Grasmere

Found myself having a grey day this week but the sun was out so I took off and had a trip out to Keswick. To get there I had to drive past Grasmere, a delightful village lying beneath the Lion & the Lamb at the foot of Dunmail Raise. While there I made a detour to take some pics of Broadgate Meadow.


Hidden on the low outcrop in the trees is a decorated cross of local green slate, the village war memorial of 1919.

It was designed by William Gershon Collingwood, antiquarian, artist & secretary to John Ruskin. At some point I'll get round to putting a post up about him. On the reverse is the name of the memorial mason, W Bromley of Keswick. Did he carve it or merely erect it? Probably made it, although a number of Collingwood's memorials were carved by his daughter, Barbara.

The cross is one of the more fascinating in the county. The secretary of the memorial committee was fellow antiquarian Rev Hardwicke Rawnsley who had retired to Allan Bank, Grasmere in 1917 after serving as Vicar of Crosthwaite, Keswick for 34 years. Rawnsley was a close friend of Collingwood and it was probably as a consequence of this that WG was invited to create the memorial. In response he created a remarkable object, it feels like a pastiche of a 7th century Anglian cross. Indeed it is probably inspired by the local belief that St Oswald preached here in the 7th century.

Below the wheel head is a dove and below that a stag trampling a dragon.

The dedication is;

In Honour of the Men
of Grasmere who
Fought and in Ever
Thankful Memory
of the Men who Died
For God For King For Home
For Freedom Peace & Right
In The Great War
1914 - 1918
1939 - 1945

(1939-1945 added post '45)

Below this again is a poem,

THE IMMORTAL DEAD
These died in war that we in peace might live
They gave their best so we our best should give
Not for themselves, for freedom home & right
They died and bid us forward to the fight

See you to it that they shall not have died in vain.

Academics talk about 'The Language of Courage' or the 'Elevated Rhetoric' that is so closely associated with the Great War. Few memorials illustrate this better than Grasmere. Both inscriptions were probably dreamed up by Rawnsley - (I presume? Maybe not!). He was a vigorous Victorian patriot and wrote a considerable amount of rather histrionic poetry. Oddly, the poem, such an angry response to the war, reappears at Dent so maybe it is not Rawnsley.

There are no names on the memorial, the village dead are listed on a plaque in the nearby c12th century church of St Oswald where William Wordsworth and his family are buried.

Across Broadgate meadow there is a large oak tree.

Beside it is a small slate boulder explaining that the oak was planted by Canon Rawnsley on Peace Day, July 19 1919 when all the villagers of Grasmere and district gathered in Broadgate meadow to celebrate the signing of the Peace Treaty that finally wrote a line under the holocaust that was 1914-18.


On the opposite side of the meadow, just inside the gates, is a smaller tree.

A small stone at its foot bears a brass plaque explaining that this tree was planted on August 19, 1995 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of end of World War 2. So much war.

There are other memorials in the village - for another time!

Low Wray - Philip Abbleby Robson

An intriguing question posed by War Memorials is why a memorial is as it is? In particular why a specific designer or architect?

When I first started looking at these things I spent a whole summer driving round The Lakes trying to look in every church and in every community. Many memorials were pretty unimpressive but I was also amazed at the originality and craftsmanship that had been employed in the creation of some of these things. One that blew me away when I first came across it was the memorial cross at the church of St Margaret of Antioch, Low Wray, on the west side of Windermere.

The church was built in 1856 by James Dawson, a retired surgeon from Liverpool, who built Wray Castle next door and intended the Church as a chapel for the spiritual benefit of his family, retainers, estate workers, servants and friends. After Dr Dawson's death in 1875, the estate was inherited by his nephew Preston Rawnsley who in 1877 appointed his cousin, Hardwicke Rawnsley, as vicar.

The cross was designed by the architect Philip Robson and sculpted by Jackson's monumental masons of Ambleside in beautiful local green slate. So why was Robson chosen as the architect? Quite honestly I don't know but there are some pointers.

Philip Appleby Robson (1871-1951) was initially articled to his father E R Robson, the first architect appointed by the London School Board in 1870, before joining J L Pearson’s office in c1890. He was in private practice in Westminster by about 1898, where he remained until 1939. However, there were other offices in Tunbridge Wells and near East Grinstead, where he lived from 1905. Between 1919-22 he also had an address in Manchester as an architect and designer. He was very much an architect of the establishment.

The Manchester connection might be interesting. This church was the preferred place of worship for a number of families of considerable wealth and influence; industrialists who had great houses close by. Thus, inside the church there are four brasses for officers who died during the Great War. One commemorates Brian Crossley of the Halifax carpet family. The rest describe three brothers of the McIver family of Wanlass How, Bowness & of Bebington on the Wirral. The memorial itself was unveiled by a fourth brother, Captain Alan McIver MC, on Good Friday 1921. I rather suspect that these families, or the Rawnsleys, favoured Robson when the awarding of the commission to design the memorial was being discussed.

Grasmere lads & a poem by Rawnsley

I recently went round to have a coffee with a a guy I used to work with. Some years ago I helped him research a few details about a relative, Harry Smith, who was killed in the Great War and, as one does, we ended up chatting about my interest in memorials. Suddenly, he produced a copy of a photograph and a typescript copy of a poem.

The picture shows a bunch of Grasmere lads, probably around the time of August bank holiday 1914! As well as showing Harry Smith it also depicts Harry & Walter Hardisty, two of the sons of Henry & Mary Ann Hardisty of Turn How, Grasmere. Both were born in idyllic Buttermere. Five brothers would join the colours and two would die.

18781, Pte John Hardisty, 1st Battalion Border Regiment was the first to go, probably killed near Ypres on July 30, 1916. His name is on The Menin Gate.

16258 Sjt Joshua Hardisty, 11th (Lonsdale) Battalion Border Regiment followed him soon after. Aged 34 he was killed in the attack at Beaumont Hamel on The Somme, November 18, 1916. Awarded the Military Medal for gallantry, his body lies in Waggon Road Cemetery.

Maybe some Borderers out there can fill in the details.

At the time of the men's death Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley was living at Allen Bank, Grasmere. He was hugely important to The Lake District & The National Trust; a patriot and a poet! Following the death of Joshua he wrote a poem for the grieving mother ........

Not quite Shakespeare & Rawnsley's association with our fellside sheep is not of my doing! Hopefully you will be able to right click on the image to download and read the poem. If not then please email me for a copy. Not sure about copyright with these things, however.