NOTES ON NOVEMBER 2008 MEETING

Old Time Lakeland

The title of the talk given by Irvine Hunt to the Alston Moor Historical Society at their recent meeting was ‘Old Time Lakeland' and might have conjured up visions of poets strolling through hosts of golden daffodils or Beatrix Potter's idyllic world of fluffy animals. However the reality was very different. By using excellent photographic slides he showed that life in the past was far from idyllic for the vast majority of the population. Faces in family groups were etched with the hardships they all endured as a result of their spartan existence.

Living conditions were harsh and most had an almost intolerable struggle to eke out a frugal living for themselves and their families. It was not unusual to have what, by modern standards, would be regarded as an excessively large family, over ten not being quite common. Life for the children was harsh and by the age of nine they were regarded as ‘adult' and required to work to earn their keep before and after school. Photographic evidence suggests that children in the country were better dressed than their counterparts in the towns. Often children would be bare-footed and pictures show them with long straight toes, not having had their feet constrained by footwear. Most clothes were ‘hand-me downs' from older siblings.

The work they did was hard and often unpleasant and they were no better off than children in the large cities and industrial areas. By the time they entered adulthood their health had already been compromised and life expectancy was not high. In what was then Cumberland, the usual jobs were in farming, on the land, timber, quarrying, mining and other such heavy manual work. Mechanisation had not yet arrived and everything had to be done by hand. Harvest and haymaking times saw whole families working the fields together, usually with hand tools and implements. Horses were used where possible and it was not until after WW1 that the tractor came to the fore. Thousands of horses went to the Great War but they did not return and this accelerated the introduction of the internal combustion engine.

Girls and women were often employed as maids, cooks and domestics in the many large houses in the county but even here it was a hard life with long hours and unreasonable working conditions. For all workers six month terms of employment were arranged at hiring fairs. Employers and workers would meet in a public area and negotiate jobs, literally in the ‘open market'. Contracts struck in this way were enforceable for six months, after which the process was repeated, although it was possible for workers to stay in their current position if both parties were agreeable. An office in Penrith was available, as an early employment agency, to help with the recruitment process.

However despite the rigours of life there were opportunities for leisure pursuits. These were usually fairs of various types where people could mix and mingle with friends and relations and activities, apart from drinking, included wrestling, hunting and, although it was illegal, cockfighting. Touring circuses, including elephants, were great favourites. Other functions included Christmas shows and, as there was a strong religious influence amongst the people, the opening of chapels. Ironically, many of these are probably now being closed.

Gradually life improved with the introduction of mechanisation, although this brought about unemployment, and contributed to the general drift away from the area. The new industry for Lakeland was to become tourism, assisted by the improvement in transport by coach, motor coach and rail. The need for manual workers to do heavy work reduced and was replaced by work in the field of tourism, including the many hotels and tourist attractions which proliferated to serve the new business opportunity.

Celebrity visitors arrived, including Kaiser Bill who was a one-time friend of Lord Lonsdale, Beatrix Potter, Hugh Walpole, W H Auden and the well-known Lakeland character, Millican Dalton, who lived in a cave for 50 years, having renounced a conventional life style.