Furness Abbey, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria

Posted on 2 November 2024 by Katrina

I must admit that I hadn’t even heard of Furness Abbey before we were planning our trip to Barrow in Furness in Cumbria in September. Barrow is an industrial area nowadays but 900 years ago when the Abbey dates from it was obviously rural with the abbey being fabulously wealthy, owning a huge amount of land. Although it’s just a few miles outside the modern town of Barrow it still feels very rural.

The abbey was of course wrecked on the orders of Henry VIII at the time of the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. As you can see there’s some seriously heavy metalwork propping up some of the walls in the photo below.

There’s still a lot to see though and the ruins attracted the Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth.

With the arrival of the railway in 1847 it became a popular destination for tourists. If you look carefully at the photo below you can just see the top of a train going past, so it must have been easy for travellers to get to the abbey.

In the photo below you can still see the burn which supplied water to the abbey, presumably that is why it was situated here.

There’s a lot to see at Furness Abbey and as you can see we were lucky with the weather.

It’s definitely worth a visit if you are in that part of Cumbria. I was very pleasantly surprised at how scenic the Barrow in Furness area is and it’s not that far from the Lake District if you want to brave the hordes of modern day tourists!

Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s Garden, Lake District

Posted on 29 October 2024 by Katrina

The garden at Hill Top isn’t huge and I suspect that the vegetable garden hasn’t changed much over the years, although there are some decorations in it for children to spot. I think that Beatrix used her garden to illustrate some of her books, but most of my Beatrix Potter books had to be put into the paper/cardboard recycling after they were badly water damaged a few years ago, so I can’t compare them with my photos. If you click this link you will see some photos of the garden and house. As you can see from the photo I took back in early September the garden plants to the side of the house were more or less over.

I love the gate below which leads to the walled vegetable garden.

The two photos below were taken from the path which leads out of the property, going towards the shop. So you can have a sit down on one of the benches, if you are that way inclined.

These give you a bit of an idea of the surrounding area but if you click on the National Trust link near the beginning of this post you’ll get more of an idea of what the neighbouring houses look like.

Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home – part 2

Posted on 24 October 2024 by Katrina

So here we are upstairs at Hill Top and as you can see this four poster bed is very ancient looking.

There’s also a fireplace in the room so it could be quite cosy, despite the harsh winters in this rural area of northern England.

Below there’s what looks like a Tudor chest to match the bed and lovely drawings of birds on a William Morris wallpaper design.

Hill Top is full of pretty things, Beatrix was a collector although it’s fair to say that it was the fashion to have lots of ‘stuff’ on show. I particularly love that perfect miniature chest of drawers in the photo below.

Another bedroom below.

I now can’t remember which room the photo below was taken in! That’s just about all of the photos that I took, apart from some photos of the things in Beatrix’s display cabinets. There are so many reflections on the glass though, I’ll have to see if I can get rid of them.

The house isn’t large, what is open to the public anyway, but as there were only two people in it, plus a couple of servants maybe, it’s a nice size for comfort. We visited outside the school holidays and it was very busy, we booked up ahead and also reserved a parking space, it would have been a bit of a nightmare if we hadn’t I think. The car park is about 200 metres away from the house, so that’s a short walk to it, past a few houses which are right by Hill Top, I can’t help thinking that the people who have those houses must at times be cursing the popularity of this National Trust property.

I have a few photos of the garden and surrounding countryside, but I’ll leave those for another time.

Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Katrina

While we were in the Lake District last month we visited Hill Top, Beatrix Potter’s home. We tried to visit it about ten years ago but didn’t realise that it doesn’t open on Fridays for some reason – and guess who visited it on a Friday! It was very busy as you can see from the photo below. Beatrix gifted the house to the National Trust, along with a lot of land when she died.

As soon as you get through that doorway you are in the room in the photos below. These china plates were painted by Beatrix’s father, you can see where she got her talent from.

This fireplace/range is on the opposite wall from the photo above. As you can see the ceiling has wallpaper on it too. The door to the right of the range is what we in Scotland call a press, a built in cupboard.

Another cupboard below.

The next room opens off the first room and strangely it has a door knocker on it, as if it was a front door.

Beatrix loved collecting pretty things, she certainly enjoyed what was the first home of her own as her parents objected to her having a life of her own. When her books became so popular she was well able to buy this house outright, at last she could do what she wanted. You can even look at what she had inside her little desk.

Then we went back into the first rooom again to go up the stairs. I must say that from the photos you don’t get the impression of how dim the light is in this room, in fact the photo that I took of the dresser to the right of the clock didn’t come out at all, annoyingly. Beatrix used some of her own furniture in her illustrations.

I’ll do another blogpost about the rooms upstairs.

Chesters Roman Fort, Hadrian’s Wall

Posted on 7 August 2021 by Katrina

Last week we travelled down to the north-east of England again, just for a few nights, and it’s just typical that when we had only been down there half a day or so the weather changed from what had been days and days of hot dry weather – to heavy rain – such is life, and I suppose the gardens needed it!

Before the heavens opened we did manage to fit in a visit to Chesters Roman Fort. I was surprised at how busy it was but the English school holidays had just begun and I think the English Heritage site had just been allowed to open up again after the Covid lockdown.

The fort was only discovered in the 1840s by John Clayton the landowner, who had a lot of his men uncovering the Roman remains, the work was continued by his nephew who inherited the estate, although the Claytons were very wealthy and had a lot of men digging up the area there are still lots of parts to be excavated, presumably when English Heritage can afford to do it. Below is a photo of the fort HQ.

The photo below is the base of what was an interval tower.

The whole fort was obviously part of Hadrian’s Wall but there are only a few bits of the actual wall uncovered at the moment, presumably a dig would find more of it although I expect that a lot of the stones have been re-used over the years by farmers needing houses and farm walls.

Below is a photo of the remains of some of the stables.

As there were lots of horses and men housed at this fort a good source of water was obviously imperative, the North River Tyne is right on the edge of the camp and if you look across the river in the middle of the photo you’ll see some of the remains of the bridge abutment.

It’s an interesting place to visit if you find yourself in that area, there seem to be Roman remains all over. This fort is in a particularly scenic location but I can’t help feeling sorry for the 500 or so Spanish cavalry soldiers who inhabited this camp, they must have been frozen to the bone in winter – or maybe even in summer!

Penrith, Cumbria, England

Posted on 4 April 2018 by Katrina

Last month we made a quick visit to Penrith in Cumbria, the North of England. We were on our way to Oswestry. Despite the fact that we’ve spent years going up and down between Scotland and England for some reason we had never got around to stopping off at this popular market town which is situated close to the Lake District. Actually we ticked two destinations off that day because we also visited Tebay services, a place that I had heard people raving about as the best motorway services in the UK – and they could be right. I was tempted by quite a few things but ended up just buying some lovely things to eat.

I’m so glad that the owners of this shop haven’t felt the need to modernise. Drapers, Costumiers and Milliners. Perfect.

Anyway – Penrith is an old-fashioned place, we only gave ourselves an hour to see the sights which wasn’t really long enough, especially as we found a good secondhand bookshop there. We only found the bookshop because we were looking at the old church which is close to the centre of the town. You can see lots of images of St Andrew’s Church here.

But I was interested in the ‘Giants Grave‘ in the churchyard. It’s supposedly the grave of Owen Caesarius, king of Cumbria between 900 and 937 AD. The hogback stones seem to have been used over large parts of Britain, it’s thought they are Viking grave markers. I’m sure there are some in Fife.

Penrith also has Roman remains nearby, but we didn’t have time to stop off to visit them – another time we will I hope.

On the way out of the churchyard I was amazed to see this old gravestone which is situated very close to the entrance. Mary Noble apparently reached the ripe old age of 107 and died way back in 1828 (I think). It’s amazing to think she was born in 1721, she must have seen quite a few changes over the years.

Pining for the West

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Tag Archives: Cumbria