Irvine Hunt - Lakeland Yesterday


	LAKELAND YESTERDAY - Vol II A selection of images and text from this new volume, published April 2011

WOMEN in elegant clothes pause to watch farmer Robert Jackson and his son Thomas clipping sheep at Syke Farm, Buttermere. The women were all members of Harrington Wesleyan Church and were on an outing into rural Cumberland with the intention of seeing wool at its source, the subject of a sermon given earlier in the year.
Three maids pause for a cup of tea at Milnthorpe. The woman on the right in spectacles is Sarah Aldren, who went into service when she was thirteen and worked fourteen hours a day. Her daughter, Mary Perry of Windermere, remembered her mother's daily work, and her own too, for she also became a maid.	LIFE AS A MAID Mother's in a dress uniform: a dark dress and a white apron. Of course in the morning she wore a print dress and a plain apron while cleaning. Couldn't show her ankles. There'd have been a row with the mistress if she had. She changed her uniform ready for lunch. If a lady or a gentleman left a card she carried it on a tray to the mistress, never in the hand. That was the rule. I don't know why. Every other Sunday she had free time to go to church to pray. Mother had to wear a bonnet when she went to church . . . she was always having to change her uniforms, three times some days, depending on the time, and who called. I got a job myself as a maid at Skelwith Bridge with a mother and a daughter. It was dreadful. The daughter had a snappy little dog and she used to speak to her dog better than to the servants. It was a beautiful house . . . Oh, the old lady was a bit queer, I think I could have managed her, but the daughter I couldn't manage at all. She humiliated us. Everything was locked up. Even the candle was locked up at night after eight. It was put in a cupboard. If it all burned away, she made us buy a new one, and stopped the money out of our pay. The old lady's husband was dead. The room where he died was 'preserved', if that's the right word. There were vases of white flowers - lilies and such, and she changed them every few days. We hadn't even to touch the bed because the mark of the coffin was still on the covers . . . It were a queer spot, no mistake.
THE road to Furness Abbey was little more than well-rolled stone and clay when this trio stopped for a little map reading. A veil was an important asset in early motoring. It not only held the hat on, it also countered the heavy dust off the roads.
	THE drone of an engine reverberates as a waterplane, the Waterhen, flies across Bowness Bay, Windermere. Flimsy looking, and built with bamboo struts, the plane hardly suggests a story of success, yet that it what it was. The plane makers had set themselves a hard task, to build an aircraft capable of lifting off the water under its own power. Many were convinced that it was impossible, though a few were intent on trying. The Waterhen was among the earliest to succeed and proved to be one of the most reliable waterplanes of its time, flying from 1912 to well into 1916.
IF you wanted a cool splash on a hot summer's day where better than in Bowness, Bay, Windermere, especially if you were an elephant. Travelling circuses put on their performances up the hill at Goodley Dale field. Watching the elephants squirt water was a hugely popular pastime, though over-curious visitors sometimes found themselves taking part in the cooling process. Likewise, local children. Numerous youngsters have arrived home to spankings for turning up drenched.