Chapter 39

Famous individuals

A surprising number of men and women born in or near to Cockermouth have achieved fame in a wide variety of fields. In the space available it is impossible to do more than mention briefly some of these, leaving the reader to refer to full biographies of the better known.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

On entering the town we are greeted by the sign ‘Cockermouth : Birthplace of William and Dorothy Wordsworth’ and the poet is the first to come to mind when thinking of Cockermouth’ s famous sons. [1] On the death of his mother when he was eight William was sent to Hawkshead School and it was here that he wrote his first verses as a school task. Of Hawkshead he said “One of the ushers taught me more Latin in a fortnight than I had learnt the two preceding years at Cockermouth.” In 1787 he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, graduating four years later. An enthusiastic republican, he toured France about the time of the revolution, returning home in 1792 and leaving behind Annette Vallon to have their daughter Caroline. There is strong evidence that he would have brought Annette to England but for the outbreak of war with France.

He lived in the Isle of Wight, with little money, and in order to become independent of his relatives’ charity decided to study law and meanwhile to keep himself by writing political articles for the press. However, his friend Raisley Calvert died in 1795 and left him £900 to cultivate his poetical talents, whereupon William gave up law and went to live with his sister Dorothy in Somerset. It was here that he began his friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Together they produced ‘Lyrical Ballads’ in 1798, which was not a financial success. He also wrote ‘The Prelude’ about this time, an autobiographical work which contains many of his references to Cockermouth but was not published until after his death. After touring Germany he and Dorothy moved to Grasmere in the last year of the century. In his successive homes of Dove Cottage, Grasmere Rectory, Allan Bank and Rydal Mount, William continued to write, becoming increasingly involved in the group of poets known as the Lakes School. His struggles against poverty and adverse criticism were helped by his appointment in 1813 as distributor of stamps for Westmorland at £500 a year and by an increasing recognition of and demand for his work. He had, in 1802, married Mary Hutchinson of Penrith and they had five children in the next eight years. Dorothy continued to live with the family. Increasing recognition brought financial rewards – an annuity of £100 from Sir George Beaumont to pay for a yearly tour and £800 from Lord Lonsdale to enable him to buy a small estate at Patterdale. Durham and Oxford made him an honorary D.C.L. in 1838 and 1839; he became poet laureate in 1843 when Southey died, an appointment which carried a pension of £300 for life; and about this time he resigned his post as stamp distributor in favour of his son. William died on 23rd April 1850 and is buried, with other members of his family, in Grasmere churchyard.

The eldest son, John, became vicar of Brigham in 1834 and his son, another John, followed him there. The local press reported that the younger John was fined £1 in 1874 for correcting a Sunday School boy for misbehaviour with the aid of an umbrella. [2] During his life William continued to visit Cockermouth, especially while his son was at Brigham, and in a letter of 1807 Dorothy wrote

• “Wand M. have just returned. They were at Coekermouth our native place you know, and the terraced 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.”

He still visited the house where he was born and took an active interest in the affairs of the town, such as an unsuccessful scheme to provide a new church in 1836. Several of his writings express his affection for Cockermouth.

” ……what benefit I owed

To thee and those domains of rural peace,

Where to the sense of beauty first my heart

Was opened, … “

Earl Mayo (1822-1872)

Standing prominently in the middle of Main Street is the statue of Richard South well Bourke, the sixth Earl of Mayo, but known for most of his life (until his father died in 1867) by the courtesy title of Lord Naas. [3] He was the eldest often in a Protestant family, born on 21st February 1822, and said to be descended from William Fitzadelm de Borgo who governed Ireland in 1066.

He was an accomplished rider, a clever shot and a good swimmer. In politics a moderate conservative, he served in Parliament for 20 years – 1847-52 for Kildare, 1852-7 for Coleraine and 1857-68 for Cockermouth, following here Henry Wyndham who transferred to be MP for the western area of the county.

Lord Mayo held office in the Derby and Disraeli governments, being Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1852, 1858-9 and 1866-8. His policies were conciliatory, especially in Ireland, and Queen Victoria spoke highly of him and his work when he died in 1872. He was very active in relieving the Irish famine of 1847.

His representation of Cockermouth resulted from the link he formed when on 31 st October 1849 he married Blanche Julia Wyndham, the third surviving daughter of the first Lord Leconfield. They had seven children.

In 1869 Mayo was appointed Viceroy and Governor-General of India, a governorship which was soon brought to an abrupt end by assassination. On 8th February 1872 he inspected the convict prison near Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. He had been heavily guarded all day, but leaving after dark he was stabbed when on the pier and fell into the water. On being helped out he remarked “I don’t think I am much hurt”, but died shortly afterwards. His assassin, Shere Ali, was a native of the Kyber Pass area, serving a sentence for murder, and said God had ordered him to kill the enemy of his country. The Indian Government paid an annual pension of £1000 to the Countess, to which the British Parliament added another annual £1000, and India awarded £20,000 to the children.

The statue is reputed to be a good representation of the Earl in his viceroy’s robes. The figure is nine feet high, carved from a solid block of Sicilian marble by W. & T. Wills of London, and the pedestal on which it stands is twelve feet. The cost of £800 was raised by public subscription.

The unveiling was planned for the first week in June 1875, but there was a long controversy regarding the site. One plan was to place it at the corner of Station Street and Main Street, narrowing the footpaths on the corner to allow more room round the statue. There was a suggestion to place it on the old bowling green at the castle, but this was not seriously considered. A position in the widest part of Main Street was finally chosen, £30 being spent on making it wider still by curving the footpath parallel to the houses on the south side. [4]

In May it was reported that the statue was finished and ready for erection and that lifting gear would be brought to the site in mid-August. Then early on a Thursday morning in July word passed round the town that the statue was up. Crowds flocked to Main Street from all over the town to discover a white image of George III surmounting the granite pedestal – an old ship’s figurehead borrowed from a Cockermouth garden! The true Mayo arrived by rail on 13 August, was hoisted up on the 16th and unveiled by Lord Napier and Ettrick on the 19th. [5] (Plate 18).

The unveiling was made the occasion of a town celebration, [6] beginning with a procession from the Market Place. Lord Napier was supported by other dignitaries, who with subscribers to the fund occupied stands erected in the street, and by several thousand townspeople. A public lunch in the Agricultural Hall was presided over by the Earl of Lonsdale. Later in the day there was tea for 1300 children on the Castle Lands at 5 p.m. and dancing on the bowling green from 4 p.m., with Chinese lanterns lending a festive air. To ensure that everything proceeded smoothly, 30 extra police were drafted into the town for the day!

‘Mayo’ was run into a number of times over the years, but never so violently as early one morning in 1964 when two tankers were racing through the town and one hit the statue. Mayo fell to the ground and broke into several pieces and every block of masonry except the lowest was displaced by the force of the impact. The statue was put together and re-erected, but not without the odd voice that now was the chance to remove a traffic hazard to some other site. Miraculously, the tanker driver lived. (Plate 19).

John Dalton (1766-1844)

As Deborah Dalton lay in a humble Eaglesfield cottage giving birth to a son [7] in 1766 she little thought that 78 years later 40,000 people would file past his coffin. Deborah came to Eaglesfield from Caldbeck when she married (at Pardshaw) Joseph Dalton, whose grandparents had been first generation Quakers.

Joseph came of yeoman stock and was a home weaver; Deborah, a woman of character and energy, augmented the income by selling paper, ink and quills in the porch of the cottage. They had six children, three of whom reached maturity.

The boys received their first education from their father, John later going to John Fletcher’s school in Pardshaw meeting house premises. When Fletcher discontinued his school Dalton opened one in Eaglesfield when twelve or thirteen years old, first in a bam, then in his home and finally in the Eaglesfield meeting house. The weekly school pence brought him about 5s. a week and he augmented this by selling paper, etc. John attracted the attention of an able Eaglesfield Quaker Elihu Robinson, who gave him further lessons in mathematics and instilled in him a life-long interest in meteorology. A cousin had a school in Kendal, in which he was helped by John’s older brother Jonathan. John gave up his school after about two years and turned to farming, but when the cousin died and Jonathan took over the Kendal school he left farming to become assistant to his brother. He was now about 16. In Kendal he formed a close friendship with John Gough, a blind Quaker scholar immortalised by Wordsworth in ‘The Excursion’, a man versed in Greek, Latin, French, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and philosophy. In addition to teaching in the school, Dalton gave public lectures on natural philosophy, kept meteorological records, contributed articles to magazines and carried out observations on his own body. He thought of training in medicine to earn more money, but while hesitating because of the length of the Edinburgh course he successfully answered an advertisement for a teacher of mathematics and philosophy at the Manchester New College. He moved in 1792, now aged 26, and lived at first in rooms over the college library. Six years later he left the college staff to undertake research in chemistry, supporting himself by private teaching. He made many friendships with leading scientists and was offered several tempting and lucrative posts, but these he always refused in order to pursue his own work. He gave numerous lectures [8] including 116 papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was secretary, vice-president and, for the last 27 years of his life, president.

It was to this Society that he made the first communications of his atomic theory, for which he is best remembered. To the same Society he related his researches into his own colour blindness, a disease for long known as ‘Daltonism’. His eyes, which he left for research, are among the Dalton relics of Dalton College, founded by Quakers as a hall of residence in Manchester University.

Dalton never married, although he was chivalrous to women and formed a number of warm friendships. He always retained his Cumberland accent, had a deep gruff voice, was blunt and outspoken but kind and helpful, lived very simply and never forgot his friends of early years. He enjoyed nature and music. He climbed Helvellyn over 30 times, the last time when he was 70, making observations and collecting samples of air at different heights. In 1844 the Lit. and Phil. made him a presentation for his zeal and perseverance in making over 200,000 meteorological observations in some 52 years. He was now in failing health and died eight days later.

Manchester Quakers made efforts to give Dalton the simple funeral he would have liked, but the city insisted on a public one. 40,000 people filed past his body as it lay in Manchester Town Hall, where there is a mural painting of him collecting marsh gas and his statue is in the main entrance. The funeral procession of a hundred carriages stretched for a mile.

Many anecdotes could be told of this very colourful character. One typical of his honesty and kindness relates to a student who had missed one lecture of a course but asked for a certificate of full attendance. John refused to issue it, but added “if thou wilt come tomorrow I will go over the lecture thou hast missed”.

He refused a knighthood because he would not bow to any man, even the king, but he did accept honorary degrees from England and the continent and was a Fellow of the Royal Society, which granted him its gold medal. William IV awarded him a pension of £150, increased in 1836 to £300 a year. When presented to WiIliam IV he wore his scarlet doctor’s gown instead of court dress and sword (but it would not appear scarlet to John, more a bottle green). Visiting Eaglesfield some time after this presentation (he often returned to Cumberland, as the plaque outside the Globe Hotel testifies) John Fletcher asked him about his visit to St. James’s.

John told him that the King had said “Ah! Dr. Dalton, how are you getting on in Manchester?”, a reference to the Battle of Peterloo; to which he replied “Well, I don’t know, just middlin’ I think”. A horrified Fletcher said “Why, John, thou hardly showed court manners in addressing the king in such common parlance”. “Mebbe sae” replied John, “but what can ye sae to sichlike fowk?”.

Fletcher Christian (1764 – c.1794?)

Fletcher Christian [9] was born on 25th September 1764 and travelled to Brigham School by pony before entering the Free Grammar School at Cockermouth. His birthplace, Moorland Close, is more than 300 years old, the house and farm buildings enclosed within a wall for defence and entered through an arched gateway which once had strong folding doors.

Fletcher went to sea when quite young and at the end of 1787 was appointed chief mate on the Bounty, under its captain William Bligh, a man of similar age. The ship was fitted out by the British government to go to Tahiti to collect bread fruit trees and take them to the West Indian colonies. Arriving at Tahiti in October 1788 they were ready to leave six months later with 1015 plants, but the crew had become demoralised by the long stay in such a luxurious island and angered by Bligh’s treatment of them. Christian suffered most abusive insults from the captain one day and determined to leave the ship by raft during the night, trusting to be carried to land. He was unable to put his plan into effect and the following day, 28th April 1789, when 24 days out from Tahiti, a quarter of the crew mutinied. This was a quick decision of minutes only and Bligh and 18 of the crew were set adrift in the ship’s launch, in which they travelled 3,600 miles before landing at Timor on 14th June.

The mutineers returned to Tahiti where most wished to stay, but Christian was anxious to leave to avoid punishment by the government. Eventually Christian and some of the men and their Tahitian wives settled on Pitcairn, a small island 2 ½ by 1 ¼ miles.

Meanwhile 14 of the mutineers who had stayed initially on Tahiti when the others left for Pitcairn were arrested by the navy after Bligh had reported the events on his return to England, but only three were executed as the rest escaped. Bligh led a further expedition for bread fruit trees, this time successfully, and in 1806 became Governor of New South Wales, where his continued tyranny resulted in him being deposed and arrested two years later.

What did happen to Christian? One theory is that he was killed with others after four years on the island. Another that he was seen in Devonport and visited his family in Cumberland about ] 808, but this is very doubtful. What is certain is that descendants of the mutineers visit Moorland Close today, anxious to see the leader’s birthplace.

Fearon Fallows (1788 -1831)

A cottage in Low Sand Lane, facing the side of Words worth House, has a tablet which reads

• “In this house, in the year 1788, was born Fearon Fallows, MA., F.R.S., late fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. H. M. Astronomer. Died at the Cape of Good Hope, 25th. July 1831.” [10]

In this cottage father John Fallows wove shalloons for a living. When Fearon was only five he astounded his father by his powers of calculation. After attending school in Brigham he worked at home, helping in the family weaving, until at 19 or 20 he became assistant master at Plumbland School.

Fearon’s ability, especially in algebra, attracted the attention of clergy and gentry in the neighbourhood and they subscribed to enable him to matriculate and enter St John’s in 1808. Here he was a contemporary of Palmerston, Herschel and Playfair. He obtained his RA. when 24, being third wrangler, following Herschel as first and Peacock, later Dean of Ely, as second. For two years he had a mathematics lectureship in Corpus Christi College. He was a Fellow of St. John’s and in 1818 became Moderator (the principal examiner in mathematics) in the University.

Fearon was appointed director of an observatory to be built at the Cape of Good Hope and set sail in May 1821 with his wife, Mary Ann Hervey, the eldest daughter of the vicar of Bridekirk. He directed the building of the observatory and incorporated a small chapel where he held a service each Sunday. He suffered from sunstroke, scarlatina and dropsy and latterly was carried in a blanket from his bed into the observatory.

In spite of his early death Fallows made a considerable contribution to astronomy, cataloguing the principal fixed stars seen from the Cape and listing 142 new ones. In Askew’s opinion,

• “As a mathematician and general scholar, Fallows was the greatest man Cockermouth has produced. His knowledge of algebra approached the marvellous.” [11]

Dr. John Walker (1759-1830)

Approximately on the site of the Conservative Club in Main Street there was at one time a blacksmith’s shop where, on 31 July 1759, was born John Walker. [12] After attending the Free Grammar School he helped in his father’s smithy for five years, then went to Dublin. He had become interested in engraving and in the period 1780-3 did several plates for the Hibemian Magazine. Part of his time in Dublin was spent in running a school, but he also travelled widely to prepare a geography and universal gazetteer. This was published before John was thirty and ran through six editions in twenty years. He accompanied Sir Ralph Abercromby on his Egyptian expedition.

Walker moved to London before the end of the century because it was cheaper to print books there, and now the whole pattern of his life changed. In 1799 he qualified as a doctor at Guy’s Hospital and became interested in vaccination. For the rest of his life he was a keen supporter of Jenner’s campaign. Admitted to the College of Physicians, Walker was for 17 years Director of the National Vaccine Board, of which Jenner was president, and with a colleague introduced vaccination in the near east.

A simple, earnest man, direct in his thought and with liberal ideas, he associated with the Quakers and adopted Quaker dress; but he never officially joined Friends because he was not certain that his faith was sound. He was one of the pioneers against slavery and worked also to arouse public opinion against the Indian practice of sacrificing widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres.

John Walker died on 23rd June 1830, a “great apostle and martyr in the cause of vaccination”.

Abraham Fletcher (1714 – 1792)

In 1714 was born Abraham Fletcher, [13] one of seven children of a Little Broughton pipe maker. His education was short – three weeks, when he was very young – and he became a pipe-maker like his father. Becoming dissatisfied with pipe-making he began to educate himself, retiring in the evening to a tiny room above the porch of the house. He married when young and both his wife and his family were very opposed to Abraham’s interest in learning. This was not because his family suffered, for he never neglected his manual work, and indeed his wife Mary, a woman who talked a lot, thought little and smoked a clay pipe, changed her attitude when she realised there might be more money in teaching than in pipe-making.

Abraham first mastered reading and writing, then turned his attention to arithmetic. He progressed so well that he became the village schoolmaster when 30. His studies included the writings of herbalists and his knowledge of botany made him the village doctor, with a fame far beyond Broughton for the power of his remedies, kept in bowls and bottles or hanging from the beams of his home. From botany he went on to astrology and acquired a further reputation for telling the future by studying the stars.

It was, however, in mathematics that Fletcher really made his mark. In 1753 his “Universal Measurer: the Theory of Measuring in all its various uses, whether artificers’ works, gauging, surveying or mining” was printed in Whitehaven. This 600 page volume was described by another mathematician, John Howard, as “the largest and best collection of mathematical knowledge … that has hitherto appeared in the English language”. Nine years later followed “The Universal Measurer and Mechanic, a work equally useful to the Gentleman, Tradesman, and Mechanic, with copperplates” .

Fletcher died when 78, having achieved wide fame as a mathematician and renown in his own county as ‘doctor’ and astrologer. He was buried in the Baptist burial ground in the village where he had been born, leaving savings of £4000, a very large sum for those days.

Edward Waugh and Neddy

Edward Waugh was Cockermouth’s last member of Parliament while the town remained a separate constituency. He is remembered less for his parliamentary work than for ‘Neddy’, the clock erected in his honour at the junction of Main Street and Station Street.

The Waugh Memorial Fund was opened to honour the town’s solicitor and last M.P. and in January 1893 purchased land west of the Congregational Church, extending from Main Street to the Derwent, for £450 and it was hoped the council would erect a library here. The library did not materialise until the turn of the century, and meanwhile a scheme was put forward for a memorial

clock. [14] There were delays because of arguments about the site – should it be placed in the Market Place or at Station Street corner, where the council were concerned that it might interfere with the town sewer ! In April the committee decided to go ahead with the clock scheme although the site was not yet fixed, ordering from W Potts and Sons of Leeds a 40 feet high column [12 m], the clock to have faces 4 feet by 3 feet [1.2 m x 0.9m] and a two-hundredweight bell to strike the hours, the whole to be in iron, bronze and gold. A wooden structure was erected on the Main Street site to give some idea of the project. Eventually the memorial was erected here and ‘Neddy’ became one of Cockermouth’s most prominent features.

However, as the motor age advanced Neddy became a traffic hazard, especially as it was not centrally placed in Main Street which made it more difficult: for cars to get round it.

In May 1932 the Council decided the clock must come down and two months later suggested a new public clock. [15] By late August Neddy had gone, the dials and movement sold to a Leeds man for a mere £4-10s. The Council decided to fix the explanatory plaque from the clock to the front of the Court House and to place the bell and a large photograph of Neddy in the library.

James Duffield (1835 – )

A man who found his way to this area as owner of Tallentire Hall was born at Tipton in 1835, one of the fifteen children of a poor banksman who earned 3s. or 3s-6d. [18p] a day at a colliery near Dudley. James Duffield [16] had no schooling, working in the coal pits or ironstone mines of the Earl of Dudley until he was 16, starting when seven as door-boy diverting the air in the mines. He had several accidents, sometimes being insensible for days at a time, and in a period of nine months his father and four older brothers were all killed at work, leaving James the eldest of the family. When 20 he married, signed the pledge, and began to educate himself by attending Mechanics Institute classes. After several years in Staffordshire and Sheffield Duffield became a puddler at Cammell and Coo’s new forge, rising to night foreman when only 26 years of age, and five years later to day manager in the armour plate mills and puddling forge. After a further five years, now 36, he was chosen from 40 as manager of the new Dronfield Steelworks which achieved a reputation for Bessemer steel rails. He decided on Workington as a suitable site for the firm with its access to ore, harbour and railways and transferred the whole undertaking from Yorkshire.

Duffield was a well-respected and much-loved man in the fifteen years he spent at Tallentire, serving on the Workington Town Council, as County Councillor and as Chief Magistrate

The Denwood Family

The first member of the Denwood family [17] to settle in Cockermouth is reputed to have come in 1745 from Charles Edward’s rebel army. The first written record is of John Denwood, Dainwood or Danewood being buried at All Saints on 27th April 1786. The well known members of the family have been John (1845-1890), Jonathan M. (1869-1933), John (1871-1917) and Ernest R. Denwood. (d. 1950s).

The first John had a chequered career. Born in a two-roomed cottage in Skinner Street, since replaced, he was an only son. For a time he played leads in Shakespeare, etc., with a group of strolling players in northern England and southern Scotland, but the company was unsuccessful and John returned to Cockermouth to work as a tailor. He was a generous man and soon got through his money_ In the early 1870s he went to Barrow, hoping to find work in the growing shipbuilding town, and later tried London, Bradford, etc. Very poor, he tramped back to Cockermouth ill-shod and ill-fed (a threepenny loaf lasted him three days) with only a few coppers in his pocket.

He was seriously ill, but recovered sufficiently to try to find work in Texas in the early 1880s with his friend John Conkey, but work was hard to come by and he was often unwell so eventually returned home again. Then improvement came. He found work in Bumley, where he was happy and decided to take his family. However, returning to Cockermouth he died from paralysis of the spine and was buried near Tom Rudd Beck in the cemetery.

John left behind a number of writings – in 1869 his ‘Poems on various subjects’, printed by Isaac Evening of 59 Main Street and sold for 1s. ;’Boggle Willy’s Adventures between Cockermouth and Lorton’ in 1877; ‘The Cumbrian Brothers or How we raise the Revenue’ in 1885; and ‘Curnbrian Carols and other poems’. Many local places and characters featured in his poems, especially the first volume from which some verses from ‘Kirkgate Brow Boggle’ are given

“Twas on a stonny night.

(True is the tale I tell),

Young Bella got a dreadful fright

While going to Scarr Well.

O’er Kirkgate Brow she had to pass,

 All, save the stonn, was still,

And, Oh! she got a fright, poor lass,

When just on Kirkgate Hill.”

The next few verses tell ofher fear, ofher flight home and ofher father’s dash from the house armed with cobble stones to deal with the cause ofher terror.

“In vain he list’ning search’d around;

But soon the tempest’s howl

Arous’d a horrid whistling sound

That shook his very soul.

He thought the noise came from the dike,

Or bushes on the wall;

His courage fail’d, and, coward-like,

He let the cobbles fall.

His flesh, now shudd’ring, crept with fear,

For oh! he thought of death;

And dreading that the ghost would hear,

He scarce durst draw his breath.

A while he silent, trembling stood,

Then, desp’rate, made a rush;

The’ quaking terror chill’d his blood,

He grasped the thorny bush.

And with the bush he grasp’d the host,

But oh! it made him roar;

He nigh his right hand fingers lost,

And smeared himself with gore.

For he a broken bottle snatch’d,

That lay across a bough;

The gusty winds the neck hole atch’d,

And loudly whistled through.”

Memoirs of this John Denwood were published by his son E. R. Denwood as ‘The Cumbrian Caroller’ in 1936.

Jonathan is remembered for the novel ‘Red Ike’ written in collaboration with S. Fowler Wright. It brought him fame when he was suffering a long illness after a hard life. The second John wrote dialect poems and the Cumbrian dialect was the chief interest of Emest R. Denwood.

Joseph Faulder (1730 1816) and the Cockermouth School of Portrait Painters

Joseph Faulder, who was to become the ‘father’ of the Cockermouth School of Portrait Painters, [18] was born in a house adjoining the King’s Arms Inn. He was described as

• “a man of much local celebrity as a portrait painter, mathematician and philosopher; his remarkable attainments being all self-acquired. He is stated to have been a most excellent person both socially and morally; but on the mysteries of a future state and the immortality of the soul, he was strangely sceptical” [19]

Faulder’s nephew Joseph Sutton was born 32 years later in the same house as his uncle, who taught him to paint and encouraged him to go to London and study at the Royal Academy. This he did, and on his return and after his marriage, moved to Rogerscale where he built himself a painting-house in a delightful situation on the banks of the Cocker. He became a member of the Royal Academy and one of his best known studies is ‘The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green and his Daughter’. So great was the demand for portraits by him that at one time he employed six apprentices George Sheffield, Robert Taylor, Robert Hird, Thomas Scarrow, John Lewthwaite and Mr. Askew. Two of these exhibited at the Royal Academy and George Sheffield studied in its school.

The Cockermouth School was an unusual development in such an isolated situation. It existed from about 1760 to 1840 and included in its group Faulder (1730-1816), Sutton (1762-1843), Taylor (about 1811-1870), Lewthwaite (active 1830-1866), Scarrow (active 1831-3) and Sheffield (1800 1852).

Surprising is the fact that most of the group were Quakers, at a time when painting and other arts were frowned upon in the Society of Friends. The births of Joseph Sutton’s parents are in the Quaker records, also their marriage at Cockermouth and Joseph Faulder’s birth. One of Sutton’s portraits was of George Fox, founder of the Friends, but as Fox died in 1690 this cannot have been from life.

Writers and Poets

In addition to those already mentioned there have been others from the Cockermouth area known for their writings. O.S.Macdonell, who married a member of the Harris family and retired from abroad to PapcastIe, wrote two novels with local settings- ‘Thorston Hall’ and ‘George Ashbury’. Robert Barnes, born in the town in 1782 and a connection of the Denwood family, published a book of verse. Isaac Wilkinson (1753-1836) was born at the eastern end of South Street. A classmate of Fletcher Christian and a cousin of E. R. Denwood’s paternal grandmother, he was also a poet. His birthplace was in a narrow court near the Cocker, approached through a massive wooden door which led to John Pearson’s woollen mill. [20] At the former Blue Bell Inn in Main Street was born about 1777 John Whitelock, who became a clergyman and wrote both prose and poetry. [21] John Fell was born in the town in 1735. He rose to become an eminent dissenting minister and wrote on a variety of topics, including English grammar and the idolatry of Greece and Rome. [22] From outside the town came Thomas Tickell (1685-1740), born in Bridekirk Vicarage. He entered Queen’s College. Oxford, when 15 and was a fellow at 23. He served under his friend Addison as an under-secretary of state. He also wrote poems. [23] John Hudson, born at Routenbeck in the first house on the right from the Pheasant Inn, entered Queen’s at 14, became a classical scholar, author and Doctor of Divinity, and when he died in 1719 aged 57 was principal of St. Mary’s Hall. He is buried in the chancel of St. Mary’s Church at Oxford. [24]

Born in Wigton in 1795 and dying in Tasmania in 1886, John Woodcock Graves, writer of ‘De yer Ken John Peel’, was believed to have lived with his uncle, when a young man at the ‘The Lamb’ in Challoner Street However, it appears that the ‘Lamb’ was occupied by the ‘Grave’ family and not the ‘Graves’. In Woodcock Graves own biographical notes, he refers to living in the inn, opposite Joseph Faulder, (of the Cockermouth School of Painters) and it therefore seems likely that he resided in Main Street. Short visits to the town were paid by William Harrison Ainsworth, who spent a week at the Appletree in 1848, [26] and Hall Caine, who had many holidays in a house opposite the Globe. [27] Robert Louis Stevenson describes his stay at Globe in his ‘Essays of Travel’. [28]

Industrialists

Most of the industrial leaders of Cockermouth have already been mentioned. We may add Isaac Fletcher of Tarn Bank near Greysouthen, much involved in the iron and coal trades, but also an astronomer and historian and finding time to be a Liberal M.P. and to serve as first president of the Cockermouth Scientific and Literary Society. He wrote in 1876 the first study of industrial archaeology, ‘The Archaeology of the West Cumberland Coal Trade’. [29]

Extending the term ‘industry’ to agriculture, William Dickinson who was born near Mockerkin invented the Cumberland clod-crusher. He was a writer, botanist and geologist. [30]

On the other side of Cockermouth, Whistling Syke near Broughton was built in 1708 by a potter who was related to Josiah Wedgwood. [31]

Miscellaneous

A number of local men and women travelled far in the early days of Quakerism [32] James Dickinson of Greentrees near Randlecross visited Ireland twelve times, America twice and also Germany and Holland for the Society of Friends. He died in 1749 aged 82 and was buried in Eaglesfield Burial Ground, having been a Quaker ‘minister’ years. John Burnyeat, born at Crabtree Beck by Loweswater in 1631, although little educated, travelled in Great for Britain, the 64 West Indies, America, and Ireland where he died in 1690. William Graham, a native of Mockerkin, was described by Jonathan Harris as “One of the greatest scholars in England”. Educated at St. Bees, he was a mathematician and also mastered eight languages, yet he lived very simply as head of Dean School. [33]

The town and villages had their share of colourful characters, outstanding amongst whom was Salathiel Court, born in Papcastle at the end of the 17th. century and described by Askew as a joker, wastrel, painter and illegal marrier, following a strange and wild career. [34]

Rather outside our area Robert Eaglesfield was bom at Allerby, but he enters the story of Cockermouth as the founder of Queen’s College, Oxford, in which several Cockermouth boys have become students. Eaglesfield Scholarships are granted to students from the county. Robert became rector of Brough and confessor to Queen Phillippa, and it was in her honour that he named the college he founded. [35]

Recent ‘Characters’

In the early part of this century a number of colourful characters travelled round Cockermouth and the villages selling their wares. Such was Mrs. Allan, a “grand old lady well known and respected”. She was pure Romany and for a silver coin would tell fortunes, but this was not her real trade. Mrs. Allan was virtually a travelling bazaar, for in a huge basket balanced on a flat cap she took to the villagers ribbons, lace, dusters, towels, tapes, threads, elastic, baking tins, etc. [36]

‘Dearham Mary’ who lived in the Gote hawked rubbing stone for marking steps and stone floors with fancy designs. [37]

‘Freddy Cairns’ was well known in West Cumberland. His jingle ran

“Gather up your rags and bones, gather up, gather up,

For your windmills they will fly,

Take you up into the sky.

Gather up, gather up.” [38]

The windmills were toy ones given in exchange for rags and bones.

1. R. Denwood recalls a character of an earlier time held up as a warning to children in his childhood that if they misbehaved “Drummer Robin will come”. Of ‘Robin’ the church register records

• “Robert Atkinson, of Lamplugh, late of this place, skinner, who for a period of 40 years or upwards beat a drum about this town, morning and evening, for which he acquired the familiar appellation of Drummer Robin, by which he will long be remembered by the inhabitants, died July 4th. 1800.”

He was remembered a hundred years later as a threat to the naughty!

In contrast a great favourite with both boys and girls was Jimmy MiIlington [39] who would relate his major exploits to an enthralled audience. On one occasion he was asked to play football for a Derwent Street team against one from St. Helen’s Street. The match took place in Deer Orchard. Jimmy kicked the ball with such force that it was lost over the Drill Hall. Some time later, according to Jimmy, if was found lodged inside All Saints Clock!