In search of friends of William Wordsworth
It was quite a surprise to come across Angletarn Beck so soon - two bridges are there now, the upper one fairly recent, I was told later by Andrea Taylorson at Side Farm.
There are some walled channels, probably to serve as flood collectors, and a notice by the owners of many of the fells in the region - Dalesmain Estates, Penrith. There is also a huge rock by the track - I wonder if it was there when W and D passed this way?
Just past the junction where the steep track to Boredale Fell goes off, there is a junction with the track to the motor road and later I discovered that a ‘permissive’ footpath starts here along the bank of Goldrill Beck. The N.T. are proposing to 'remeander' the river here to unite the flood plane with it, to help clear flooding which occurs on the motor road - but won't that hinder the farmers with stock on the valley floor?
Beckstones, the next building along the track, is occupied but no-one was at home today and I saw only one or two other people all the way to Broadhow, not named on the modern O.S. Explorer map, which prefers Patterdale
The small stone building that I found between Beckstones and Crookabeck, (Crookedbeck on the earlier map) I think might have once been a byre, but a widened doorway now permits an inflatable boat to be stored there. I doubt very much that this tiny place is the Luff's former cottage. Nevertheless a steep footpath descends directly to this area from Boredale Hause and Wordsworth used this once after a long walk and said in his Guide to the Lakes, “a rough and precipitous peat track brought us down to our friend’s house” (p.125 in the 1970 reprint). But the house could have been Crookabeck or even Beckstones.
There was no-one around at Crookabeck, although there were about eight cars, presumably belonging to people renting the buildings as holiday quarters.
At Broadhow, the name given by Mary Moorman for the place that Wordsworth bought, but never actually lived in, has certainly been there since the eighteenth century by its looks. It now serves as a holiday cottage.
I found the track leading past Side Cottage down to Side Farm; I and the Pownall Campers in the seventies had driven up another way from the main road. I went to a little cafe at the farm and met a lovely lady (Andrea Taylorson) who would have been a small girl at the time we camped there. It was her father-in-law who had the farm then. I asked her about Wordsworth Cottage, and she said it was the newer part at the end of the whitewashed cottage (but this turned out to be named The Studio of Wordsworth Cottage). She was most interested in my questions about the Luffs, but said she had not heard of the name at all, and that the small building between Crookabeck and Beckstones had not been a cottage, at least during her lifetime. I had a lovely, refreshing mug of tea and a cake and promised I would send her some pictures.
I must also write to the N.T. to ask if they can shed any light on the Luffs, and anything else of interest, as the Trust is the main landowner in the valley.*
More investigation is
called for.
*I did write, and
received an explanation of the ‘re-meandering’ plan; but their search for the
name Luff drew a blank.
