National Trust Histories: The Lake District by Christopher Barringer

Author:Christopher Barringer [Barringer, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782811480
Publisher: G2 Entertainment
Published: 2015-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

Parks and Forests

By the 1530s, when the Dissolution of the Monasteries took place, many forms of economic activity were already under way in Cumbria. There were, however, large areas to which development came late or had not even begun because they had the status of parks or forests.

The right to empark an area was a right granted by the Crown and it usually went with other considerable privileges, such as the right to castellate a building (turn it into a castle). Naworth Park, about eight miles north-east of Carlisle, is a good example. Although there are records of Anglo-Saxon parks, most seem to appear first in the thirteenth century as landowners sought permission to keep their own herds of deer for hunting. They were fenced with large banks and ditches and often had a hunting lodge; some of these later became known as the parkhouse or park farm. The parks of the Abbots of Furness have already been mentioned, but many lay lords had such parks. The names Park Farm and Troutbeck Park are still shown on the map and the stout walls of the deer park can be seen at the head of the Troutbeck Valley that leads to the Kirkstone Pass. The magnificent walk from Rydal over Heron Pike and Rydal Fell to Fairfield and back down High Pike follows a massive, if now crumbling, wall for most of the route with an outer ditch over much of its length; this wall enclosed Rydale, a perfect natural park on the Fleming estate. In 1090 William II created a big Royal deer park at Plumpton Hay, just to the south of Carlisle.

On a larger scale still, there were the stretches of forest. Again the names survive: Skiddaw Forest, for example, covers one of the largest stretches of inaccessible fell in the Lake District to the north of Skiddaw. Inglewood Forest, south of Carlisle, was perhaps the largest stretch of late-surviving forest in Cumbria. In 1300 it stretched from the Riven Eden at its confluence with the Eamont to Carlisle along the Roman road to the River Wampool, and then back up that stream and the Chalk Beck round the east side of the Skiddaw massif and back to Penrith. This was the largest royal hunting forest.

‘Forest’ in this context is a legal term implying that Forest Law, the severe laws relating to the rights of hunting, applied to the area. These rights could be given by the Crown to great Lords, as at Copeland in west Cumberland, or held directly by the King, as at Inglewood. Although hunting remained a major concern at Inglewood, settlement was not prevented and the new parish of Sebergham was created complete with a new parish church in the 1280s. However, large stretches of unenclosed tracts of this forest did survive until the Parliamentary Enclosure Award of 1819 finally abolished them.

As the area became more peaceful, as the population grew and the income from cattle and sheep became important to landowners, so the expanses of parks and forests were much reduced.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.