Thursday 5th July 2018 - Thursday walk with Pete - From Leck
In February I walked this route the other way round in the rain:
http://conradwalks.blogspot.com/search?q=Leck
Today in contrast was well into our current summer heatwave. Pete had his eighty something birthday on Wednesday, and whilst he still walks well up to four miles on Tarmac he is unsteady on rougher ground, and this route included a kilometre and a half of fairly rough track, and I shouldn't really have selected it for Pete. Temperature was in the high twenties and I was thankful to just plod along at Pete's steady pace - he was using walking poles which he says make a huge difference.
Not far from the start Jubilee Cottage features, bearing a stone inscribed plaque above the door, now almost unreadable but Internet searching interprets:
"This school for girls was erected by the surviving sisters of R H Welch Esq in memory of him, and in aid of his designs for the improvement of education. 1847".
This website:
https://www.leck-st-peters.lancs.sch.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Leck-brochure-15-16.pdf
for the nearby C of E school in Leck produced the following:
In 1845 a girls' school was started in what is now Jubilee Cottage, next to the Church. The boys were in the building, which is now the Infants room, which was in existence before 1857. Later the girl’s school became the Infant School (mixed). On 19 August1931 they became an Infant and Junior School only and senior pupils went to Burton-in- Lonsdale School. In 1938 the infants and juniors were taught together. The junior classroom was built in 1960 and the school became Leck St Peter's Infant/Junior C E School. In 1968 Tunstall School closed and children were admitted to Leck School. Jubilee Cottage is now a private residence.
If you read the full link it is apparent that this school had some tenuous connection with the school at Cowan Bridge attended by the Bronte sisters which is of interest to me having completed the Bronte Way walk along with Bowland Climber only a few weeks ago.
Considering that extract was written by somebody with an educational qualification, it is woefully unclear and difficult to understand exactly what happened where and when, and the mention, not included here, of the connection with the School at Cowan Bridge is equally obfuscated. I'm not that bothered or interested but I do derive amusement from unearthing stuff like this from observations on a walk, especially when unexpected connections occur, and there's more from the next discovery.
Further down the road a fenced track, not part of our route, leads off to the north-east across archetypal English parkland to partly reveal Leck Hall mostly hidden by large trees - another opportunity for research.
Leck Hall turns out to be the residence of Baron Shuttleworth - Charles Geoffrey Nicholas Kay-Shuttleworth, 5th Baron Shuttleworth, KG, KCVO (born 2 August 1948) is a British hereditary peer.
The erstwhile family seat was Gawthorpe Hall at Padiham which was the starting point for our Bronte Way walk mentioned above, another Bronte connection. If you want to know more about the various Barons Shuttleworth whose title inheritances were marred by both world wars look at this link and follow others from there -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_Hall
I have always had a slight reluctance to repeating walks, preferring to explore new ground, but this little excursion shows that much can be missed the first time. At least, today, we went the other way round.
CLICK FIRST PHOTO TO ENLARGE FOR SLIDESHOW
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| Jubilee Cottage |
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| North east across Leck Hall parkland to distant Leck Fell and possibly Whernside |
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| Leck Hall hiding in the trees. Just to the right of this photo and further away in the trees we saw a bright light shining - see next photo - it remains a mystery. |
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| The bright light Overexposed beyond redemption in Photoshop so it remains a mystery |
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| Pete moving uncertainly on the rough stony track, but thankful for some shade |
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| South-west to the Bowland hills |
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| North from our high point after emerging from the stony track. Right is the cul de sac road leading to Leck Fell, a Mecca for potholers |
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| Why do some trees grow so gnarly? |
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| This is not a public footpath so no complaints. I had to overexpose in Photoshop to reveal detail of the stile's infill |
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| Anti-clockwise as opposed to my previous visit |
Why do aristocrats enrobe themselves with so many first names? And family names, come to think of it? The question is, of course, rhetorical; I don't give a damn other than it seems to confirm excess breeds excess. An extremely left-wing friend of mine has observed (philosophically)that those who work hard for a living tend to "love a toff" and you need go no further than Dorothy Sayers for confirmation of this. In one of her duller yarns about bell-ringing Peter Wimsey drives his car into a ditch. The proles who gather round him all automatically start "My Lord"-ing him. Are they taught this in school? His brother, the Duke of Denver, is I think accorded "Your Grace", an unintended irony by the author given that the Duke is both graceless and stupid - even by the low standards of his related gene pool.
ReplyDeleteIt comes as no surprise that the present Foreign Secretary has a clanking chain - Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Could do better, I'd say, and not just taxonomically. I blame his parents, especially for that initial name. Boris should reflect on one of his predecessors who
endeavoured to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea" ... but turned back at the demand of his homesick troops.(Very un-Boris like, that.)... and died... without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia.
A gift to tombstone makers.
RR - Your comment is a bit like my walks and resultant posts - one thing leads to another.
ReplyDeleteI do not adulate the aristocracy but they do fascinate me, the more chinless, the more fascination. However, I will always have a soft spot for James Mason's character in The Shooting Party. Looking at the ancestry of Charles Geoffrey Nicholas Kay-Shuttleworth, 5th Baron Shuttleworth, KG, KCVO his title is so far removed, in family terms, from its origins, because of deaths of first and second sons, and the passing to cousins and second cousins, that one wonders if a communication may arrive one day informing one that one is now Baron Conrad Hugh of The Munros and Wester Hebrides.
It’s a difficult task to choose a walk in this heat that provides both a firm surface and some shade. I agree with your comments on the information provided about the school. Plenty of words, surprising little clarity.
ReplyDeleteObscure history of a school and a Hall with connections to others in the area: just the kind of trivia, if trivia is the right word, that I like to unearth, or stumble upon, when I'm out for a walk.
ReplyDeleteLeck II - sequels never seem as good as the original.
ReplyDeleteI know that road well from pot holing days up on the fell, Lost John's Cave etc
Short Drop cave was always fun to take newbies into, you had to hang from the lip and let go not knowing how far the drop would be - the name explains why I'm still alive.
Sir Hugh you already have your title.
Ruth - My biggest problem is that I try not to repeat previous routes, and going further back I tried to avoid linear there and back routes, but after living here 18 years I have exhausted most possibilities and now find myself looking ever further afield.
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Mark - I looked up "trivia" :
" details, considerations, or pieces of information of little importance or value."
So I suppose for our historical discoveries we would have to enter into the age old debate on the value of history. And the kind of stuff we uncover may be "of little importance" to some, but of more importance to others, therefore defining something as trivia may put one on shaky ground. Long may we continue to unearth bloggers' gifts.
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bowlandclimber - A bit of nostalgia there. I am guessing,and suspect that like me you dabbled in caving and potholing whilst your first passion was really for rock climbing. I say this because I have not heard much on the underground subject from your vast store of anecdotes - perhaps we may explore that subject on our next time out? I vividly remember the life giving smell of green and chlorophyl on emerging from time spent underground; much better to be high up on a good crag.
time too move , then , if you are running out of routes - or buy a Bertie and do an extended M&G
ReplyDeleteregarding the naming of offspring - it's pretty simple - one must reward Uncle for those acres (although it was in his will) and Auntie for the eyes - and legs - and remember dear old 'Y' for the leg up in the city - or the house , of course
gimmer - I would gladly acquire a Bertie and disappear, and just for fun, probably do some version of a Donald Crowhusrt. What I am waiting for is one pf those uncles or aunties you mention, previously unknown to me, to come up with a bequest beyond my dreams.
ReplyDeleteSo far I have avoided the emails telling me a Robinson in Africa died and the sender is handling the estate and I am the nearest relative and "...if you will just send your bank account details..."