Identifier: cu31924104648583 (find matches)
Title: Past and present at the English lakes
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Rawnsley, H. D. (Hardwicke Drummond), 1851-1920 Wordsworth Collection
Subjects:
Publisher: Glasgow, J. MacLehose and sons
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
Here, as at How Town, every woman
body as well as every man body was busy, and we
could not help noting how picturesque were the
blue aprons and pink sun-bonnets they were all
wearing, and not surprised to remember that
the sun-bonnet of the old Westmoreland dales
was now all the vogue with the fashionable
motorist.
The toot of a horn told us that the valley was
within the motors range, and from a little house
behind rusty railings sounded another note to tell
us that the Mardale valley was in touch with the
modern world, for the solitary inhabitant was
having his afternoon's rest enlivened by the
screams of a gramophone.
On we trudged by meadowsweet and harebell-
haunted hedgerows to the little inn at the head of
the vale. The nearer we approached it the more
improbable did it seem an inn was there, for Chapel
Hill, with its larches and Scotch firs, stood right
across the vale, a continuation ofRough Crag, and
we had supposed that we should find it in Riggen-
dale, but we were soon to be undeceived. The
road went to the left, the entrance to Riggendale
farm was passed, a beck was crossed, and the little
church hidden by yew, or rather the tower of the
little church, with its vast vane and weather-cock,
Text Appearing After Image:

GOWBARROW TO MARDALE 49

stood revealed. We entered a typical dale chapel
of two hundred years ago ; the tiny altar, with its
little rail enclosure, the three-decker, the little west
end gallery, but all cared for, all in its simplicity
sublime. Holme seemed to be the name of most note
upon the headstones in the little churchyard, and
well it might be, for here from the time of King
John the Holmes had resided. I remembered how
Green, the artist, in his entertaining Guide to the
Lakes, published in 1819, had written of Chapel
Hill as consisting of three houses, one recently
built by Mr. Richard Holme, brother to the Rev.
William Holme, of Emmanuel College, and how
he had really told in the beginning of the Dun
Bull Inn, to which we were bound for a night's
hospitality.
" The late Mr. John Holme, father of the above
gentleman, " writes Green in his old-fashioned
quaint style, " was a most respectable and intel-
ligent man. Mr. Holme with much kindness
occasionally received the narrator to his house to
eat and to lodge, there being no ' puplic ' (sic)
house nearer Haus Water than Bampton, which is
six miles from Chapel Hill and two from the foot
of the lake."

Note About Images