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Calgarth Hall
CALGARTH HALL, WESTMORLAND.
And is not this a haunted hall?
Are not the spells of time
Still lingering round its hoary walls
With eloquence sublime?
THE tourist, or in the older fashioned phraseology of the
dalesman the laker, who in his light skiff glides o'er the
azure depths of the wide clear waters of Windermere, when at
the close of day the rays of the westering Sun glorify with
the witchery of eventide the whole of the eastern shore,
cannot fail at such an hour of surpassing loveliness to have
had his attention drawn to the remains of an old manor
house, situate on the side I speak of, about midway between
the head of the lake and the pretty-looking village of
Bowness. Should the beholder be one of who "in thir present
days," as Edie Ochiltree says, "when things o' the auld
warld sort are na keepit in mind round winter fire-sides as
they used to be," has a feeling for old names and events, he
perchance may find his fondness for the spirit of by-gone
ages gratified by a visit to the mansion in question, and
his inquiries after the family who once owned it not
unattended with a portion of that interest which the
examination of the fading things of a remote era always more
or less excites.
Landing in the nearest of the tiny bays that indent the
margin of this lovely lake, the stranger may proceed along a
plain until the gables and round buttressed chimneys of the
mansion, overgrown by ivy of the richest foliage (and which,
by the way, I may observe grows in more luxuriant profusion
in Westmerland than in most other parts of England,
verifying the saying in the sweet old ballad, that -
- the oak, the ash, and the bonnie ivy tree,
That flourish best at home in the north countrie.)
attract observation to where the Hall of Calgarth, rearing
those lofty remnants of its former state, amidst still more
stately trees, stands in the glittering flood of sunshine a
ruined monument of times that are no more.
The situation of the house, whose history belongs to the
world of shadows, but whose ruins still form an object of
interest, is within a short distance of the water, upon the
narrowest part of the small and pleasant plain; and I know
of but few spots in the neighbourhood where the lover of
picturesque antiquity could so lose himself in dreams of the
past as in contemplating this dilapidated fabric.
Of old, the country around was comprised within a park
belonging to the crown; and here and there may yet be met
with, thinly scattered in hoary magnificence, the trunks of
massive trees, whose giant forms bear testimony to the
dignity of the primaeval forest, of which they are alone the
solitary remains. Centuries have gone by since it was
disparked, and, from being the lair and covert of the wild
animals which erstwhile were almost its only tenants, its
inhabitancy by man has long converted it to more benficial
purposes.
Alas! for the woodland glories of Windermere; like the
forest shades of Rydal, where but a score or so survive of
those old dwellers of the woods which saw its earliest
lords, the Norman de Lancasters, they will soon have no
existence, save in the recorded recollections of some
enthusiast who, like me, has loved their green retreats, and
feelingly laments their indiscriminate destruction. The
changeful utilitarianism of the age has invaded and much
altered the landscape around since the days of the original
owners of Calgarth. The Dryads of its forests have forsaken
their desecrated abodes, and the lake country, no longer
what it was, even but a quarter of a century ago, is fast
surrendereing the remaining vestiges of its ancient
picturesque appearance. It is true it is environed by the
mountains and valleys with which past generations were
familiar; but those indestructible features, the majestic
fells, do not present the same alluring garb upon which our
forefathers loved to look. In losing the wilder and more
untrimmed
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