Snapshot of a Lighthouse with no Light!

Lighthouse on a hill: The Sir John Barrow Monument in Cumbria.

Today's Saturday Snapshot may look like a lighthouse on a hill, but it's never had a lamp, and it's not on the coast (although it does look out across Morecambe Bay). Perched on the top of Hoad Hill, in the Cumbrian town of Ulverston, it's known to residents as the Memorial, and was built to honour Sir John Barrow, who was a great traveller and naval man. Wherever you go in the town you can't escape it, and it's visible for miles around – when our daughters were small and we travelled up there they would watch eagerly through the car windows, each wanting to catch the first glimpse of the inland lighthouse.

Smeaton's Tower, on Plymouth Hoe, which we
visited a couple of months ago - do you think
the Monument pictured above looks like this?

Owned by the Sir John Barrow Trust, which is part of Ulverston Town Council, the Monument has been extensively repaired and restored in recent years, thanks to a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and a lot of hard work from the Friends of the Sir John Barrow Monument and the Ulverston Partnership. The structure is based on one of the lighthouses built at the Eddystone Rocks at Plymouth – there have been four over the centuries, and the upper part of this particular one, known as Smeaton's Tower, stands up on the Hoe, where Drake played bowls while he waited for the Armada to arrive, but that's another story... 

Sir John Barrow's birthplace at Dragley Beck. In his day the cottage
 had a thatched roof, but since then it's been replaced with slate.

Sir John Barrow (by the way, his name is nothing to do with the nearby town of Barrow in Furness) was the son of a tanner. He left school at 13 to work as clerk in iron foundry, then joined a whaling trip to Greenland, and was part of a British Embassy expedition to China. His diplomatic work also took him to the Cape of Good Hope, where he married and set up home, but he returned to England in 1804 to become Second Secretary to the Admiralty – a position he held until 1845.

By the cottage is Dragley Beck, from which the area
takes its name. A beck is a stream, and this is not
very big, but just before we were there it was a raging
torrent and flooded the road and surrounding land.

To get back to Sir John, he was born in 1746, at Dragley Beck, which must once have been a small village, or even a hamlet, but is now on the outskirts of Ulverston. The cottage where his family lived still stands and is occasionally open to visitors. It was shut during our visit to the area, but we have been inside because years ago it was a sweet shop, and I can remember going in with the girls, when it seemed to be very dark and musty. However, I assume restoration work has been carried out since then, and it is probably very different. We passed it each time we walked into Ulverston from the campsite where we stayed, and in the town itself one of the little alleyways off the main street has the most amazing murals showing Sir John's life and achievements. There are a series of beautiful, colourful paintings along each wall, and they are much too big to get into one photograph.

One of the wall paintings showing the young John Barrow -
you can see his cottage in the background.

A keen astronomer, he helped develop navigation techniques, was a founder member of Royal Geographic Society, and promoted British exploration in various parts of the globe, including West Africa, and the north polar region, as well as supporting the search for a north west passage through the Canadian Arctic. During his retirement he wrote his autobiography and compiled a history of Arctic voyages.

Another part of the mural celebrating Sir John Barrow's work.
I think this is such a fantastic way to remember someone.

Sir Robert Peel (MP for my home town of Tamworth), made him a baronet, in 1835, while Barrow Strait, Barrow Sound, Barrow Point and Cape Barrow were all named after him. And after his death in1848, at the age of 84, Ulverston honoured him by raising £1,250 through public subscription and building a lighthouse, with a lower room for a Keeper, and 112 steps leading to the lightless lantern room. Some 8,000 people climbed the hill for a special ceremony when the foundation stone was laid in 1850, and they must have been been jolly fit, because Hoad Hill is pretty steep. Mind you, all the hills on the Furness Peninsula seem pretty steep, and although we always promise ourselves we will walk up this one and look inside the Monument, we never do. 

A  colourful panel marks the start of work on the Monument.

  The Man of the House, who scrambled to the top when he was younger and slimmer, remembers buying fizzy pop and snacks there, and says you weren't allowed to climb the Monument in bad weather, which sounds sensible (I think a flag flies to show when it is open). The ground was certainly muddy after all the rain, and quite windy, and the thought of staggering 450 feet to the summit, then crawling up a spiral staircase which is almost 100 feet high, was singularly unappealing – so we wimped out again!

For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/

The Druid's Circle

The inner ring at The Druid's Circle, at Birkrigg Common,
near Ulverston, in Cumbria.

We have been away, hence the somewhat patchy posts and lack of response to comments last week – you might as well be in outer space as far as Internet connections go in parts of Cumbria. Anyway, we are back home now and, hopefully, normal service has been resumed, and I have some holiday pictures which I'm planning to show you as Saturday Snapshots, including these, which were taken at the Druid's Circle, at Birkrigg Common, which is near Ulverston, where Stan Laurel (of Laurel and Hardy) was born.

Me, walking around the inside.

We usually stay up there once a year, because the Man Of The House comes from Barrow in Furness, and still has friends and relatives in the area. Barrow is a ship-building town, and is not at all beautiful, but it's right at the top of Morecambe Bay, and the beaches are gloriously unspoilt, and it's very close to the Lake District (it only takes 20 or 30 minutes to drive to Windermere). The countryside is just incredible – you have to see it to believe it – and the nearby towns and villages are lovely. 

A closer view of two of the stones.

 This year we did lots of walking, and went to some places I'd never seen before, including this stone circle, which was almost hidden by the bracken and is, so we were told, much more visible during the winter, when the ferns die back. The grass inside the circle is kept short, but around it is a sea of very dense, very tall bracken, with wide grassy walkways through it. It was very lonesome, very wild, and very windy, and these prehistoric remains look like some kind of strange fairy circle, with stones sprouting up around the rim where there would normally be mushrooms - and it's on a slightly grander scale!

You can just see three of the stones in the outer ring,very
low down in the grass - almost at ground level.

It's a double circle, with 12 very weathered small stones forming an inner ring. The stones in the outer ring are difficult to count, because they are somewhat scattered, and even more weathered, and even smaller than the others. The circle is only about 27ft in diameter across the greatest part of the outer ring, and is believed to date from the Bronze Age, possibly from around 2,000 years BC. Apparently fragments of human bones were found in an urn during an excavation carried out in the early 20th century, and evidence of ancient fires was also uncovered. However the site remains as mysterious as other stone circles, and its significance is unknown. I have tried to do some research, but there doesn't seem to be much information available, and I can't discover whether it aligns in any way with the sun, moon, planets or stars. Some of the stones do line up with the spire of Bardsea Church and Chapel Island, and I think there is at least one old trackway nearby, but I don't know if Druid's Circle lines up with any other features in the landscape, or whether there are ley lines or anything like that.

This is another of the outer circle stones, right up against
the bracken, which stretches far as the eye can see.

It does feel very mysterious, and I imagine sunrise and sunset would be quite spectacular up here, but it would be a bit spooky in the dark, as its very isolated, with no lighting. The view down the hill to Bardsea village, Seawood, Bardsea Beach and out across Morecambe Bay was amazing, and I walked around the inner and outer rings, and stood in the centre, and tried to examine the stones, but it wasn't as peaceful as we expected, because a group of Scouts on an activity day were cooking soup on a little camp stove to one side of the circle. They were were very well behaved, and were no trouble, but they obviously thought I was nuts wandering round touching the stones! 

This was the view looking back over a gate as we walked up
to the stone circle. You can see Bardsea Church spire, and
Chapel Island, one of many tiny islands in Morecambe Bay.

There is a small road which runs up on to the common, quite near the stones, but it doesn't seem to be used much, and we walked along minor roads, tracks, footpaths and bridleways, going up and up and up, until we thought we couldn't go any further. It was tough going in places, because we are not really used to walking, and we are not very fit (our legs ached so much the next day), but we enjoyed looking at the wild flowers in the fields and hedgerows, and listening to the birds.  For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/

*Information in this post was taken from the booklet 'Discovering Ulverston & Surroundings' by Jeff Chambers.