The Lake District: A Landscape in Amber

By Jim Hargan | British Heritage  | one comment  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

The Norman lords did not leave their mountain lands as waste; instead they gave them over to giant sheepwalks. At the time, the mountains were covered in light forests with little understory. As the sheep grazed under the trees, they ate the tree seedlings along with the grass. It takes a good 10 years for a seedling to get big enough so that it won’t be killed by a sheep; the forest never had a chance. By the 14th century, all the pre-Norman trees had died of old age, and the mountaintop forests simply disappeared. The great open, windswept ranges, so admired by Wordsworth and modern visitors alike, date from these Norman sheepwalks.

By late Norman times, the noble lords had begun a three-part strategy of managing their enormous estates. The lowland perimeter they tended to keep in manor farms, owned by them and operated either directly by their stewards (demesne farms) or indirectly by leaseholders (tenant farms).

In the great glacial valleys they would have extensive demesne lands devoted either to sheepwalks or dairy farms, where the animals would graze the mountains in the summer and the valleys in the winter; lower down, they would have large forests, carefully managed for commercial timber and for charcoal, essential for their lead and iron mines deeper in the mountains.

Finally, they sold off their upland valleys to small farmers, and these farmers became the progenitors of the hardy, independent Lakeland freeholders.

A typical freehold might have 30 or so acres, kept in the Scottish infield-outfield manner: a small valley-bottom “in-field” tract in permanent cultivation; a set of two or three “out-field” tracts on the rising land behind the farmhouse kept in rotation; and an area of rough grazing on the mountain slopes.

The farmhouse would be made of stone, and would either incorporate the barn as part of the human quarters (a longhouse), or have a barn attached. Wordsworth would have recognized one of these medieval farms instantly, and they can still be spotted in the landscape. Keep a sharp eye out for the longhouses; this is one of the few places in England where this early medieval house can still be seen.

Here you have all the elements of Wordsworth’s picturesque landscape — the rich meadows, lakes and forests of the deep valleys, the quaint old farmsteads of the independent Lakeland farmers, the bare, windy peaks with their endless unobstructed views — all in their present form by the 14th century.

Even one of the great medieval estates survives: Greystoke (yes, Tarzan’s Greystoke), one of the large northeastern pie slices. Although many of its rich lowland farms have long since been sold, its traditional mountain heart remains intact as the largest wholly private noble estate in England. Even more remarkable, it remains in the hands of its pre-Conquest holders, the descendants of Llyulph de Greystoke, one of the few Saxon lords to survive William’s purge of the English aristocracy. While you can’t visit Greystoke Castle, its village is cute as a button and worth seeking out.

During the 14th century, everything went bad and stayed bad.

After the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn, Scotland and England would be at loggerheads for four centuries. Border raids devastated the rich farmlands around the base of the Cumbrians, and the mountains’ fastnesses languished, their trade economy destroyed.

Poverty is a great preserver. Wordsworth wandered through a medieval landscape as he walked the fells — unchanged because no one had the money to change it.

And you can, too. Wordsworth not only taught people how to appreciate this archaic landscape that combines the gentle harmonies of medieval agriculture with the splendor of the mountains, he launched its preservation.

By the early 19th century, mining enterprises had entered the Lakes on a heroic scale, dwarfing the medieval pits. By late Victorian times, large industrial cities were damming the natural lakes to create reservoirs for their water supply.

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Tags: British Heritage, Exploration, Historical Figures, Social History

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