Wordsworth's Guide 1810, edn 1835
|
|
|
|
|
title page | ||
|
|
previous page
next page |
||
|
page 44
more. The Abbots of Furness enfranchised these pastoral vassals, and permitted them to enclose quillets to their houses, for which they paid encroachment rent." - West's Antiquities of Furness. |
|||
|
buildings enclosures |
|||
|
However desirable, for the purpose of defence, a numerous
population might be, it was not possible to make at once the
same numerous allotments among the untilled vallies, and
upon the sides of the mountains, as had been made in the
cultivated plains. The enfranchised shepherd, or woodlander,
having chosen there his place of residence, builds it of
sods, or of the mountain-stone, and, with the permission of
his lord, encloses, like Robinson Crusoe, a small croft or
two immediately at his door for such animals as he wishes to
protect. Others are happy to imitate his example, and avail
themselves of the same privileges: and thus a population,
mainly of Danish or Norse origin, as the dialect indicates,
crept on towards the more secluded parts of the vallies.
Chapels, daughters of some distant mother church, are first
erected in the more open and fertile vales, as those of
Bowness and Grasmere, offsets of Kendal: which again, after
a period, as the settled population increases, become
mother-churches to smaller edifices, planted, at length, in
almost every dale throughout the country. The inclosures,
formed by the tenantry, are for a long time confined to the
home-steads; and the arable and meadow land of the vales is
possessed in common field; the
|
|||
|
gazetteer links
|
|||
|
|
-- (churches, Cumbria) | ||
|
|
next page | ||
|
|
|||
Lakes Guides menu.