button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page 26:-
objects and stile. On one side is the lake; on another a beautiful and cultivated scene, composed of water, wood, and hills; on another, high, rugged, and broken rocks, interspersed with here and there a green shrub; and on the other is a beautiful view up the lake, including the rugged and varied hills on the opposite side, together with Helveylin and its craggy inferiors.
  echoes
Here fire a gun or two to rouse the echoes from the hills; the traveller will be astonished to hear them like repeated peals of thunder, some linger, some shorter, now seeming like the crash of worlds, now reverberating only in hollow murmurs. The effect of martial music is inconceivable, more particularly when joined to the reports of the guns. Every note is re-echoed in ten thousand varied tones; sometimes the ear fancies it perceives something of a regular strain, then again all relapses into such a mixture of wildness and harmony as is beyond the reach of art; whilst that savage uproar which the guns occasion, disturbs at intervals the softer harmony, and impresses the mind with ideas awfully pleasing.
  Old Church
  Gowbarrow

About a mile further up is Old Church, so called from a church or chapel formerly situated there: This seems to have been pretty large, for the present house stands upon part of the ruins of an old building. It is said, but I think without reason, to have been standing in the reign of Edward the III. I am in possession of an admission of Anthony Rumney as tenant of two tenements at Gowbarrow-Hall, and part of a tenement at Old Church: this admission farther sets forth, that the parochial chapel and the burying-ground was then at Gowbarrow-Hall; and as it is dated in 1474, we must naturally conclude that the destruction of the church at this hamlet must have long preceded the reign of Edward the III.
The chapel at Gowbarrow being destroyed by the Scots, this place was without any place of worship till some years afterwards, when a chapel was built about a mile from the water: this was consecrated in the year 1558, (as appears from a memorandum in an old Bible,) by Bishop Oglethorpe when on his road to crown Queen Elizabeth. There is a tradition that this chapel served both sides of the water, and that they passed over in boats.
  anecdote of a clergyman
An anecdote took its rise at this chapel, which is so whimsical that I cannot help relating it. At a little distance from the chapel is an hill, commonly known by the name of the Priests Cragg: it was formerly covered with wood of different kinds, and was about 120 years ago the common resort of the country people for hunting, gathering nuts, and other diversions: these they put in practice on the Sunday, to the great disturbance of the congregation, as their shouting, swearing, and squalling, were very distinctly heard in the chapel. This roused the pious wrath of the minister, Mr Dawson, who accordingly one Sunday reproved and threatned (sic) them in these words: "O ye wicked of Water-Millock, and ye perverse of New Kirk, ye go a whoring, a hunting, a roving, and a nutting on the Sabbath-day, but on my soul if you go any more I'll go with you!" The parson was a keen hunter, and his expression of, I'll go with you, (which in this county's dialect is a mere threatning phrase,) striking some of the more waggish of his hearers in a double sense, the sermon and its author made such a noise, that it came to the ears of Rainbow Bishop of Carlisle. The Bishop upon this, with concurrence of the Duke of Norfolk, ordered the wood to be cut down: this put an end to the profanations there carried on, but the appelation of the wicked of Water-Millock sticks to the inhabitants of that place till this day.
  echoes
Next sail past Skelly-Neb, towards the mountain Hallin, and at or near Geordy Crag fire your guns, taking notice to point them towards Gowbarrow-Hall, or a little above it. The echo here much surpasses that at Water-Millock, both in the loudness and frequency of its returns: the most astonishing circumstance is this, every peal seems to pass over the tops of the mountains in a whistling tone, as if embodied sound was flying from place to place in the air. After very numerous repetitions, various both in
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gazetteer links
button -- All Saints Church
button -- Gowbarrow chapel
button -- "Geordy Neb" -- Geordie's Crag
button -- "Old Church" -- Oldchurch
button -- "Priests Cragg" -- Priest's Crag
button -- "Water Millock" -- Watermillock
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