The poet Gray, author of The Elegy in a Country Churchyard, in his tour of 1769, and Gilpin, in search of the picturesque, in 1772, did not seem to hear of Coniston as worth seeing. The earliest literary description is that of Thomas West, the Scotch Roman-Catholic priest, who wrote the Antiquities of Furness in 1774. He illustrated his book with a map "As Survey'd by Wm. Brasier 1745," in which are marked Coniston Kirk, Hall, Waterhead, Townend, Thurston Water, Piel I., Nibthwaite, Furnace, Nibthwaite Grange, Blawith Chap., Waterycot (by obvious error for "yeat"), Oxenhouse, Torver Kirk, Torver Wood (Hoathwaite), New Brig (the old pack-horse bridge), White Maidens, Blind Tarn, Goat's Tarn, Low Water, Lever Water, and so on, giving names in use 150 years ago.

West says:—"The village of Coniston consists of scattered houses; many of them have a most romantic appearance owing to the ground they stand on being extremely steep." Later editions add:—"Some are snow white, others grey ... they are all neatly covered with blue slate, the produce of the mountains, beautified with ornamental yews, hollies, and tall pines or firs."

Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, author of the Mysteries of Udolpho and other romantic novels, came here in 1794 or earlier; and after describing the Rhine, and all the other lakes, found Thurston Lake "one of the most interesting, and perhaps the most beautiful," though she took the Hall for a Priory, and sentimentalised about the "solemn vesper that once swelled along the lake from these consecrated walls, and awakened, perhaps, the enthusiasm of the voyager, while evening stole upon the scene." Conishead, not Coniston, was the Priory; the confusion between the two has been often made.

With fuller knowledge and from no hasty glance, Wordsworth soon afterwards described the same spot (Prelude, VIII.):—

Need I quote farther the famous outburst of patriotism?—it was our lake that roused it. And another great enthusiasm was stirred by our Coniston Fells.

In 1797 the landscape painter Turner came here as a youth of 23 on his first tour through the north. After his pilgrimage among the Yorkshire abbeys, so finely described by Ruskin in Modern Painters, vol. v., the young artist seems to have arrived among the fells one autumn evening, and sketched the Old Man from the Half-penny Alehouse. Then—I piece this together from the drawings and circumstances—he went round to spend the night at the Black Bull with old Tom Robinson and his wife, the daughter of Wonderful Walker. She was a wonderful woman herself; had been first a miner's wife, helping him to rise to a clerkship at the Leadhill Mines in Dumfriesshire, and on his death returning to Seathwaite; then, sorely against her old father's will, taking up with Tom, and settling at Townend to farm; afterwards for many years at the Black Bull, keeping the inn, managing the carding mill, and acting as parish officer in her turn; a notable figure, in mob cap and bedgown and brat; sharp tongued and shrewd of judgment. What did she make, I wonder, of the sunburnt, broad-shouldered lile cockney, with his long brown curls, his big nose and eagle eyes, and his sketch-book, "spying fancies?" Early in the morning he was out and scrambling up Lang Crags. It was one of the magical, misty autumnal sunrises we know so well. There had been rain, and Whitegill was full, thundering down the precipice at his feet. The fog was breaking away from the valley beneath, and rising in drifts and swirls among the clefts of Raven Crag, and the woods of Tilberthwaite. Far away, serene in the morning light, stood Helvellyn. It was his earliest sight of the mountain glory; the thrill of emotions never to be forgotten. Going home to London, he painted his first great mountain subject, afterwards in the National Gallery—the first picture for which he was moved to quote poetry in the Academy catalogue, and this from Paradise Lost—"Morning on Coniston Fells:—

By this time the fashion of visiting the lakes was coming in, enough to give employment to a guide—Creighton, whom Captain Budworth, about 1790, described as a self-taught scholar, claiming descent from a noble family in Scotland, and fond of bragging about the nobility he had taken up the fells. His son William was something of a genius; he was found here by John Southern of Soho drawing a map of the world with home-made mathematical instruments, but using them with immense skill. Mr. Southern took him into his drawing office, and young Creighton, by hard study, became a considerable linguist, astronomer, and cartographer.

To the old Black Bull, De Quincey came from Oxford in 1806 to see Wordsworth. Next year William Green, the artist and guide-book writer, was there, and went up Walna Scar with Robinson. Mrs. Robinson died in extreme old age, and afterwards Adam Bell was landlord (1849); in 1855, Edward Barrow.

The tourist business made more hotels necessary. In 1819 the old Waterhead Inn was called the New Inn as distinguished from the Black Bull. It stood at the head of the lake, where now is the plantation between the letter-box and the sign-post. In Holland's aquatint view (1792), a rambling farmhouse is shown there, but not called an inn. This became a favourite stopping place for tourists. John Ruskin's father was fond of it, and often stayed there alone or with his family. But John Ruskin, returning in 1867, wrote—"Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so happy playing in the boats, exists no more." The present hotel was built by Mr. Marshall in 1848-49, and tenanted by Mr. Atkinson, afterwards by Mr. and Mrs. Sly, and now by Mr. Joseph Tyson.

In 1849 the landlord of the Crown was Isaac Massicks. The Ship, in 1849, was kept by John Aitkin; the Rising Sun, in 1855, by James Harker. The old Half-penny Alehouse was pulled down in 1848 to build Lanehead.

To tell the story of the many "worthies" of Coniston, and to trace the fortunes of 'statesman families often wandering far into the world, and winning a fair share of renown, would need a volume to itself. One or two names we can hardly omit—such as Lieut. Oldfield of Haws Bank, who piloted the fleet into Copenhagen, and received his commission from Nelson for that deed; and Sailor Dixon, who fought under Howe on the first of June and under Duncan at Camperdown; twice taken prisoner, once retaken and once escaping from Dunkirk; implicated in the great mutiny of 1797, and yet acquitted by court martial, he lived at Coniston to the age of 71.

With these might be mentioned the soldier John Jackson, whose records of foreign service in the Crimea and elsewhere are still extant. His cousin, the late Roger Bownass, left many papers of interest to the student of Old Coniston. The first of his family came in 1710 from Little Langdale, and bought from William Fleming of Catbank for thirteen pounds odd the smith's shop at the place called Chapel Syke, i.e., where the Crown Inn bar is now; a stream rising above the Parsonage used to cross the road there, whence the name. He bought also the old Catbank Farmhouse and its land now covered with cottages. His son was about twelve or fourteen in 1745, and told the writer of the manuscript history of the family that he remembered taking a cartload of cannon balls, forged at the smithy, to Kendal for the Duke of Cumberland's army.

By 1773 a new site was needed for the smithy, and it was moved to Bridge End, where the Post Office now stands, on land bought from William Pennington of Kendal, wool comber, by George Bownass, son of the original blacksmith who by this time had died at the age of 87. Here a large business was carried on in quarry and edge tools, employing a number of men and apprentices; and profitable enough to enable the owner to buy many plots of land round about, to which his son William, who inherited the business, added other purchases, and still managed to save £100 a year. William Bownass died in 1818, and was the first person buried after the rebuilding of the church; of his seven children, Isaac, of Queen's College, Cambridge, became a successful schoolmaster, but died at the age of 28, and Roger, for 45 years postmaster at Coniston, died in 1889. Old George Bownass, the second of the name, died a year later than his son William; one of his daughters married a Coniston man, William Gelderd, who became the first mayor of Kendal after the passing of the new Municipal Act.

In the Christmas number, 1864, of the old Liverpool Porcupine is a short story by Dr. Gibson which, if we read Bownass for "Forness," Spedding for "Pedder," and Coniston for "Odinsmere," as the writer certainly intended, becomes a very vivid and interesting picture of Coniston folk and their surroundings at the beginning of the last century. It describes the smith "George Forness" as the well-to-do and industrious craftsman, in his busy workshop, surrounded by the village gossips at Candlemas. To him enters "old Matthew Pedder," bound next morning for Ulverston, to settle accounts. The smith entrusts him with money to pay his iron bill at Newlands, and save himself a journey. The next scene shows us a lane through the deerpark before dawn; Matthew on his half-broken mare attacked by a wastrel who has overheard the conversation, and now tries his unaccustomed hand at highway robbery. The mare throws him down, and Matthew gallops away believing his unknown assailant to be dead. Ten months later Matthew is called from his house in Tilberthwaite to the death-bed of Tom Bratton, and comes back subdued and silent. "What did he want wi' yee?" his family clamoured. "To ex me to forgive him." "Then it was him 'at tried to rob ye?" "Niver ye mind wha tried to rob me—neahbody did rob me!" "And what did ye say till him?" "I ext him to forgive me, and we yan forgev t'udder."

The slackness of anything like police in those days is illustrated by a document in possession of Mr. John Bell, which is an agreement dated 1791 on the part of leading villagers to form a sort of Trades Defence Association to preserve their property from "the Depredation of Highwaymen, Robbers, Housebreakers and other Offenders." It is signed by Edward Jackson, Isaac Tubman, Geo. Bownas (the smith), James Robinson, George Dixon, John Gelderd, David Kirkby, John Dawson, and by Thomas Dixon for Mr. John Armstrong, each of whom subscribed eighteen pence to found the association, and resolves in strictly legal form to stand by his neighbours in all manner of eventualities.

The smith's ledger, already quoted, gives also a number of farmer's names in 1770-74, which may be worth recording as a contribution to the history of Coniston folk. At Littlearrow lived John Fleming and Wm. Ion; at Spone How (Spoon Hall), Geo. Dixon; at Heathwaite, John Fleming; at Bowmanstead, T. Dixon and T. Parke; at Dixon Ground, John Ashburner; at Catbank, Roger Tyson; at Brow, T. Bainbridge; at Bove Beck, Wm. Dixon; at Far End, Wm. Parke; at Tarnhouse (Tarn Hows), John Johnson; at "Utree," Geo. Walker; at Oxenfell, Christopher Huertson; at Tilberthwaite, John Jackson; at Holme Ground, Wm. Jackson; at Lane End, Henry Dawson; at Waterhead, Anthony Sawrey; at Hollin Bank, John Suert; at Bank Ground, John Wilson; at Howhead, Eliz. Harrison; at Town End (Coniston Bank), Ed. Barrow and Wm. Edrington; at Lowsanparke (Lawson Park), Wm. Adinson. Other well-known names are Adam Bell (Black Bull), John Bell, John Geldart, T. Gasketh, G. Knott, David Kirkby, Matthew Spedding, T. and W. Towers. Many of these names are still represented in the neighbourhood, but the old 'statesman holdings have nearly all passed into alien hands.

A list dated between 1830 and 1840 enumerates the acreage of fifty-three separate estates in Church Coniston, ranging from the Hall (Lady le Fleming's), over 397 acres, and Tilberthwaite (John Jackson's), over 135 acres, to Henry Braithwaite's plot of 15 perches. But of the whole number only twenty-five, or less than half, are smaller than ten acres. In 1841 the list of Parliamentary voters for Church Coniston gives twenty owners of house and land in their own occupation out of forty-six voters. In this list, James Garth Marshall of Leeds appears as owner of High Yewdale, occupied—no longer owned—by a Jackson; but there are very few non-resident landlords on the list.

So late as 1849 the directory mentions as 'statesmen owning their farms in Monk Coniston and Skelwith, Matthew Wilson of Hollin Bank, John Creighton of Low Park, and William Burns of Hodge Close; in Church Coniston, William Barrow of Little Arrow, William Dixon of Dixon Ground, Benjamin Dixon of Spoonhall, James Sanders of Outhwaite, and William Wilson of Low Beck.

But after the "discovery" of the lakes, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Coniston began to be the resort of strangers in search of retirement and scenery.

In 1801, Colonel George Smith, after losing a fortune in a bank failure, settled at Townson Ground, and some years later built Tent Lodge, so called from the tent his family had pitched on the spot before the house was built, as a kind of "station," as it was then called, for admiring the view. Here in the tent, they say, his daughter used to sit, dying of consumption, and looking her last on the favourite scene. Elizabeth Smith was a girl of great charm and unusual genius. Born in 1776, at thirteen she had learnt French, Italian, and mathematics; at fifteen, she taught herself German; at seventeen, she studied Arabic, Persian, and Spanish; and at eighteen, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. While living here she wrote much verse and many translations, of which her Book of Job was highly commended by scholars; the manuscript in her handwriting, with a copy of her portrait, may be seen in the Coniston Museum. She died in 1806, and is buried at Hawkshead.

After the death of Mrs. Smith, Tent Lodge was bought by Mr. Marshall, and occupied by Tennyson the poet on his honeymoon. His favourite point of view is still marked in the wood above by a seat now hidden among the trees. Later, the Misses Romney, descendants of the famous painter, lived at Tent Lodge; then it was taken by the late George Holt, Esq., of Liverpool.

At Colonel Smith's removal to the Lodge, Tent Cottage, as it is now called, was taken by Mrs. Fletcher, one of whose daughters became Lady Richardson and another married Dr. Davy, brother of Sir Humphrey Davy. Dr. Townson succeeded them at the Cottage; then Mr. Oxley of the sawmills; then the Gasgarths, on their removal from the Hall; then Mr. Evennett, agent to Mr. Marshall. Afterwards it was taken by Mr. Laurence Jermyn Hilliard, secretary to Mr. Ruskin. Mr. Hilliard died in 1887 just as he was beginning to be well known as an artist; he is commemorated in a brass tablet in the church, and some examples of his work are to be seen in the Museum. Since his death Tent Cottage has been tenanted by his brother and sister.

In 1819 Mr. Thomas Woodville bought from Sir D. Fleming a house called Yewdale Grove at Yewdale Bridge. In 1821 Mr. Binns of Bristol built the Thwaite House, and let it in 1827 to Mr. William Beever, a Manchester merchant, who died four years later, leaving two sons and four daughters, whose memory is very closely associated with Coniston. John, the eldest son, was a sportsman and naturalist; the author of a little volume entitled Practical Fly-fishing, published in 1849, and republished 1893, a memoir of the author (now again out of print). The pond behind the Thwaite was made by him, and stocked with fish; once a year he used to catch every member of his water colony, and examine it to note its growth. The picturesque "Gothic" boat house, now the gondola house, was built for his use. One of his hobbies was the improvement of fishing-rods, and Mr. William Bell (afterwards J.P. of Hawes Bank, who died in 1896) remembered helping Mr. Beever in this and other carpentering, turning, carving, and mosaic works, and in the construction of the printing press used for his sister's little books. John Beever died in 1859, aged 64. His brother Henry was a Manchester lawyer, and died 1840.

Of the four ladies of the Thwaite, Miss Anne Beever died in 1858, and is buried with her brothers at Hawkshead. Miss Margaret (d. 1874), Miss Mary (d. 1883), and Miss Susanna (d. 1893) are buried at Coniston; their graves are marked by white marble crosses close to Ruskin's. Indeed, though their local influence and studies, especially in botany (see, for example, Baxter's British Flowering Plants and Baker's Flora of the Lake District, to which they contributed, and the Rev. W. Tuckwell's Tongues in Trees and Sermons in Stones, describing their home), give them a claim to remembrance, their name is most widely known through Miss Susanna Beever's popular Frondes Agrestes, readings in "Modern Painters," and through the correspondence of Ruskin with Miss Mary and Miss Susanna published as Hortus Inclusus. In his preface to the last he spoke of them as "at once sources and loadstones of all good to the village in which they had their home, and to all loving people who cared for the village and its vale and secluded lake, and whatever remained in them, or around, of the former peace, beauty, and pride of English Shepherd Land."

The old Thwaite Cottage, below the house, was tenanted by the Gaskarths after the death of David Kirkby, Esq., the last of the former owners, in 1814; and then for many years it was the home of Miss Harriette S. Rigbye, daughter of Major E. W. Rigbye of Bank Ground, and an accomplished amateur of landscape painting. She died in 1894, aged 82, and is buried beside her friends the Beevers in Coniston Churchyard. The Thwaite Cottage was then let to Professor J. B. Cohen of the Leeds University, whose works on organic chemistry are well known.

The Waterhead estate was bought in the eighteenth century from the Thompsons by William Ford of Monk Coniston (see Mr. H. S. Cowper's History of Hawkshead, p. xvi.), and came to George Knott (d. 1784) by marriage with a Miss Ford. Mr. Knott was mentioned by Father West as having "made many beautiful improvements on his estate." In 1822 a view of the modern "Gothic" front of the house, now called Monk Coniston Hall, was given in the Lonsdale Magazine. The poet Wordsworth is said to have advised in the laying out of the gardens. From Mr. Michael Knott the place was bought by James Garth Marshall, Esq., M.P. for Leeds, whose son, Victor Marshall, Esq., J.P., still holds it.

Holywath was built by Mr. John Barratt, the manager of the mines in their prosperous days, and afterwards held by his daughter, the wife of Colonel Bousfield. Mr. William Barratt, his cousin, built Holly How on the site of an old cottage; it was afterwards tenanted by Mrs. Benson, and is now occupied by Mrs. Kennington. Mr. William Barratt's son, James W. H. Barratt, Esq., J.P., now lives at Holywath.

In 1848 Miss Creighton of Bank Ground built Lanehead, on the site of the old Half-penny Alehouse, for Dr. Bywater, who tenanted it for many years. Miss Creighton left the estate to the Rev. H. A. Starkie; the house was occupied later by Mrs. Melly, and since 1892 by W. G. Collingwood.

Coniston Bank replaces the old homestead of Townend. It was held in 1819 by Thomas North, Esq.; in 1849, by Henry Smith, Esq.; in 1855, by Wordsworth Smith, Esq.; subsequently by Major Benson Harrison, who let it for a time to George W. Goodison, Esq., C.E., J.P., and then to Thomas Docksey, Esq. In 1897 it was sold to Mrs. Arthur Severn, who sold it to its present occupant, H. P. Kershaw, Esq.

Brantwood, that is to say the nucleus of the present house, was built at the end of the eighteenth century by Mr. Woodville on a site bought from the Gaskarths. It was sold to Edward Copley, Esq., of Doncaster, whose widow died there in 1830. In 1849 it was in the occupation of Josiah Hudson, Esq., and the early home of his son, the Rev. Charles Hudson, a founder of the Alpine Club, and one of the party of young Englishmen who first climbed Mont Blanc without guides. He joined in the first ascent of the Matterhorn, 1865, and was killed in the accident on the descent.

The next resident was an artist, poet, and politician. Mr. William James Linton was born at Mile-End Road in the east of London in 1812; his father was of Scotch extraction. After apprenticeship to a wood engraver at Kennington, he worked for the Illustrated London News, and mixed with artists and authors of the Liberal and advanced party, becoming known as a writer, editor, and lecturer of much energy on the Radical side. In 1849 he left London for Miteside in West Cumberland, and in May, 1852, moved to Brantwood; after a year's tenancy he bought the little house and estate of ten acres, to which on the enclosure of the common six acres more were added. At Brantwood he also rented the garden and field between the house and the lake, and kept cows, sheep, and poultry; he anticipated Ruskin in clearing part of the land and cultivating it; in his volume of Memories (Lawrence & Bullen, 1895) he records the pleasures of his country life, as well as some of the trials of that period. He had been editing, and publishing at his own expense, a monthly magazine called The English Republic, and this was taken up again in 1854. Two young printers and a gardener came to Brantwood and offered their services, as assistants in this work; and with their help the magazine was printed in the outhouse, which he decorated with mottoes, such as "God and the People"—still to be traced in the roughcast on the wall. But its cost, however economically produced, was more than he could afford, and the magazine was dropped in April, 1855, after which he was employed on the woodcuts for the edition of Tennyson's poems illustrated by Rossetti, Millais, and other artists of the period. He tells how Moxon came to call on him and hasten the work, but could not be received into the house owing to serious illness; and how thankful he was for a ten-pound note put into his hand by the considerate publisher as they stood at the gate. At Brantwood Miss Eliza Lynn came to nurse the first Mrs. Linton in her fatal illness, and married Mr. Linton in 1858. At Brantwood she wrote her novels Lizzie Lorton, Sowing the Wind, and Grasp your Nettle; also The Lake Country, published in 1864. Mr. Linton, in 1865, published The Ferns of the Lake Country, but for some years he had not lived continuously at Brantwood, and in 1866 he went to America, where he died in 1898. Mrs. Lynn Linton's best known work was Joshua Davidson, written later than her Coniston period; she died in London in 1898, and was buried at Crosthwaite, Keswick. Portraits and relics of the Lintons are to be seen in the Museum at Coniston.

Another poet, Gerald Massey, lived for a time at Brantwood, and dated the dedication of a volume of his poems from that address in May, 1860. He, like Linton, is known for his advocacy of democratic opinions; indeed, it is said that George Eliot took him for model in Felix Holt the Radical.

During the later years of Mr. Linton's ownership, Brantwood was taken for the summer by the Rev. G. W. Kitchin, now Dean of Durham. In 1871, however, Mr. Linton sold the house to Prof. Ruskin.

Ruskin as a child often visited Coniston, and in 1830 at the age of eleven made his first written mention of the place in a MS. journal now in the Museum. In his Iteriad, a rhymed description of the tour of that date, he gave the first hint of his wish to live in the Lake District, and in the winter of 1832-33, at the age of nearly fourteen, he wrote the well-known verses which stood first in the earliest collection of his poems:—

remembering first and foremost, not Snowdon or Scotland, but Coniston. In 1837, as an Oxford man, he was here again, making notes for his earliest prose work, The Poetry of Architecture; and one of the illustrations was a sketch of the Old Hall from the water, the view which became so familiar afterwards from his windows at Brantwood.

Then for a while his interests turned to the cathedrals of France, the palaces and pictures of Italy, and to the loftier scenery of the Alps; but curiously enough he did not like the Matterhorn at first—it was too unlike "Cumberland," he said. In 1847, already a well-known author, he was looking out for a house in the Lake District, and staying at Ambleside. But the March weather was dull, and he had many causes for depression. As he rowed on Windermere he pined for the light and colour of southern skies. "The lake," he wrote home, "when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet; no bright colour, no snowy peaks. Black water, as still as death; lonely, rocky islets; leafless woods, or worse than leafless; the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray sky; far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds." Next year he revisited the lakes in spring, and wrote soon after about a wild place he had found:—"Ever since I passed Shap Fells, when a child, I have had an excessive love for this kind of desolation."

It was not, however, until 1867 that he revisited the Lakes. He came to Coniston on August 10th and went up the Old Man, delighted with the ascent. We have already quoted his description of the view.

At last (it was in 1871, at the age of 52, being then Slade Professor at Oxford) he fell into a dangerous illness, and lay between life and death at Matlock. He was heard to say and repeat:—"If only I could lie down beneath the crags of Coniston!"

Before he was fairly well again he heard through his old friend, Mr. T. Richmond, that a house and land at Coniston were for sale. The owner, W. J. Linton, asked £1,500 for the estate, and he bought it at once. In September he travelled here to see his bargain and found the cottage, as it then was, in poor condition; but, as he wrote, some acres "of rock and moor and streamlet, and, I think, the finest view I know in Cumberland—or Lancashire, with the sunset visible over the same."

Next summer the house was ready for him, and thenceforward became his headquarters. From June, 1889, till his death he never left it for a night; indeed, the last time he went so far as the village was on April 7th, 1893, when he attended our Choral Society's concert.

It is needless to tell over again the story of his life at Brantwood; to describe the house that he found a rickety cottage, and left a mansion and a museum of treasures; the gardens, woods, and moor he tended; the surroundings of mountain and streamlet, bird and beast, child-pet and peasant acquaintance, now familiar to the readers of his later books and of the many books that have been written about him. But here it must not be left unsaid that Coniston folk knew him less as the famous author than as the kind and generous friend; eccentric and not easily understood, but always to be trusted for help; giving with equal readiness to all the churches, to the schools and Institute; and to these last giving not only his money, but his strength and sympathy. It was he who started the first carving classes, and promoted the linen industry; he lectured in the village (December, 1883) for local charities, and—what was perhaps most effective of all—carried out in practice his principle of employing neighbours rather than strangers, of giving the tradesfolk and labourers of the valley a share in his fortunes and interests. And perhaps in his death he did them almost a greater service. It was in obedience to his wishes that the offer of a funeral in Westminster Abbey was refused, and he was laid to rest—January 25th, 1900—"beneath the crags of Coniston," so linking his name for ever with the place he loved.

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