Cockermouth

“ No other hill-road is visible from the house or garden at Cockermouth. The view from the front of the old mansion is limited by houses, doubtless more so now than in last century; but there is no hill towards the Lorton Fells on the south or south-east, with a road over it, visible from any part of the town. Besides, as this was a very early experience of Wordsworth's—it was in "the morn of childhood" that the road was "daily present to his sight"—it must have been seen, either from the house or from the garden. ”

“ Elizabeth, Baroness Percy, the daughter and sole heir, married Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Algernon, their son, created Earl of Egremont and Baron Cockermouth, died 1750, and was father of Elizabeth, the Seymour-Percy heiress; but Duke Algernon had also a sister, Katherine, upon whose son, Sir Charles Wyndham, the earldom and barony, and the castle of Cockermouth, were settled, and so descended to George, the last earl, who died without a successor in 1845, bequeathing Cockermouth to his natural son. ”

“ In the art of electioneering Lowther had few equals. By means of a lavish expenditure of money and the unscrupulous exercise of his enormous influence he was generally able to command the two seats for Westmoreland and Cockermouth, and one seat for Cumberland, Appleby, and Carlisle. ”

“ Our family then lived at Cockermouth, and this fact was often mentioned amongst us, indicating the sensibility for which she was remarkable.”
As a specimen of the “Evening Voluntaries,” take the following:—
“Calm is the air, and loth to lose
Day’s grateful warmth, tho’ moist with falling dews.
Look for the stars, you’ll say that there are none ”

“ S.W. of Carlisle, on the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith, the London & North Western, and the Maryport & Carlisle railways. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5355. It is pleasantly situated on the river Derwent, at the junction of the Cocker, outlying hills of the Lake District sheltering it on the north, east and south. The castle has remains of Norman work in the keep, and other ancient portions (including the gateway) of later date, but is in part modernized as a residence. The grammar school was founded in 1676. The county industrial school is established in the town. ”

“ The Lake Country is also served by the Cockermouth, Keswick, and Penrith line, as important for the north as the Furness line is to the south. It connects the London and North-Western at Penrith with the Furness at Whitehaven, passing by Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite. At Threlkeld it is nearest Thirlmere, at Troutbeck it is nearest Ullswater, while from Cockermouth the tourist may easily reach Loweswater, Crummock, and Buttermere. ”

“ Bassenthwaite Water, connected with Derwentwater by the Derwent, is a smaller lake, but exceedingly beautiful, and Buttermere has a quaint little village which goes by the same name.
Among the many places within easy reach of Keswick are Cockermouth, the birthplace of Wordsworth; Wytheburn, the nearest village to Thirlmere; and Skiddaw, the ascent of which can be accomplished with comparative ease on pony-back. The summit is over 3000 feet above sea-level. ”

“ Coal-mining is referred to in the 15th century, and after the revival of the mining industries in the 16th century, rose to great importance. The saltpans about the estuaries of the Esk and the Eden were a source of revenue in the 12th century.
Cumberland returned three members for the county to the parliament of 1290, and in 1295 returned in addition two members for the city of Carlisle and two members each for the boroughs of Cockermouth and Egremont. The boroughs did not again return members until in 1640 Cockermouth regained representation. ”

“ Whether farming did not prosper, or the usual persecution drove him away, is uncertain, but in a short time he is traced once more in his native Lancashire. There Calamy states he died ; but Samuel Palmer (Nonconf. Mem. iii. 99) corrects this, and gives extracts from a letter dated Cockermouth, 16 April 1724, by which it would seem that he became minister of a 'dissenting congregation' in that town. ”

“ Last night the debate went on, nobody remarkably speaking but Macaulay and Wetherell; the former very brilliant, the latter long, rambling, and amusing, and he sat down with such loud and long cheering as everybody agreed they had never heard before in the House of Commons, and which was taken not so much as a test of the merits of the speech as of an indication of the disposition of the majority of the House. Wetherell was very good fun in a conversation he imagined at Cockermouth between Sir James Graham and one of his constituents. ”

“ The tourist generally spends the time possible for the casual excursionist at Scale Force, on a feeder of the Cocker after it has cleared the lake. It is a sheer fall of over a hundred feet when there is plenty of water. A kindred cataract in the neighbourhood is Sour Milk Force, the second waterfall of that name mentioned in this chapter. The main river, having sped through the meres and the meadows that separate them, passes through the Vale of Lorton, and enters the Derwent near the castle ruins at Cockermouth. ”

“ These lines were suggested during my residence under my son's roof at Moresby, on the coast near Whitehaven, at the time when I was composing those verses among the "Evening Voluntaries" that have reference to the sea. It was in that neighbourhood I first became acquainted with the ocean and its appearances and movements. My infancy and early childhood were passed at Cockermouth, about eight miles from the coast, and I well remember that mysterious awe with which I used to listen to anything said about storms and shipwrecks. Sea-shells of many descriptions were common in the town ”

“ The town was so important, through its baronial fortress, of which the gateway remains, that the Roundhead troops gave it the fatal honour of a passing visit, and there an end of the castle, which they promptly dismantled. But Wordsworth was born here, and the garden-terrace of his home was by Derwent side. The railway frequently crosses the Derwent between Cockermouth and Workington, keeping it on the whole close company through a generally level and ordinary country. Workington is in these days a prosperous seaport ”

“ The Perpendicular additions, including the armorial shields over the gateway, must have been later than 22 Richard II., when Maud, the Lucy heiress, carried Cockermouth Castle to Henry Percy, who agreed to quarter her arms. The Umfranville shield commemorates Maud’s first husband, Gilbert, Earl of Angus. The Nevile shield is that of Henry Percy’s first wife, who was a daughter of Ralph Lord Nevile. As this Henry was a very considerable person, and survived till 1408, it is probable that he built or rebuilt the upper part of the gatehouse between 1388–9 and 1408. ”

“ Dr. Cradock wrote to me (January 1886) ,
"an old map of the county round about Keswick, including Cockermouth, dated 1789, entirely confirms Dr. Dodgson's statement. The road over Hay Hill is marked clearly as a carriage road to Isel. The miles are marked on the map. The summit of the hill is naked: for the map marks woods, where they existed, and none are marked on Hay Hill."
Ed.
return
Footnote D: A part of the following paragraph is written with sundry variations of text, in Dorothy Wordsworth's MS. book, dated May to December 1802.—Ed. ”

“ He lost his seat for Carlisle in 1865, but in 1868 was again returned as a supporter of Mr Gladstone, and was member till 1885; though defeated for the new Cockermouth division of Cumberland in 1885, he won that seat in 1886, and he held it till the election of 1900, when his violent opposition to the Boer War caused his defeat, but in 1903 he was returned for the Camborne division of Cornwall and at the general election of 1906 was once more elected for his old constituency in Cumberland. ”

“ He visited the home of his childhood occasionally to refresh his heart with a cup of remembrance, and we find a note of a certain visit in Dorothy's letter to Mrs. Marshall. Writing in September, 1807, she says:—'W. and M. have just returned. They were at Cockermouth, our native place you know, and the Terrace Walk—that you have heard me speak of many a time—with the privet hedge, is still full of roses as it was thirty years ago. ”

“ It is from one and a half to two miles distant, of considerable height, is bare and destitute of trees, and has a road going directly over its summit, as seen from the terrace in Wordsworth's garden. This road is now used only as a footpath; but, fifty or sixty years ago it was the highroad to Isel, a hamlet on the Derwent, about three and a half miles from Cockermouth, in the direction of Bassenthwaite Lake. The hill is locally called the Hay, but on the Ordnance map it is marked Watch Hill. ”

“ Mr Cocker was on a chair in the corner, probably multiplying the squares in the table-cover by the flowers in the paper.
"How do you like France, Mr Cocker?" said Mr Bullion.
"Not at all, sir; the folks has no sense; and no wonder we always wallop them by sea or land."
"Hem! Must I remind you, sir, that this is my country; that the French are my countrymen; and that you by no means wallop them either by sea or land."
"You French! you Frenchman!" replied Mr Cocker; "that is a joke! Bullion ain't altogether a French name, I think? No, no; it smells of the bank; it does. ”

“ A story not an epitaph must write.
It was not easy to find the way to South Cockerington as the road to it literally forms a square, and then passes on from the churchyard gate right through a farm; but to reach North Cockerington you seem to go round at least five sides of a square or squares, then cross the Louth River, and then a bridge just above a water mill, and passing by two gates through a farmyard you arrive in a grass field, in which, devoid of any sort of fence on the north and west sides, the plain-looking church of Alvingham stands ”

“ THE quiet little village of Cockerham is hardly the spot one would expect to find selected as a place of residence by a gentleman of decidedly fast habits, and to whom a latch-key is indispensable; yet once upon a time the Evil One himself, it is said, took up his quarters in the go-to-bed-early hamlet. ”

“ This was an Augustinian foundation of the time of Henry I. The dale continues well wooded and very beautiful until Warkworth is reached, with its fine castle and remarkable hermitage. A short distance below this the Coquet has its mouth in Alnwick Bay (North Sea) , with the small port of Amble on the south bank, and Coquet Island a mile out to sea. The river is frequented by sportsmen for salmon and trout fishing. ”

“ As we round the Tynemouth cliffs the fishing village of Cullercoats comes into sight, rather over a mile away, with the dim, far-projecting Newbiggin Point a few miles beyond. On bright days a flash of light may reveal the white lighthouse at Coquet Island, by Warkworth town. Round the rocky promontory close at hand [Pg 172] there is a little bay, a projecting point of rock, and then a long stretch of yellow sand, broken almost at its centre by a brown, weedy reef of rocks, among which the pools linger when the tide goes down. ”

“ Cockerel, as I say, is extremely good-natured, and he bears out what I’ve heard said about the men in America being very considerate of the women. They evidently listen to them a great deal; they don’t contradict them, but it seems to me this is rather negative. There’s very little gallantry in not contradicting one; and it strikes me that there are some things the men don’t express. ”

“ Cockerel disappeared one fine day, without the smallest pretension to having broken my heart, I am sure, though it only depended on me to think they had! All the gentlemen are like that; you can't tell what they mean; everything is very confused; society appears to consist of a sort of innocent jilting. I think, on the whole, I am a little disappointed—I don't mean about one's not marrying; I mean about the life generally. ”

“ Martin Outwich, London, his most important work, some of the designs for which he sent to the Royal Academy. This church was pulled down in 1874. He built several large and handsome residences, and was employed in altering many more, among those designed or improved by him being Middleton Hall, Carmarthenshire, Gore Court, near Sittingbourne, Kent, and Nutwell Court, near Exeter. Cockerell lived at the house at the corner of Savile Row and Burlington Street, and latterly at Westbourne Lodge, Paddington, where he died on 12 July 1827, aged 74. ”

“ Coqueville is a little village planted in a cleft in the rocks, two leagues from Grandport. A fine sandy beach stretches in front of the huts lodged half-way up in the side of the cliff like shells left there by the tide. As one climbs to the heights of Grandport, on the left the yellow sheet of sand can be very clearly seen to the west like a river of gold dust streaming from the gaping cleft in the rock ”

“ But a crowing hen is notoriously a freak and an abomination.
In Lancashire there is a place called Ainsworth or Cockey: in Yorkshire there is a river Cock, and near Biggleswade is a place named Cockayne Hatley: the surname Cockayne is attributed to a village in Durham named Coken. In Northumberland is a river Cocket or Coquet, and in this district in the parish of St. John Lee is Cocklaw. Cockshott is an eminence in Cumberland and Cocks Tor—whereon are stone circles and stone rows—is a commanding height in Devon. ”

“ Captain Cockermuth was aware that he had not been entirely at the front-door. Two or three times he had crossed over to hold a chat with acquaintances on the other side the way; had strolled with one of them nearly up to Salt Lane and back. Upon catching hold of these two gentlemen, now brought in, he had found the parlour empty of occupants and the box not to be seen.
“Well, this is a nice thing—that a man can’t put his hand upon his own property when he wants to, or hear where it is!” grumbled he. “And what business on earth had Dene to meddle with the box?” ”