The city of Concangios is much better situate than Kendal in several respects; because good land for a considerable way quite round it, as far as the valley reaches: the river, which may well be called spumosus, incompasses it like a horse-shoe: it is deeper, broader, and smoother, here than any where else: it is indeed a place incomparably well chosen for a small city: the ground is sufficiently high, even in floods; but floods render it an island, for it is low ground before the entrance, but not marshy. Across the entrance there are plain marks of a ditch north of the house; and Mr. Guy told me there was a wall all along, an apparent rampire on the inside of it; that his father dug up vast quantities of stone there: he showed me a place in the city, where a hypocaust was found, all arched with Roman brick, and paved with square bricks; that they covered it up again without demolishing it. I saw a brass Antoninus, found here; and a stone, somewhat like the capital of a small pillar, hexangular. Beyond the low ground which lies before the entrance of the city, is a Roman tumulus. Upon a slope of high ground, and in a pasture behind it, is another very large hill, partly natural, and partly artificial, by cutting away the roots of it, and rendering it more steep, as it appeared to me: there is an ash-tree planted on it: when it was ploughed, they discovered stones with mortar on them. I conjecture there was a building upon it; probably an outguard, or lodge, for the soldiers that stood upon the watch: for here was placed the numerus vigilum in the Notitia; and this place takes in a larger view than the city, as being higher. The city contains about 14 acres of ground, or more: it consists of two closes, one of twelve acres, another of four; but the fortified part took not in intirely the twelve acres: the ditch goes along the partition-fence visibly enough; the remainder was suburbs to the castle, which was 500 foot one way, 600 another. The inscription I spoke of at the end of the barn has not yet been described. Thus Mr. Gale read it.
Publius Ælius Publii filius Sergio Basso Decurioni legionis vicesimæ valeriæ Victricis vixit annos et privatus libertis et herm miles emeritus legionis sextæ victricis fecerunt. Si quis sepulchro alium mortuum intulerit mulctam ferat fisco Dominorum nostrorum, &c.
A great woollen manufactory at Kendal, especially of such stuffs as are proper for hangings. Winander meer, near here, is ten miles long, remarkable for a fish called char, which they pot, and send all over the kingdom. This country is exceedingly obnoxious to rain, and some of the hill-tops on one side or other are perpetually covered with clouds: I imagine the vast solidity of the stone that composed them attracts the clouds big with water at some considerable distance, and then the winds break and dash them into rain. This is another furtherance of hills being supplied with fountains.
The city of Concangios is placed on the highest plot of the Chersonese: the four acres westward are more meadow-like, but far from low. A great ridge of hills runs north and south-eastward of this place, called Hag-fell, of a fine downy nature, and good riding on the southern point of it. About a mile and half off the city was the castrum exploratorum, or watch-tower: it is a mere tip of very high ground, like a narrow tongue, and very steep, especially side ways: it is called Castle-steed: it is sixty foot broad, 120 long: the sides being thus steep needed no ditch; but on the south end are two ditches, on the north three: I suppose it was walled about: it is of the common cliff of the country; and in one place the ditch has been cut through the rock. At the bottom of this hill is a large spring, which immediately falls into a cavity of the earth again, and so I suppose rises lower in another place. From hence is a fine prospect to the mouths of the rivers Can and Lune, and all over this coast. The Westmorland hills raise themselves into a new and more romantic appearance than before, and the place well answered the purpose of an espial.
About a mile north of Kendal is a cave in the rock near a wood, called Hells-fell Nab, or the Fairy-hole: they talk of organs, pillars, flitches of bacon, and the like matters here, as at Poole’s Hole in Derbyshire.
SHAP.
On the south side of the town of Shap, six miles south of Penrith, we saw the beginning of a great Celtic avenue, on a green common. This is just beyond the horrid and rocky fells, where a good country begins. This avenue is seventy foot broad, composed of very large stones, set at equal intervals: it seems to be closed at this end, which is on an eminence, and near a long flattish barrow, with stone works upon it: hence it proceeds northward to the town, which intercepts the continuation of it, and was the occasion of its ruin; for many of the stones are put under the foundations of houses and walls, being pushed by machines they call a betty, or blown up with gunpowder. Though its journey be northward, yet it makes a very large curve, or arc of a circle, as those at Abury, and passes over a brook too. A spring likewise arises in it, near the Greyhound inn. By the brook is a little round sacellum, composed of twelve stones, but lesser ones, set by one great stone belonging to the side of the avenue: the interval of the stones is thirty-five foot, half the breadth of the avenue: the stones, no doubt, did all stand upright, because three or four still do; but they were not much higher then, than now as fallen, because of their figure, which is thick and short: they are very large, and prodigiously hard, being nothing else but a congeries of crystals of very large sizes, of a flakey nature. Houses and fields lie across the track of this avenue, and some of the houses lie in the inclosure: it ascends the hill, crosses the common road to Penrith, and so goes into the corn-fields on the other side of the way westward, where some stones are left standing; one particularly remarkable, called Guggleby stone. The people say these were set up by enchantment: and the better sort of folks, as absurdly affirm, they are made by art. I doubt not but they are gathered somewhere off the surface, among the fells, and that here was a great temple of the old Britons, such as that at Abury, which it resembles very much, as far as I can judge at present; for the rainy weather, which in this country is almost perpetual, hindered me from making at this time a thorough disquisition into it. The ground it runs over consists of gentle risings and fallings, but in general declines toward the west: it is here, and for a great way further north, east and west, a very fine downy turf, and pleasant hills; or at least they seemed so after the rugged and barren views and roads we had just passed: but the country under this turf is a lime-stone, quite different from the stones of the avenue. In our journey hither the country is far worse than the peaks of Derbyshire, and nothing to entertain the eye but the numerous and rare cataracts; whole rivers, and the whole continuance of them, being nothing else; the water every where running among the rocks with great violence and rapidity: even the springs burst out of the ground, and rise into the air with a surprising push: therefore the Britons erected this laborious work very conveniently, beyond that uncultivated frontier, and in a country where they might range about in their chariots at pleasure. I guess, by the crebrity and number of the stones remaining, there must have been two hundred on a side: near them in several places are remains of circles to be seen, of stones set on end; but there are no quantity of barrows about the place, which I wonder at. Though these stones are not of such a flat form as those at Abury, nor so big as some there; yet they are very large, and as heavy as any of those in the avenues there. The site of the place is pretty much bounded eastward by the hill that way adjacent; but there is a large prospect west ward, and the country descends that way to a great distance. At a place called in the maps Stone-heaps, we saw a cairn or barrow made of stones: all the tops of the fells, I am told, abound with these crystallised stones.
90·2d. The Devils arrows near Burrowbridg. 14 Sep.tr 1725.
