Neat, though not Sumptuous – Lowick Hall, A Chronicle

“Neat, though not sumptuous”

Lowick Hall a chronicle

Adam & Marianne Naylor

HANDSTAND PRESS

Published by Handstand Press East Banks, Dent, Sedbergh. Cumbria.

LA10 5QT First Published in 2013 Š Adam and Marianne Naylor

All rights reserved without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Designed and set by Russell Holden ~ Pixel Tweaks, Ulverston Printed in Great Britain by Short Run Press, Exeter, Devon Hardback Edition - ISBN: 978-0-9576609-0-8 Paperback edition - ISBN: 978-0-9552009-9-1

ANDSTAND PRESS

Acknowledgements

We researched the relevant holdings of the Cumbria Archive Service’s offices in Barrowin-Furness (where Mrs. Susan Benson was particularly helpful), the Kendal Record Office, the Lancashire Record Office in Preston, the Armitt Library and the local studies section of Kendal Public Library. Specifically for the Arthur Ransome chapter we worked on his papers at the Brotherton Library in Leeds. Permission to reproduce illustrations and documents was kindly granted by The Cumbria Archive Service, The Brotherton Library, the Literary Executors of Arthur Ransome, The Trustees of The Lakeland Arts Trust, Roland Hart Jackson, Lowick Parochial Church Council and The Red Lion at Lowick.

Individuals who have given, lent, or shown us material in their possession to use in the book, and those who have shared anecdotes or suggested lines of enquiry include John Borron, Richard Greer, Charles Sebag-Montefiore, Jean Hind, William Hind, Colin and Sue Tomlinson, Gary and Elizabeth Wemyss, Ron Wilson, Alison Woodburne, Wendy Keegan, Anthea Hartley, Gill Wilson, Caroline James, Hugh and Jane Ellwood, Charles Rowntree, Maggie and Jim Capstick, the late Nancy Mather, the late Margaret Houlson, the late Cop Woodburne and the late Brenda Hart Jackson. We thank everyone most sincerely.

We would also like to thank all who have enhanced and facilitated life at Lowick Hall - too numerous to list individually, but we must mention Mary Booth, the Ellwood family, Alison Ellwood, Peter and Pip Millburn, Ray Millard and especially Frank Billingham who can turn his hand to absolutely anything and has realised many of our projects. Not forgetting all those in the area who made us welcome and make life at Lowick so enjoyable.

Very special thanks are reserved for Russell Holden who designed the book with great flair and skill, expertly interpreting to the page any design ideas we had, and who took the photographs not taken by Marianne. Gillie and Chris Addison who helped us track down Handstandpress’ Liz Nuttall’s contact details. Liz has been such an enthusiastic, encouraging publisher and perceptive editor, without whom...! She has allowed us, as booksellers, to switch to the other side of the coin, and be published authors, for which we are very grateful.

For Claire, who shared it with us, and for Gareth and Angus, with all our love.

contents

Chapter

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Introduction.............................................................. 1 The Middle Ages....................................................... 5 The Ambroses.......................................................... 15 The Latus Family..................................................... 29 William Blencowe................................................... 35 A Church Dispute................................................... 48 William Ferdinando Blencowe................................ 52 Everard.................................................................... 57 The Ladies Of The Manor....................................... 61 The Squarson And His Wife.................................... 68 Colonel Montagu.................................................... 76 The Later Montagus................................................ 86 The Calverts............................................................ 97 Arthur Ransome.................................................... 101 1950-1990............................................................ 111 The Naylors........................................................... 114 Household Inventories.......................................... 125 Bibliography.......................................................... 149 Index..................................................................... 153

Decorations throughout feature details of the house book title taken from the poem on page 46

chapter ONE

INTRODUCTION

The village of Lowick lies in High Furness in the south west corner of the English Lake District. Furness was part of the County Palatine of Lancashire.

It was the northernmost part of the county, known as “Lancashire North of the Sands”, as it lies north of Morecambe Bay and is somewhat cut off from the rest of the county. In 1974 local government re-organisation put Furness into the newly created county of Cumbria.

A view in Lowick by Col.Montagu

Lowick parish lies two miles south of Coniston Water and seven miles from Ulverston, the market town to which its inhabitants travelled for all their wants until recent times. Lowick is really two small villages, or hamlets perhaps, as the total population has never exceeded five hundred. They lie in the valley of the River Crake (meaning “rocky stream”) which flows from Coniston Water into Morecambe Bay. Lowick Bridge, the northern hamlet, contains both the subject of this study and the church, vicarage and mill. The other hamlet, Lowick Green, includes, as its name implies, the village green.

1

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

West of Lowick Bridge lie Woodgate and Gawthwaite, even smaller hamlets.

A number of outlying farms and part of Spark Bridge, the next village down the valley, are also incorporated in this ecclesiastical parish.

Lowick has always been principally a community based on agriculture.

However, Robert Dickinson in the introduction to the Lancashire Parish Register Society volume on Lowick, published in 1954, points out that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the local assets of the district were exploited. The copse woods provided the raw materials for bobbin turners, colliers or charcoal burners, coopers, hoopers and swillers. A swill is an oval basket made from interwoven laths or thin strips of oak wood softened in boiling water. The slaters worked in the slate quarries at Gawthwaite, where the slate river (rhyming with driver) splits the blocks of slate into the thin slabs suitable for roofing. Water power operated the cotton spinning mill at Spark Bridge (later to become a Bobbin Mill) and also the forges where spades were made.

Perusal of the records he published also produced the following occupations: spade handle dresser, slate merchant, slate dresser, limeburner, joiner, blacksmith, cotton rover, cotton spinner, labourer, millwright, tanner, tailor, butcher, auctioneer, shoemaker, waller, weaver and nailor(!)

When the present day Naylors bought Lowick Hall, the previous owners handed on a few old pictures of the house and also four boxes of documents. We knew that it was an “old house�: indeed,that was one of our main reasons for buying it! However our initial attraction to its history grew from merely enjoying it, into a desire to write the Lowick Hall chronicle.

When we started to make forays into the boxes of documents we Lowick Church

2

chapter ONE

realised that there was indeed enough material amassed to compose an account of the house’s history and life. The documents ranged from the fourteenth century to the twentieth: the bulk of them from the eighteenth. We began to make our way steadily through them, at least those that we could decipher, and we gradually got our eyes used to the scripts of our ancestors.

When we bought the house, a few knowledgeable friends mentioned that it cropped up in some of the local histories. So we turned to the printed sources and sought out references to Lowick Hall and to the Manor of Lowick.

Between what had appeared in print and our own documents, we were able to produce a “time-line” of owners of the house. It started in 1086, and, barring the odd gap in the Middle Ages, came up to the present day. One remarkable fact that emerged was that the house had never been sold on the open market until 1948. Owners’ surnames changed, quite frequently, but research revealed a family connection or a connection by marriage in every case.

The printed material we found focussed principally on the earlier periods, as traditionally that was what interested local antiquaries. Unlike some of the neighbouring villages, there has never been a history of the village or parish of Lowick. The most complete account is to be found in the Victoria County History. Other references are frequently incidental and usually brief. The works we have consulted will be found in the bibliography. Despite being trained as academic historians, we decided not to provide footnotes, principally because the bulk of the references would have been to the uncatalogued documents in the house.

Having to rely mainly on our own documents has produced some inevitable distortions, distortions we suspect common to many local histories. Firstly, those who left the biggest paper trail get the biggest billing! Between 1094 and 1948 none of our owners came to any but very local prominence, and none made it into the Dictionary of National Biography or similar publication: there is little independent corroboration of our documents. Second, the nearer one gets to the present day, the more information is available. Third, our owners can seem a litigious lot, the survival of legal documents being much greater than those of a more human or cheerful hue.

The fun we have had in compiling this history has been much enhanced by the 3

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

assistance we have received which we have recorded in the acknowledgements.

It has taken us some fifteen years to complete, working in odd moments snatched from busy lives. We can truthfully say that all errors and omissions are ours alone! Perhaps more information will now emerge and others may be able to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge.

Having tried to chronicle nine hundred years of the house has made us very aware that we are temporary custodians. We have enjoyed the privilege of being so: this drawing together of the information we have amassed is our tribute to the old place. Lowick Hall is not, and never has been a very grand or important house. Its history, though, does shed some light on a quiet corner of northern England as well as the families who lived there. Smaller manors and their estates make up one element of the social history of our country, and we offer here our modest contribution to that history.

One of the defining features of the medieval period in this area was the ever present threat of the Scots. We will see how the house was built as a defensive “pele tower�, the necessity for which endured until the Union of the Crowns in 1603. The English Civil War did intrude on the life of the owner of the Hall, as did the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. Thereafter national and international events seem to have passed the house by. The Hall was not requisitioned during the world wars, nor did the families lose any immediate members. The closest we get to international politics is the arrival in 1948 of Trotsky’s secretary as the new Lady of the Manor!

Lowick Green by Col.Montagu 4

chapter TWO

THE MIDDLE AGES

As so often happens, there seem to be alternative derivations of the name Lowick. An inlet, creek or tidal stream has been suggested. In ancient documents it is sometimes spelled Lofwick, meaning a leafy hollow, from the two Old Norse words lauf and vik. Another source could be the Old English word wic, meaning a village. The Scandinavian derivation, however, seems more likely, as the valley of the River Crake has other well attested Old Norse names, such as Greenodd. Indeed, there are Laufviks to be found in Scandinavia. Writing in 1896, Canon Ayre ascribes the first half of the name as deriving from a Norse settler called Lofthi.

The first recorded Lord of the Manor, however, was not Lofthi, but Ivo de Taillebois, a Norman baron. Lowick is not mentioned in the Domesday Book.

Though many of the villages in Low Furness and south-west Cumberland were covered, Broughton is the only place in High Furness to be featured, despite Thomas West’s claim in the 1770’s that the “Furness fells in Domesday are included under the general name of Hougun”.

Ivo, born circa 1031, perhaps in the village in Basse-Normandie still called Taillebois, came to England and fought at Hastings with William the Conqueror. He was a warrior, an administrator and a cattle baron, a friend of William’s son and successor (William II or Rufus) and a key member of his court. He was one of three or four Royal Stewards and became one of the King’s most loyal and trusted advisers. As William Rufus’ biographer records, Ivo had from the beginning of the reign been a member of the inner circle of curiales regularly authorizing and witnessing royal writs and charters and clearly much involved in the everyday conduct of affairs.

He and the other Stewards were described as the King’s Barons.

5

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

To quote Rufus’ biographer again: One of the most useful ways in which William helped his favourites, however, was in providing them with rich or important wives.

In Ivo’s case this was Lucy of Bolingbroke. Her “identity, despite much research, remains uncertain”: she could have been the daughter of Thorold, a post conquest Sheriff of Lincolnshire, or the daughter of the Saxon Earl Aelfgar of Mercia. All authorities do agree that she was a “great heiress” and brought Ivo extensive lands in Lincolnshire on their marriage in 1083. A modern historian of Norman rule tells us that Ivo’s “estates in Lincolnshire fill most of two folios in Domesday Book”. Ivo went on to serve as Sheriff of that county.

In 1091 or 1092 the King sent Ivo as a pacifying “Viceroy” to the north west. The King granted him an extensive area in the south of the Lake District which became known as the Barony of Kendal. Ivo seems to have held lands in Cumberland as well as much of Westmorland. The Barony included a large part of Furness, and the manor of Lowick must have been amongst the lands he gained. Richard Sharpe in his work “Norman Rule in Cumbria” remarks that “it can be very difficult in this period to ascertain the territorial extent of the power of men such as Ivo Taillebois”, but feels that Ivo “has some claim to be considered the first Norman Lord of Cumbria”. Another modern historian, William E. Kapelle, attempts to be more specific on Ivo’s holdings: In the West William Rufus gave Ivo a new lordship composed of Ewecross Wapentake, southern Westmorland and southern Cumberland. These lands provided the basis for the later baronies of Burton in Lonsdale, Kendal, and Copeland, and if Furness was included, as is likely, they constituted a continuous strip of land running from the North-western exit of the Aire gap to the Irish Sea. Ivo’s lands covered all the routes north into Cumbria and all the trails from northern Lancashire over the Pennines from the Aire gap northward.

As he held so much land, it is possible of course that Ivo never actually saw Lowick with his own eyes!

When William Rufus established the Abbey of St Mary in York, his friend 6

chapter TWO

Ivo granted to the new Abbey the revenues from several of the south Cumbrian churches, notably Kendal. Thus it was that the Abbot built a “hall” in Kendal to collect his revenues: Abbot Hall being the name that has survived in Kendal at the art gallery.

Ivo’s life does not seem to have consisted entirely of good works, however.

One contemporary recorded of him: All the people in his domains were very careful to appear humble before Taillebois, and never to address him without bending one knee to the earth, but though they were anxious to render him all homage, he made no return of goodwill. On the contrary he vexed, tormented and imprisoned them, and loaded them with daily cruelties; his truly diabolical spirit loved evil for evil’s sake.

Certainly this aspect of his character is uppermost in Charles Kingsley’s famous Victorian novel Hereward The Wake. In it he is portrayed as “brutal, ignorant, and profligate – low-born too” and a man who “did evil mightily all his days”. Admittedly Kingsley used Saxon sources extensively which were not unbiased against their Norman conquerors. One such source accuses Ivo of harassing his tenants and maiming and torturing their livestock.

He would follow their animals with his dogs, drive them to a great distance down in the lakes, mutilate some in the tails, others in the ears, while often by breaking the backs and legs of the beasts of burden, he rendered them utterly useless.

Ivo died in 1094. His death had local and national implications. Sharpe speculates that he died “too soon perhaps to have achieved much by way of bringing Cumbria securely into the administration of the realm”. Nationally, his death “seriously affected the royal administration” and it also made Lucy a widow. They seem to have had no children, and within a month the King had given her in marriage again, this time to Roger Fitzgerald of Roumare.

He died three years later and the King then gave her to Ranulf le Leschin of Bricquessart. Ranulf, like Ivo, was one of the men William Rufus was using to secure Cumbria for the English crown and had been granted the Lordship of Carlisle. Lucy had a son with both her second and third husbands. The dates are not precise, but it seems that Lucy buried all three of her husbands 7

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

within a six year period. She was clearly not keen to embark on matrimony for a fourth time, for she petitioned the King with 500 Marks for permission to remain unmarried for five years. The King’s biographer describes this as a “cri de coeur”.

Ivo’s extensive Lincolnshire land holdings passed to Lucy’s third husband, Ranulph de Meschines. However, the now slightly diminished Northern lands seem to have passed to Ivo’s illegitimate son Eldred. Eldred had three children. The eldest, Goditha, married Gilbert de Lancaster. Thomas West in “The Antiquities of Furness” (1774), however, writes that Gilbert was Eldred’s grandson rather than his son-in-law. With their son, William de Lancaster we are on firmer ground, all the authorities agree that he was Lord of the Manor of Lowick.

In either case, there is a suggestion from a modern historian that de Lancaster’s acquisition of Lowick might have been by another route. Sharpe says that de Lancaster “obtained Kendal, which had been Ivo’s, as well as lands in Furness and Lonsdale which had been Roger’s”. This is Roger of Poitou. He had been lord of most of Lancashire under William the Conqueror. Near the end of his reign the Conqueror had removed Roger from his position, and Roger seems to have taken some time to decide his allegiance when William II came to the throne. By 1090, however, he had thrown in his lot with Rufus and been returned to royal favour. He was regranted the Lordship of Lancashire and became yet another of William Rufus’ great northern magnates.

William de Lancaster was clearly a territorial figure of some standing in the area. Unlike de Taillebois his holdings, as his name would suggest, seem to have been concentrated in Westmorland and North Lancashire. He is described as the fifth baron of Kendal, he was also Lord of Ulverston. In 1162 or 1163 William made an agreement with another powerful figure in the area, the Abbot of Furness Abbey. Furness was one of the great Cistercian abbeys. It controlled a huge amount of land and was the dominant power in the area. As well as their very splendid de Lancaster shield red sandstone abbey, the monks built a large castle a few miles away on the Irish sea coast, to control the safe flow of their goods. They ruled their vassals with some vigour and the records of the area are full of 8

chapter TWO

references to them extracting the maximum in rent and service. They did also, of course, provide the area’s only centre of any culture, looked after the sick and infirm and provided lodgings for passing travellers and merchants. Along with the few great territorial magnates like William, the Abbot was also the only contact that Furness would have had with the King and his court and the outside world.

The agreement divided the mountain district of High Furness between them, William taking the western part, the Abbot the eastern. William’s western portion included Lowick. Thomas Beck, a nineteenth century historian of Furness, discussing this agreement singled out only one part of William’s acquisition, and it was not Lowick: In his share stands the loftiest of the Furnesian mountains well known as Coniston Old Man, in which rich veins of copper have been subsequently worked to great advantage. Whether these were latent at this period, or whether they proved inducements for Lancaster to select this portion of the country will remain probably as at present indeterminate.

Incidentally, it seems that a temporal lord was more interested in hunting than a spiritual lord, for William also agreed to pay the Abbot twenty shillings a year to retain the venison and hawking over both areas. The agreement was duly confirmed by the King, who issued a Charter of Ratification: Henry King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Earl of Anjou, to the Archbishops etc Greeting: Be it known to you, That I have granted, and do by these presents confirm, an agreement made before me, betwixt the monks of Furness and William the son of Gilbert, concerning the fells which divide Furness from Kendal by the boundaries which have been sworn to, agreeable to my command, by thirty sworn men. … Wherefore I will, and positively command, that the agreement remain firm and sure; and that the said abbey shall have its division, and hold the same wholly and in peace, in woods and open grounds, in waters and fish-ponds, and in all other things.

9

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

The witnesses included two future Lord Chief Justices and the Bishops of Lincoln and Durham.

William had a son also called William. The latter was Steward to King Henry II and married to one Helwise de Stuttville. One of these two William de Lancasters transferred the manor of Lowick to Robert de Turribus or Towers. It is difficult to ascertain which, as it is described only as “in the reign of Henry II”. As Henry ruled from 1154 to 1189, and as William de Lancaster 1 died in 1170 and William de Lancaster II in 1184, it could have been either of them. There is some suggestion that de Turribus was a kinsman of the de Lancasters.

The manor passed to Gilbert de Turribus, who in turn transferred it to another de Turribus or Towers, William, “to hold by Knight’s Service”. This transfer took place during the reign of King John (1199-1216). William took the name “de Lofwic”, sometimes spelt Lafwyck or Lowick. It seems that at this time Lowick ceased to be merely an area of ground, and became a separate manor in its own right, carved out from the Lordship of Ulverston. Does the adoption of the territorial name of Lowick indicate that this de Turribus was the first to actually live there? Certainly the distinguished local historian W. G. Collingwood dates the first building on the Lowick Hall site, a tower, to this time. This branch of the de Turribus/Towers may have changed their name, but it is interesting to note that in the twenty-first century there are still farmers with the surname Towers in the village.

1389 document

chapter TWO

With its creation as a separate manor came the structure involved. The manorial system was established throughout England by the late eleventh century. In Cumbria it was confined mostly to the valleys and lowland areas: much of the mountainous heart of the Lake District never saw the establishment of manors. Commonly known as feudalism, it established a Lord in every manor to whom all owed allegiance and land tenure, either as villeins or freemen. In addition, the Lord retained land for himself, known as the demesne; Lowick Hall estate maps of the eighteenth century still refer to the estate in this way. Tenants were obliged to work on this demesne land without pay for a fixed number of days a year. In Lowick this work usually entailed ploughing, harrowing and mowing the Lord’s lands, shearing his sheep and cutting peat for him. These so-called “Boon Days” were obviously very important to the Lord and were to remain so: a list survives, dated as late as 1761, of all the tenants, their holdings and the number of days work each owed. A curiosity of manorial service is recorded in another eighteenth century document, this time of 1741: “Old Swainson payd a Red Rose to the Lord of Lowick upon Demand on Christmas Day and preserv’d it in Honey”.

Service to the Lord originally also required military allegiance, as for example, every “entire tenement” was obliged to keep one horse and harness for the King’s service on the Scottish border and elsewhere: these horses were known as “summer nags”.

Some of the structures of feudalism survived until the 1920’s, for example the holding of the “Court Baron” twice a year. By then the session of the Court Baron was held in the Red Lion at Lowick Bridge.

Previously it had probably been held in the Hall itself. The medieval court required the attendance of all the tenants. As well as reiterating the customs of the manor and enforcing the Lord’s payments, the Court also appointed a Jury An early twentieth century summons to The Court Baron 11

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

of local men. The Jury and the Lord himself together operated as a crude form of local government dealing with any matters administrative, legislative and even judicial within the manor. Many manors also held a “Court Leet” to deal principally with questions of law and order, but it is not clear if there was one at Lowick. The Lord of the Manor collected payments from all those resident on manorial lands. The principal one being the “fine on admission”, payable when a new tenant took possession of land or a property. In the middle ages another payment was called the “running gressom” or “town term” and was collected every seventh year. This carried on being collected until at least 1931, as precise documentation of the names, addresses and amounts still exists. According to a note in the Furness Coucher Book, the Lord also had the right to every tenth pig that foraged in the woods.

The de Lofwics built a corn mill at Lowick Bridge on the Crake, and every tenant was obliged to use it for grinding their corn. This building, or more correctly, its eighteenth or nineteenth century successor, still survives; it closed as a mill in 1906 and is now private housing. An unusual custom that pertained to the manor of Lowick was the annual appointment of four householders to review any necessary repairs to the Hall, and then choose the timber required to effect them. West calls them the “houselookers”. What the Hall looked like during the medieval period is now mostly a matter of conjecture. The probability is that it was a “pele tower” (or peel), and later documents often refer to it as having started as such.

Peles were a common building type on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border. They were defensive in nature with very thick walls. Usually of three storeys, the bottom one provided 12

chapter TWO

storage during peaceful times. In times of danger, however, the cattle, which the raiders or “Border Reivers” were keen to steal, could be driven into this ground floor. Living accommodation was provided in the two floors above.

Often the first floor would be accessed by a ladder, which could be drawn up at times of attack. The roof would usually be flat, enabling the housing of an iron structure in which to light a warning beacon, and also allowing defenders to stand there and rain down objects or fire on their attackers. Wordsworth touched on this legacy of the area in his Guide, in the chapter “Aspect of the Country, as Affected by its Inhabitants”. Of “the old hall residences of the knight and esquire”, “many have been places of defence against inscursions of the Scottish borderers; and they not unfrequently retain their towers and battlements”.

Peles were frequently built in remoter locations far from great lords and their castles, such as Lowick, and could provide some protection for many of the tenants and retainers as well as the lord and his family. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, there may ultimately have been two towers, perhaps joined as more peaceful times came by a wing, to make a Z shaped house.

There is reference to one burning down in the eighteenth century and it is believed that the surviving one formed the base of the present old wing.

Returning to William de Lofwic, he seems to have had some difficulty with the Abbot of Furness Abbey. Either because he wished eventually to be buried in the Abbey, or because he wanted the monks to pray for the souls of his parents, Robert and Avice, he promised to pay three shillings twice a year in perpetuity to the Abbey. He seems to have regretted his largesse and stopped paying. He had with his own hand put a sealed charter promising the payments on the altar of the abbey church “in the presence of the Convent and many others, both clerks and laymen”. The Abbot was clearly not one to let such matters be forgotten. William was “summoned before the Dean at Aldingham and payment was enforced”.

In 1292, when Alan de Lofwic, William’s son, was Lord of the Manor, we find the first reference to a church at Lowick. This Alan was relatively long-lived for the period, having been mentioned in a document of 1256 concerning “pasturage”. The church, however, was not an independent parish: indeed, it was not to become one until the mid – Victorian period. It was a 13

Lowick Hall ~ a chronicle

chapelry of the parish of Ulverston, a fact established by law in 1292. Alan had been claiming the revenues of the chapel on the very reasonable grounds that he was providing the priest who took a daily service there. The law, however, for it went to court, supported the Prior of Conishead Priory. The Prior had Ulverston church amongst his properties and successfully argued that Lowick was a chapel of Ulverston and thus the revenues were his. It was not to be the last dispute Lowick chapel engendered. Interestingly, at this period the chapel was dedicated to St. Andrew, whereas the dedication of the modern church is to St. Luke.

Although the de Lofwics were in residence for nearly two hundred and fifty years, few other references to them, or the Hall at this period, have been found. Thomas West does describe the de Lofwics as one of “the ancient and honourable Furness families, who by their arms claimed connexion and alliance with the barons of Kendal”. The other families were Broughton, Bardsea, Preston and Kirkby. The de Lofwic arms he describes as “argent, two bars gules; in chief, three mullets of the second”. We also know that John de Lofwic married Joan Le Fleming in 1333. The Flemings were a notable local family, whose seats included Coniston and Rydal Halls. They will reappear in the next chapter when they marry again into the family of the Lords of the Manor of Lowick. The family by then was the Ambroses who acquired Lowick during the reign of Henry VI, when John Ambrose married Isabel, the daughter and heiress of William, the last of the de Lofwics.

1415 document

14

Lowick Hall, a small Cumbrian manor house, has a history stretching back nearly a thousand years. This short illustrated book traces the history of the house and its owners, from Ivo de Taillebois, a friend of King William Rufus, to the writer Arthur Ransome and beyond. The families of Ambrose, Latus, Blencowe, Everard, Montagu and Calvert owned the manor in succession, during which time the building evolved from a fortified pele tower into the “Neat, though not Sumptuous” house lovingly described in George Blencowe’s eighteenth century verse.

ISBN 978-0-9576609-0-8

ANDSTAND PRESS

9 780957 660908

£14.99