button to main menu  Simpson's Agreeable Historian, 1746

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Page 184:-
former Times, but now much decay'd, and inhabited chiefly by Miners, who have their smelting Houses here for the Black lead. It is 218 Miles computed. and 283 measured from London. The Market here is on Saturdays, and the Fair on the 22d of July. The Black Lead Mines near this Place are the only Mines of the same Kind in Britain. On the N.E. of Keswick, lies
  Penrith
Penrith, or, as it is usually call'd Perith, which, in the British Language, is a Red Hill, or Head, because the Ground hereabouts, and the Stone of which it is built, are both reddish. It is a large well built Town, and esteem'd the second in the County for Trade and Wealth. The Market-House, which is a great Convenience to the People resorting thither to sell their Goods, is a large Building, beautify'd with Bears climbing up a ragged Staff, the Devise of the Earls of Warwick.
The W. Side of this Town was fortify'd with a Castle now in Ruins. The Church is an handsome spacious Edifice, but hath nothing further remarkable but an Inscription in rude Characters, set up for a Monument to Posterity, upon the N. Outside of the Vestry Wall: Fuit Pestis, &c. i.e. There was a Plague in this County in 1598, whereof died at Kendal, 2500; at Richmond, 2200; at Penrith, 2266; and at Carlisle, 1196: Which Relation is the more observable, and worth our Notice, because we have no Account of this Accident in any of our Histories. In King Henry VIII's Days, it was honour'd with the Title of a Suffragen Bishop.
In the Church Yard of this Place, on the N. Side of the Church are two large pyramidal Pillars, erected about four Yards high each of them, and about five Yards distant from one another: These, it is said, were set up in Memory of one Sir Owen Caesar, Knight, in old Time, a famous Warrior of great Strength and Stature, who lived in these Parts, and kill'd wild Boars in the Parish of Englewood, which much infested the Country: He was bury'd here, and, as Tradition reports, was of that prodigious Stature, as to reach from one Pillar to the other; to which it farther adds, That the rude Figures of Boars, which are wrought in the Stone, and placed on each Side of his Grave, are in
Memory
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