The river Can is very rapid, and full of cataracts, as running chiefly over the rock, and having a great descent. It is strange that the salmon coming up these rivers from the sea to lay their spawn, when obstructed by these places, leap over them with a surprizing force; and there they lie in wait to catch them with nets laid on the upper edge. A mile below Kendal this river takes a circling course, and makes a sort of peninsula, called Water-crook, where I found the old city: its name signifies the valley upon the water Can. It is a fine large valley, and very pleasant. Either with a cut, or by nature, the river ran quite round the city. Mr. Tho. Guy is the possessor of it. As soon as I came into the yard, I saw a large altar placed by some steps: I believe it dedicate to Bacchus, because of grapes and festoons on it: it is above three foot high: the festoons are on three sides; the back is plain. All the house and out-houses are built of Roman stone, dug up in the old city. The top of an altar is put into a corner of that stable where the altar stands. At the end of the house is a large statue or bas relief of Cupid: the gavel end fell down some time ago, and knocked off his head and arms; but it is well cut. In the garden, at the end of an out-house, is a very long inscription on a stone. He showed me a little portable altar, but 7-1/4 Roman inches high: the dedicatory inscription is obliterated by using it as a whet-stone; but it is prettily adorned, has two scrolls and the discus at top. Innumerable antiquities have been found here; great arches and ruins of buildings: they never plough but somewhat is found. The father of Mr. Guy saved many, which are since lost: this gentleman found many brass, silver, and gold coins here; but all are dispersed, except a large brass Faustina: he showed me an intaglia of Mercury set in gold for a ring: another with three faces to a head; the foremost, Mars with a helmet on; a woman’s face on each side: a paste of a light onyx colour, with a head: a sepulchral lamp. He told me of a large brass urn with bones in it found here: it had two ears to it, and was used forty years ago, in the family, as a kettle, and is now at his sister’s, Mrs. Herring, at Wall near Hexam.
The town of Kendal is very large, lying under a great hill to the west; the river to the east. Upon the rise of the hill is a place called Castle-low hill, which has been a castle raised in Saxon times, fortified with a ditch where not naturally steep, and a keep or artificial mount; a sorry way of encampment: the keep is narrow at top, and cannot contain above forty people: they are much too high to offend an enemy, and have no ground to defend. Above this are great scars, or mountains, of a hard kind of stone like porphyry, that will yield to no tool: they break it up in small shivers, for building, by the force of a heavy gaveloc and sledge-hammer. I saw several pretty springs running out of little hollows of the rock, especially toward the upper part; and most of the strata thereabouts drip continually: the workmen told me, that those cracks where the springs are go a great length into the mountain; and that the strata all round the hill lie declining with the side of the hill; that some strata are soft and porous, which lets the water strain through them; whilst others by their hardness stop it, and turn it all into the cracks and fissures; that these springs run very sparingly in dry weather: this shows that they are made only of the rain and dews falling upon the hill, and collected into these channels, which being generally perpetual, and in sufficient quantity one time with another, render the springs so. There is a spring on the top of Penigent hill, the highest in these parts. In this country vast stones like the grey weathers in Wiltshire, lie upon the surface, and by the sides of the hills, which are no part of the quarry, being of a different stone. On the other side of the town eastward, and over the river, is Kendal castle; a large stone building on a solitary apex, but not extraordinary high: it is fenced with a wall and ditch: they report that queen Catharine Parr was born here. This town has been built mostly with pent-houses and galleries over them all along the streets, somewhat like Chester. The carts or carriages of this country are small machines, with two wheels each, made of three pieces of timber, fastened to a cross axle-tree, which turns with the wheels: the cart is laid upon these wheels pro tempore, kept from slipping off the axle-tree by two pins underneath: they are drawn by one horse.[1] They say these carriages, of a light burthen and with one horse, answer better in this stony country than heavier, which are shook to pieces presently: hence Nature makes the horses of this country small in bulk. Here is an anchorite’s house with a very fine spring: near was a chapel of St. Mary, Abbot’s hall, and some other ruins of religious places. The church is a handsome and very large structure, consisting of five ailes: a good organ: several ancient chapels in it, with the tombs of the founders; one of Roos. The parishes of this country are generally of great extent, having several chapels of ease. This was, I believe, the county-town before Appleby, as rising immediately after the destruction of the Roman city. In the church is a monument of a judge, who died at the Assizes here in queen Elizabeth’s time.