Keswick, Cumbria

Keswick's market has been thriving for more than 700 years.

Keswick's recorded history starts in the Middle Ages. The area was conquered by the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria in the 7th century, but Northumbria was destroyed by the Vikings in the late 9th century. In the early 10th century the British Kingdom of Strathclyde seized the area, and it remained part of Strathclyde until about 1050, when Siward, Earl of Northumbria, conquered Cumbria.[17] In 1092 William II of England, son of William the Conqueror, marched north and established the great baronies of Allerdale-below-Derwent, Allerdale-above-Derwent, and Greystoke, the borders of which met at Keswick.[18] In 1181 Jocelyn of Furness wrote of a new church at Crosthwaite, Keswick, founded by Alice de Romilly, the Lady of Allerdale, a direct descendant of William II's original barons.[19] In 1189, Richard I granted the rectory of Crosthwaite to the Cistercian order of Fountains Abbey.[20]

During the 13th century, agricultural land around the town was acquired by Fountains and Furness Abbeys. The latter, already prosperous from the wool trade, wished to expand its sheep farming, and in 1208 bought large tracts of land from Alice de Romilly. She also negotiated with Fountains Abbey, to which she sold Derwent Island in Derwentwater, land at Watendlath, the mill at Crosthwaite and other land in Borrowdale. Keswick was at the hub of the monastic farms in the area, and Fountains based a steward in the town, where tenants paid their rents.[18] Furness also enjoyed profitable rights to the extraction of iron ore.[21]

Keswick was granted a charter for a market in 1276 by Edward I. This market has an uninterrupted history lasting for more than 700 years.[22] The pattern of buildings around the market square remained broadly the same from this period until at least the late 18th century, with houses – originally timber-framed – fronting the square, and sturdily enclosed gardens or yards at the back. According to local tradition these stout walls and the narrow entrances to the yards were for defence against marauding Scots. In the event it appears that the town escaped such attacks, Scottish raiders finding richer and more accessible targets at Carlisle and the fertile Eden Valley, well to the north of Keswick.[23]

German miners sorting copper ore, 16th century

With the Dissolution of the Monasteries, between 1536 and 1541, Furness and Fountains Abbeys were supplanted by new secular landlords for the farmers of Keswick and its neighbourhood. The buying and selling of sheep and wool were no longer centred on the great Abbeys, being handled locally by the new landowners and tenants. This enhanced Keswick's importance as a market centre, though at first the town remained only modestly prosperous: in the 1530s John Leland wrote of it as "a lytle poore market town".[24] By the second half of the century, copper mining had made Keswick richer: in 1586 William Camden wrote of "these copper works not only being sufficient for all England, but great quantities of the copper exported every year" with, at the centre, "Keswicke, a small market town, many years famous for the copper works as appears from a charter of king Edward IV, and at present inhabited by miners".[25]

Earlier copper mining had been small in scale, but Elizabeth I, concerned for the defence of her kingdom, required large quantities of copper for the manufacture of weapons and the strengthening of warships. There was the additional advantage for her that the Crown was entitled to royalties on metals extracted from English land.[26] The experts in copper mining were German, and Elizabeth secured the services of Daniel Hechstetter of Augsburg, to whom she granted a licence to "search, dig, try, roast and melt all manner of mines and ores of gold, silver, copper and quicksilver" in the Keswick area and elsewhere.[26]

Plaque on Keswick's Moot Hall detailing its history from the 16th century

As well as copper, a new substance was found, extracted and exploited: this was variously called wad, black lead, plumbago or black cauke, and is now known as graphite. Many uses were quickly discovered for the mineral: it reduced friction in machinery, made a heat-resistant glaze for crucibles, and when used to line moulds for cannonballs, resulted in rounder, smoother balls that could be fired further by English naval cannon.[27] Later, from the second half of the 18th century, it was used to make pencils, for which Keswick became famous.[27]

The copper mines prospered for about seventy years, but by the early 17th century the industry was in decline. Demand for copper fell and the cost of extracting it was high.[28] Graphite mining continued, and quarrying for slate began to grow in importance. Other small-scale industries grew up, such as tannery and weaving. Although the boom of the mid-16th century had finished, the town's economy did not slide into ruin, and the population remained generally constant at a little under 1,000.[29]

Skiddaw in Cumberland, a Summer Evening with a Coach and Horseman, by Philip James de Loutherbourg, 1787

The historian George Bott regards John Dalton (1709–63) and John Brown (1715–66) as the pioneers of tourism in the Lake District. Both wrote works praising the majesty of the scenery, and their enthusiasm prompted others to visit the area. The poet Thomas Gray published an account of a five-day stay in Keswick in 1769, in which he described the view of the town as "the vale of Elysium in all its verdure", and was lyrical about the beauties of the fells and the lake.[30] His journal was widely read, and was, in Bott's phrase, "an effective public relations job for Keswick".[31] Painters such as Thomas Smith of Derby and William Bellers also contributed to the influx of visitors; engravings of their paintings of Cumberland scenery sold in large numbers, further enhancing the fame of the area.[31] In 1800 the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, "It is no small advantage that for two-thirds of the year we are in complete retirement – the other third is alive & swarms with Tourists of all shapes & sizes."[32] Coleridge had moved to Keswick in that year, and together with his fellow Lake Poets (see below) was possibly the strongest influence on the public esteem of Keswick and the Lake District.[33]

During the 18th century and into the 19th, turnpike trusts were established and major roads in Cumberland were greatly improved.[34] With the Lake District now accessible by coach the area attracted well-off visitors, particularly at times of war in mainland Europe, which made the aristocratic Grand Tour impossible there.[35] Regular public coach services were established in the 1760s, but they were expensive. The ten-hour journey from Whitehaven to Penrith via Keswick cost 12 shillings (numerically equivalent to 60p), at a time when country labourers typically earned 10 shillings a week or less, and the annual income of even the most prosperous tenant farmers was rarely more than £200.[36] Nonetheless, by the 19th century the number of tourists visiting Keswick during each season was estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000.[37] Some of the Keswick inns that catered for affluent visitors remain as hotels, including the Queen's, where Gray stayed.[35]

Pencil-making at Keswick in the 1850s

The construction of the railways in the mid-19th century made the Lake District, and Keswick in particular, more accessible to visitors of modest means. The original impetus for building the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway (CKP) line came from heavy industry: the new Bessemer process of steelmaking brought a great demand for the rich iron ore from west Cumberland and the coking coal from Durham on the east side of the country. The CKP was built to enable ore and coal to be brought together at steel foundries in both counties.[38] The line opened for goods traffic in 1864, and the following year it began to carry passengers.[39] Fares varied, but holidaymakers could buy excursion tickets at discounted prices, such as six shillings for the 170-mile (270-kilometre) return journey from Preston to Keswick.[40]

In addition to its growing importance as a tourist centre, Keswick developed a reputation for its manufacture of pencils during the 19th century. It had begun on a modest scale in about 1792, as a cottage industry, using graphite mined locally. This developed on more industrial lines in factories purpose-built by several companies. Pencil making was the town's most important manufacturing industry by the mid-19th century, textiles and leather goods having declined.[41]

The Moot Hall was rebuilt in 1813, and the lower floor was used as a market house on Saturdays. Coal gas was supplied by a gas works from 1846; the Keswick library opened in 1849;[42] a water works began operation in 1856; and Keswick police station opened in 1857.[43] The local weekly newspaper, The Keswick Reminder was founded in 1896, and in 2019 continues to be published every Friday. In an article in The Observer in 1978, Christopher Brasher wrote that as long as the Reminder flourishes, "there will be one corner of these islands that is forever England."[44]

Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, cleric and conservationist

In 1883 Hardwicke Rawnsley was appointed vicar of Crosthwaite. In a study of Lake District towns in 1974, H. A. L. Rice commented that to write about Keswick without mentioning Rawnsley would be the equivalent of writing about Stratford-upon-Avon without mentioning Shakespeare, so great was Rawnsley's impact on the town. He and his wife set up classes to teach metalwork and wood carving; these grew into the Keswick School of Industrial Art, which trained local craftsmen and women from 1894 until it closed in 1986.[45] He revived the ancient May Day festival in the town, and was a leading figure in the establishment of Keswick School,[46] Blencathra Sanatorium and the County Farm School.[47] As co-founder of the National Trust, Rawnsley contributed to Keswick's continued growth as a tourist centre, with the acquisition by the Trust of many acres of popular scenic land around Derwentwater, beginning with Brandelhow Wood in 1902.[48]

Keswick's history throughout the 20th century was one of increasing reliance on tourism, the pencil industry being the second largest source of employment. The Cumberland Pencil Company, formed at the turn of the century, occupied a large factory near the River Greta on the road leading out of Keswick towards Cockermouth.[49] The conservation movement continued to develop; Rawnsley led successful campaigns to save the medieval Greta and Portinscale bridges from replacement with ferro-concrete structures;[50] and the National Trust continued to acquire land locally.[51] In the First World War Keswick lost many of its young men: the war memorial near Fitz Park commemorates 117 names,[52] from a population at the time of less than 4,500.[53] By the 1930s Keswick was firmly established as the main centre of tourism in Cumberland and Westmorland. An article in The Manchester Guardian in 1934 called it "the capital of the Lake District", and continued:

Keswick's chief industry is to promote the contentment and happiness of its visitors. Its pleasant position provides at the outset a tonic atmosphere ... it is set in the most delightful part of a delightful district, described by Wordsworth as "the loveliest spot that ever man has found". There are numerous places of interest and fine shops, and good accommodation is offered to visitors at reasonable prices. Keswick is the best centre from which to visit Lakeland.[54]

During the Second World War, students from St Katharine's College, Liverpool, and Roedean School, Sussex, were evacuated to Keswick when their own buildings were requisitioned for use as a hospital and a navy base respectively.[55] Students were also brought to the safety of Keswick from Central Newcastle High School,[56] Hunmanby Hall School, Yorkshire,[57] and the Liverpool Orphanage.[58]

The creation of the Lake District National Park in 1951, with strict control over new development, prevented any expansion of the town beyond its pre-war borders.[59] Keswick's population has remained stable at a little below 5,000 residents.[n 3] The town's reliance on tourism increased in 2006 when Cumberland Pencils moved production from Keswick to Lillyhall, Workington, only the Derwent Pencil Museum remaining at the old site.[61] At the beginning of the 21st century, more than 60 per cent of the population were employed in hotels, restaurants and distribution. A survey of retail premises in 2000 found that more than ten per cent were outdoor clothes shops, a similar proportion were cafés or restaurants, and more than eight per cent were gift shops.[62] The age profile of the Keswick population is significantly higher than the English average. In 2011 children under 10 made up 7.6 per cent of the town's population, compared with 11.9 per cent for England as a whole. Between ages 10 and 20 the comparable figures are 10.2 and 12.1; and from ages 20 to 44, 25.9 as against 34.3. The percentage of Keswick's population aged 45 and upwards is above the national average, the largest difference being within the 75- to 84-year-old bracket, which contains 9.6 per cent of Keswick's population compared with a national average of 5.5.[63] Figures from the same census show that Keswick has fewer than average "large employers and higher managerial occupations" and more small employers and self-employed people. Long-term unemployment is considerably below the average for England.[n 4]

James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed for treason in 1716

In medieval times the township was within the manor of Castlerigg and Derwentwater. The earliest surviving official record of the town is the market charter of 1276 granted to the lord of the manor, Thomas de Derwentwater. The manor was granted by Alice de Romilly to Adam de Derwentwater before 1216, and subsequently passed to the Radclyffe family through marriage. The Derwentwater estate was forfeit to the Crown after the execution of James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater in 1716 for his involvement in the Jacobite rising of 1715.[65] In 1735 the Crown granted the income from the estates to support the Greenwich Hospital, London. Land to the south and west were part of Greenwich Hospital's forestry and farming estates until the 19th century.[65] In 1925 the then owner, Sir John Randles, gave the National Trust 90 acres (36 ha) of land in this estate, including the foreshore woodland.[66]

St John's Church, dating from 1838, is the parish church of Keswick

Until 1838, Keswick had no Anglican church within the town boundaries and was part of the widespread parish of Crosthwaite. The present parish church, St John's, was designed by Anthony Salvin and consecrated in 1838. It is geometrical in style, with pink castle-head ashlar sandstone and a slate roof. The church was extended in 1862, 1882 and 1889 by the parish's benefactors the Marshall family; the chancel windows, designed by Henry Holiday, installed in 1879, were taken down and reinstalled when the chancel was extended in 1889.[99] St John's became a Grade II* listed building in 1951.[100] Keswick's former parish church, St Kentigern's, at Crosthwaite, just outside the town, is also Grade II* listed. Dated to at least the 14th century, it is built mainly in the Tudor-Gothic style and was expanded in 1523 and later restored in 1844 by George Gilbert Scott.[101]

The Quakers had an early meeting house in the town, replaced in 1715 by one at Underskiddaw. Protestant dissenters met at a private house from 1705 or before, moving to a chapel in Lake Road in the latter part of the 18th century.[102] A Congregational chapel was built in 1858–59.[102] The first Wesleyan chapel was built in 1814 in a small yard off Main Street at a cost of £331 10s; the present Methodist church is in Southey Street.[103] Since 1928 Roman Catholics in Keswick have been served by Our Lady of the Lakes and St Charles in High Hill. A new Quaker meeting house opened in the town in 1994.[102] An Eastern Orthodox church was inaugurated in 2007, holding services in Keswick and the nearby village of Braithwaite.[104]

There are no other religious buildings in Keswick; Muslim worship was accommodated on Fridays in a room at the local council building in Main Street. This has since discontinued.[105]

Keswick's old inns and their successors include many listed buildings, mainly Grade II in designation.[106] The George Hotel, stated to be the oldest inn in the town, dates to the 16th century, with the alterations made during the Georgian period still evident.[107] The King's Arms Hotel, in the main market square, dates from the early 19th century; it is built from stuccoed stone, with Victorian shop windows on the ground floor.[108] The Queen's Hotel in Main Street, a pebbledashed stone building dating from the late 18th century, was renamed "The Inn on the Square" in 2015.[109] The Bank Tavern in Main Street and the Dog and Gun public house in Lake Road are both Grade II listed 18th-century buildings.[110][111]

Annual events in the town's calendar include the Keswick Film Festival (February–March). It features screenings of old and new films, interviews with directors, and the festival's Osprey Awards for short films by local filmmakers.[142] The ten-day Words by the Water literary festival is held in March every year, based at the Theatre by the Lake. The festival began in 1995, and events have been presented by Melvyn Bragg, Louis de Bernières, Germaine Greer, Steve Jones, Penelope Lively, Princess Michael of Kent, Michael Rosen and Joanna Trollope.[143]

The Theatre by the Lake, venue for the Words by the Water festival

In May each year, Keswick is host to three contrasting events. The Keswick Half Marathon, in the early part of the month takes participants around Derwentwater with an additional loop into Newlands Valley.[144] In the second week of May there is the four-day Keswick Jazz Festival, with more than 100 jazz events at a dozen local venues. Participants include British and international exponents of mainstream and traditional jazz.[144] After the Jazz Festival is the four-day Keswick Mountain Festival in mid-May. In the words of the organisers, the festival "celebrates everything we all love about the outdoors".[144] It includes ghyll scrambling, mountain biking, guided walks, map reading, canoeing, climbing, a triathlon and other events.[144]

The main event of the town's calendar in June is the Keswick Beer Festival, a two-day event that attracts more than 5,000 participants each year.[144] July is marked by the opening of the annual Keswick Convention, an international gathering of Evangelical Christians, described in 1925 as "the last stronghold of British Puritanism",[145] promoting biblical teaching and pious lifestyles.[146] Among those associated with the Convention have been Frank Buchman and Billy Graham.[147] The event has grown from a single week to three weeks, straddling the latter part of July and early August.[144]

In August, Keswick features the Derwentwater Regatta. It was inaugurated by the eccentric local landowner Joseph Pocklington in 1792,[148] and after a lapse of more than two centuries was revived in 2013.[149] Its organisers describe it as "A weekend of mayhem and madness afloat, with the chance to climb aboard in a variety of races on Derwentwater".[144] The Keswick Agricultural Show, founded in 1860, has traditionally been held on August Bank Holiday Monday at the western edge of the town on the Crossing Fields section of the open land known as the Howrahs.[n 6] The show features both commercial and charity stands, and attracts large numbers of competitors, exhibitors and spectators.[144] From 2014 the venue has changed to Pump Field, a few hundred yards further from the town centre towards Braithwaite.[151]

Classical music is presented throughout the year, both in conjunction with the Lake District Summer Music Festival[152] and independently through the Keswick Choral Society[153] and the Keswick Music Society, which was founded in 1947.[154] Performers in Keswick have included the Chilingirian Quartet,[152] the Royal Northern Sinfonia,[155] Tasmin Little,[156] the City of London Sinfonia,[154] Red Priest[154] and Nicolai Demidenko.[157]

Greta Hall, behind Greta Bridge

Coleridge and William Wordsworth were close friends and collaborators; when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy took up residence in the Lake District in late 1799 it was, in Bott's word, inevitable that Coleridge would follow suit. Six months after the Wordsworths moved into Dove Cottage at Grasmere, Coleridge leased Greta Hall in Keswick, 12 miles (19 kilometres) away.[158] In 1803 Robert Southey, Coleridge's brother-in-law, agreed to share the house with Coleridge and his family. Southey remained at Greta Hall after Coleridge left in 1804, and it remained Southey's family home until his death in 1843.[159] Many famous literary figures stayed at Greta Hall in these years, including the Wordsworths, Charles and Mary Lamb, Thomas de Quincey, William Hazlitt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.[33] Lamb, a Londoner devoted to his native city, remained doubtful of the attractions of the Lake District, but most of the visitors to Greta Hall wrote eloquently of the beauty of the scenery, and further enhanced the public regard for, and desire to visit, the area.[33] Southey was well regarded locally, but played little part in the life of the town.[33] He is buried in Crosthwaite churchyard and there is a memorial to him inside the church, with an inscription written by Wordsworth.[160]

Prominent Keswickians: Bankes, Myers and Walpole

Among Keswick notables before the Lake Poets was Sir John Bankes, a leading Royalist during the English Civil War. He was Charles I's Attorney General and Chief Justice. Bankes was born at Castlerigg near Keswick in 1589.[161] A bust in his memory is in upper Fitz Park close to the museum.[162] In 2014 he was further commemorated by the conversion of the former Keswick courthouse into a bar named in his honour with his full title, "The Chief Justice of the Common Pleas".[163]

Later residents of the area have included the classical scholar, essayist, poet and founder of the Society for Psychical Research, Frederic Myers, who was born in Keswick,[164] and the campaigner for animal welfare Donald Watson, founder of the Vegan Society, who lived in Keswick after retiring from teaching.[165] The pioneer mountaineers and photographers George and Ashley Abraham lived and worked in Keswick.[166] Their photographic shop in Lake Road, built in 1887, was later taken over by the local mountaineer and outfitter George Fisher; the shop still contains memorabilia, including photographs, from the Abrahams' era.[167]

Of literary figures after the Lake Poets among those most closely associated with Keswick was the novelist Hugh Walpole. In 1924 he moved into Brackenburn, a house between Keswick and Grange at the opposite end of Derwentwater.[168] Like the Lake Poets in the previous century, he wrote enthusiastically about the Lake District, and its scenery and atmosphere often found their way into his fiction. He wrote in 1939, "That I love Cumberland with all my heart and soul is another reason for my pleasure in writing these Herries books. That I wasn't born a Cumbrian isn't my fault: that Cumbrians, in spite of my 'foreignness', have been so kind to me, is my good fortune."[169]