Shrove Tuesday = Pancake Day. That is pancakes as in crêpes, not American-style. Served with sugar and lemon juice. Or maybe Nutella, if you have a sweet tooth. Or flambéed with alcohol, for the gro...Read More
Kendal town clock has told the time on the town hall since 1861. But it had a predecessor. By 1837, the previous town clock (with a wooden face) had been marking time for 70 years. It was atop the old...Read More
Legends and Historical Notes on Places of North Westmorland, published in 1887, remains a useful resource for family historians and local historians some 134 years later. But who was Thomas Gibson, ...Read More
The last Crackanthorpe to be recorded on Cumbrian Characters was a tragic one. And the short version is that Hubert Crackanthorpe was an author who died young, likely as a result of suicide. With fact...Read More
Frozen fish, a staple of any domestic freezer, was a 20th century discovery by Clarence Birdseye. Or was it? Well, no. But this isn’t a blog about native Canadians, or how the Romans invented underf...Read More
If the militia in the late 1700s were akin to Dad’s Army, the commander of the Westmorland Militia was… well, he was Wicked Jimmy. Most families have a black sheep somewhere down the centuries, bu...Read More
The need-fire – a Celtic response to cattle disease – might not mean much to people today. But, it’s only 160 years or so since desperate farmers finally abandoned it. And it seems to have been ...Read More
The Window Tax was introduced in 1696 and repealed in 1851 and was used as a means of assessing which households were liable to pay church and poor rates. It was soon mocked as a tax upon light and ai...Read More