RESTORED FROM THE RUBBLE
Set within a 3,000-acre deer park, and surrounded by 130-acre gardens, Lowther Castle, approximately 6 miles south of Penrith, was once one of the grandest Regency houses in the North West. The land at Lowther has been occupied since 1150, when Dolfin, a Viking descendant, settled in the area and gave it the name, ‘lauthr’, in Old Norse, meaning ‘foaming river’. From the 14th-16th centuries, it was a hall similar in design to Sizergh or Levens, and in the 17th century, it was extensively improved, with the addition of a gatehouse, galleries and outer hall. Then, in 1718, it was eviscerated by fire. The rebuilding was eventually undertaken by the architect Sir Robert Smirke, who would later design the British Museum, but at the age of 25, Lowther was his first commission. Work began in 1806 and was completed in 1814. It was, at this time, an opulent home, fitted with Gothic stucco, the state rooms gilded and hung with silk. When the 2nd Earl of Lonsdale inherited it, he filled it with collections of antique Roman sculpture, tapestries from Gobelins Manufactory, which supplied French Royalty, and canvases by Flemish painter Frans Snyders. The extravagant 5th Earl, Hugh Lonsdale, with his regiment of yellow-liveried servants, fleet of yellow motor cars and pack of yellow dogs, improved it still further, remodelling the stables and gardens, and adding a new lodge, dubbed The Emperor’s Gate. However, high taxes and a slump in farm income in the 1930s led him to sell first Whitehaven Castle, then Barleythorpe and Carlton House Terrace. In 1936, Lowther Castle, too, was closed. During the Second World War, it was requisitioned and used as a tank training range, and in 1947, the contents were sold off. In 1957, unable to let it out or find other suitable custodians, and facing £25 million in death duties, the 7th Earl decided to demolish the interior and take off the roof. In a drastic decline in dignity, pig pens were built on the forecourt and a broiler chicken factory on the south lawns, with a plantation of Sitka spruce planted partly as a screen, but 2006 saw funding secured to restore the castle shell and gardens. Today, the deer park is managed with an ethos of regenerative agriculture to allow wildlife to flourish. Hay and grassland meadows have been planted; Glenn and Dragonfly, two Eurasian beavers, have been released onto the estate, and the extensive grasslands are grazed by hardy pigs and cattle. The gardens too, once a mossy wilderness, have been transformed. Though the work is ongoing, visitors can now wander the courtyard between clipped hornbeam sentinels, explore the rose garden planted with 1,250 eglantine roses and roam the orchard of old Cumbrian varieties of apple. the second half of the 18th century, pencils. The Pencil Museum, on the western edge of town, tells the story of this surprising industry. Inside is the world’s first pencil, Second World War pencils, with hidden maps, and one of the largest colour pencils in the world, measuring almost 26ft (8m) in length.
The complete history of the town is told at Keswick Museum and Art Gallery.
Though the museum was founded in 1873, it only moved to its current location in 1898, spending most of the preceding years in the Moot Hall. The building in which it is now housed is the earliest purpose-built museum in Cumbria.
The largely volunteer-run team care for approximately 20,000 objects related to its landscape and natural history, community, industrial history and arts and crafts. Among these are the Musical Stones of Skiddaw: a grand lithophone, made of hornfels rock. The founder of the original museum, Peter Crosthwaite, built the first one. While walking across Skiddaw, the pyramidal mountain north of Keswick, he discovered that its stones made a musical sound when kicked. Chipping carefully away at them, he was able to create an instrument similar to a xylophone. Then, 55 years later in 1840, stonemason Joseph Richardson created the ornate eight-octave instrument on display today.
Over the River Greta, Station Road leads to the centre of Keswick, where shops and eateries face one another across the cobbled streets. In the middle stands the Moot Hall, a tower of grey limewashed stone and slate, with pale stone dressings and a one-handed clock. It was built in 1813, replacing a building that was not
well loved. “The town of Keswick is much improved by the demolition of the shambles,” wrote the poet Robert Southey.
A two-minute walk to St John’s Street leads to the Northern Lights Gallery, displaying work by local artists. One of these is the painter Maria Burton. In her work, energetic brushstrokes loaded with colour sweep across the canvas. Smudged and swirled oils create a vivid sense of rain-laden clouds moving through the landscape, and the shapes of the hills echo the colours of the sky. “My paintings are often very large, to convey a sense of the place,” she says. “I’m not after a reproduction or realistic representation; that’s secondary to what it feels like to be there. It’s about moments in time.”
Based in Penrith, Maria works in charcoal, pencil and acrylics before painting the final piece in oils. “I’m inspired by the energy,” she says. “It never, ever stops moving. Blue sky days are gorgeous, but the other days interest me most. Even if you’re out in terrible weather, you can almost guarantee that the sky’s going to split apart, and it’s almost like the gods sending down light. It catches on the rain and the hail that moves across the landscape, like someone’s drawing back a curtain. I don’t know anywhere else where that’s readily to hand.”
“like the bulwark of this favored plain, Alone thou standest, monarch of the scene,— Thou glorious mountain, on whose ample breast The sunbeams love to play, the vapors love to rest”
Robert Southey, ‘Keswick’
Just a few doors down from the gallery, the Alhambra has been screening films since 1913, making it one of Britain’s oldest surviving cinemas. For a small town, Keswick has a strong artistic leaning, with the Theatre by the Lake situated on the southern edge of town, overlooking Crow Park and Derwentwater. Officially opened in 1999, it was born out of a travelling theatre, called Blue Boxes, which was developed after the Second World War to bring theatre to people who could not otherwise access it. In 1975, after failing its MoT, Blue Boxes set up in a car park in Keswick, where it continued to show plays until falling into disrepair. Inside the current building are two stages, the 400-seat Main House and 100-seat Studio, hosting locally produced and touring work. There is also a rehearsal room, café and two exhibition spaces, showing work from professional artists to local schoolchildren.
Lake of islands
Stepping out of the theatre and down to the lake, Derwentwater glimmers in the late afternoon sunlight, the ripples of its deep blue water tipped with gold. Like Ullswater, it was formed by glacial action and is assumed to have once connected to Bassenthwaite Lake, making one long, thin body of water snaking north-west. Keswick itself is built on a series of low hills, composed of glacial debris and smoothed by thick layers of ice.
Unlike Ullswater, Derwentwater has several islands. St Herbert’s, at 4-5 acres, is the largest and was named after the priest who made it his hermitage late in the 7th century. His cell remains can still be found in the undergrowth in the northern part
of the island. This small, wooded island also inspired Beatrix Potter’s Owl Island in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.
The other three largest are Rampsholme, Lord’s Island and Derwent Island; the last of these, with its 18th century house, chapel and small fort, is the only inhabited island on the lake. It is open five days a year to visitors, who reach it by canoe, with two hours to explore.
Boating of many kinds has been popular on the lake since 1781, when Peter Crosthwaite and Joseph Pocklington, who built the house on Derwent Island, organised an annual regatta. Sailing boats, steamboats and motor boats skimmed through the water, sails flashing merrily in the winds. Today, canoes, kayaks, paddleboards and rowing boats can be hired from Derwent Marina, but perhaps the easiest way to set sail is aboard one of Keswick Launch Co.’s heritage boats. Formed in 1935, when individual operators on Derwentwater joined to form one company, many of its boats are still of the same era. The wood-panelled Lady Derwentwater was built in 1926 and was used as Captain Flint’s houseboat in the 1974 film Swallows and Amazons. Round trips run all year round, with stop-offs at various locations on the shore.
On the last sailing of the day, dusky light settles over the water, and the lights of Keswick start to prick on. “The Northern Lakes have a multitude of moods, and you can find whatever you need in it,” says artist Maria Burton. “And the people are so welcoming and friendly. If you open yourself up to them, it is reciprocated tenfold. It’s just great.”
“And thro’ the rifted cliffs, that scal’d the sky, Derwent’s clear mirror charm’d his dazzled eye. Each osier isle, inverted on the wave, Thro’ morn’s grey mist its melting colours gave”
Samuel Rogers, ‘The Pleasures of Memory’