Blindcrake
| Blindcrake | |
| Cumberland | |
|---|---|
 Clints Crag above Blindcrake | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | NY148348 |
| Location: | 54°41’46"N, 3°18’-0"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 348 (2011) |
| Post town: | Cockermouth |
| Postcode: | CA13 |
| Dialling code: | 019008; 017687; 016973 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Cumberland |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Copeland |
Blindcrake is a village in the Isel Valley of Cumberland, within the Lake District National Park.
This is a little place: the 2011 census recorded a population of just 348 within the parish (which includes Blindcrake itself and the hamlets of Redmain, Isel and Sunderland). Since 2001, Blindcrake village[1] has been designated a conservation area, a status largely based on its mediæval strip field pattern which is described as "undoubtedly the finest example of its type in the Lake District".[2]
The name of the village is believed to be from the Cumbric language, a form of Old Welsh, derived from Blaen-craig, meaning 'At the summit (blaen) of a rocky outcrop (craig), in reference to the nearby Clints Crag. The name appears as 'Blencraic' in the Middle Ages.
History
Blindcrake is on the site of an ancient settlement (possibly dating back to the Iron Age), and a mediæval field system is in evidence in the northwest sector of the village.
For much of the village's history, the dominant landowners were the owners of the Isel Estate.
The 70-odd houses of the village are spread on either side of the main street through the village and date from the 18th century. Four working farms are currently functioning in the village. There is a village green and a smaller green with a mediæval well (which has Grade II listed status).
Miss Burkett compiled a memoir of a former parlourmaid at Isel Hall, Miss May Moore.[3] She also featured in a Border TV documentary filmed at the Hall in 1997. May Moore was in service to Sir Wilfred and Lady Lawson in the 1920s, from the age of 13. As well as cleaning and other duties, she was persuaded to drive the family Daimler to Carlisle to collect provisions when she was 14 years old. May was later head housemaid in Coniston in Lancashire, regularly cycling the 39 miles across the Lake District to visit her mother in Blindcrake. Whilst at Coniston she was befriended by Beatrix Potter (living by her married name, Mrs Heelis), cutting her hair, sewing clothes and cleaning at Hilltop. May finally returned to Skiddaw View, Blindcrake, to help her sister in looking after her mother and spent the rest of the 17 years of her working life as a machinist at a local clothing factory. After retirement she helped out at Isel Hall as a guide – recounting at first hand, with a remarkable facility to relive past events, the way of life in the early part of the 20th century. The village hosted a 90th birthday party for her in the village hall in 1997. May Moore died in 2003 at the age of 96.
Parish church
The 11th-century parish church, St Michael and All Angels, stands in Isel, about a mile south-east of Blindcrake on the banks of the Derwent. It holds a harvest festival.
About the village
Isel School served the community from 1674, but has long since closed and the building is now a private home, located halfway between the two villages of Blindcrake and Isel. The main village pub, the Ghyll Yeat Inn, was formerly the toll house to the Isel Estate but closed as a pub in 2000 and is now a private home.
Isel Hall stands at the centre of the Isel Estate and stands on a steep slope above the River Derwent, with its south facing terraces overlooking the river. The oldest part of the house is a pele tower, a fortified structure built around 1400 on the site of a much older structure probably destroyed when the Scots raided Cockermouth in 1387. The house was inhabited by the Leigh family from the early 14th century to 1573 when the house passed to the Lawsons who lived there until 1986. It is now the private home of Miss Mary Burkett OBE, formerly Director of Abbot Hall in Kendal, but is opened to the public for guided tours on Monday afternoons in the summer.
Blindcrake has seven grade-II listed dwellings, mostly built in the early 18th century. In 1750 the Isel estate built a row of cottages in Blindcrake. The two end cottages were used in the 19th century for bacon curing (downstairs) and a primitive Methodist meeting room (upstairs). In 1894 the Methodist group bought the building and made it into a chapel; it is now a private home. The village hall is housed in the remainder of this row. Allison House, a large farmhouse built in 1724, is named after the Allison family who were prominent in the area. Blindcrake Hall, in the middle of the village, is another large house that dates from the same period (1728). Thorneycroft is reputedly the oldest building in the village, bearing a datestone of 1613.
Geography
The village is some four miles north-east of Cockermouth off the old Roman road to Carlisle (the A595) and above the River Derwent. It is twelve miles from Keswick and, along the A66, it is 29 miles from the M6 motorway at Penrith. It stands near the northernmost boundary of the Lake District National Park and the village is situated in an elevated position (max 558 ft; 170m) on the south facing slopes of the Isel Valley, giving the area panoramas of the Skiddaw and Buttermere fells of the Lake District.
Oystercatchers, curlews, lapwings, skylarks, cuckoos, wheatears, pied flycatchers, siskins and hawfinchs are just some of the 94 species of bird seen in the area. There are a large variety of butterflies in the countryside around the village, most notably the nationally rare pearl-bordered fritillary and the small pearl-bordered fritillary due to the mixture of upland, woodland and meadow habitats that are found. Common blue, wall brown, speckled wood, and small copper can also be regularly seen as well as many of the more common butterflies. There are many mammals in the area too, red squirrels, roe deer, foxes and badgers can all be regularly seen in woodland.
Society and events
The village holds its own open garden festival, the Garden Safari, every July.
The history of Blindcraig was commemorated in a book, now out of print, named A History and Survey of Blindcrake, Isel and Redmain[4] and a photographic survey of the houses and then residents of the parish was also published privately for the millennium. The book was the idea of Mrs Isobel McGuffie who edited the contributions with the help of Alan Brentnall. The photographs were by Michael Dawson.
Walking
Clints Crags and its limestone pavement at 807 feet are an area of special scientific interest about a mile from the village up a public footpath. The summit has outstanding views across the whole Lake District, with a vista from the Ennerdale Fells in the west, to the Helvellyn range to the south east. Its ascent is included in Alfred Wainwright's 'The Outlying Fells of Lakeland', which he dedicated to "the old-timers on the fells".[5].
The Allerdale Ramble walking route also traverses the parish from west to east following the north bank of the Derwent down towards Bassenthwaite Lake.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Blindcrake) |
- Blindcrake.org.uk - local information and lists of events
References
- ↑ conservation Areas: Blindcrake
- ↑ CBA Associates, Lake District National Park – Landscape Character Assessment, Lake District National Park Authority, 2008
- ↑ Moore, May: 'I Was Only A Maid – the life of a remarkable woman' (Firpress Ltd)
- ↑ Winter, H E: A History and Survey of Blindcrake, Isel and Redmain (2nd ed., 1988)
- ↑ Wainwright, Alfred: The Outlying Fells of Lakeland (1974)