The ladywife is having the week off work so we have gadded about here and there. We stayed here:
http://www.kirkstile.com/index.html
for a night so as to walk up a geet big fell the next day, starting early. The fact that the Inn brews it’s own delicious beers had nothing to do with it (yes it did).
Anyway, the place is old – couldn’t find the date it was built over the door (a usual practice) but I would guess around 1600; their website does talk of the place being an Inn for over 400 years, so maybe it is Elizabethan. It doesn’t look Tudor, though so it may have been rebuilt. It looks like many other local buildings constructed around 1660 et seq.
The Inn had a couple of pieces of furniture in it that carving folk, in particular, might find intriguing.
One is a large (about 8 feet wide) curved settle. I’ve not come across a curved one before. It looks like it was made of ash, presumably because ash bends so easily when steamed. Perhaps it came from a local church at some point.
The other piece is a strange carved cabinet that is built-in to an alcove in the dining room, next to the hearth. The subject of the many carvings appears to have an Elizabethan theme. It looks to be made of a mixture of oak (I think I spy medullary rays) and something finer like mahogany; but it’s hard to tell now.
Original to the Inn or some form of Victoriam add-in done on an Elizabethan style, do you think? Carving experts may be able to date it.
Lataxe
Replies
Lataxe, Beautiful landscape picture.
...and those stone walls sure do look old!
Would that be near Holmsfirth or Darrowby?
Should be able to tell what my favorite Brit TV series are!
Lataxe,
Did they cut down all them trees on that there mountain to make them thangs?
Neil
It's very hard to say without being in front of it, but if I were pressed for a guess I would say that it's a later reproduction of the maker's interpretation of Elizabethan style. One clue is what you said about the wood - it does indeed look like mahogany, and it's almost unthinkable to find mahogany in Elizabethan carving (though not impossible, since the West Indies had been colonized by then).
The other clue is that quite a bit of the carving is in some ways crudely done. Not necessarily from the technique standpoint, but from the proportions and perspective of some of the figures and emblems. The acanthus carvings strongly suggest Grinling Gibbon's style, but not his delicacy, for example.
If you're really curious, the hardware and construction will likely tell you more about its age. If it's paneled construction and the drawers are side-hung and heavy, there's a strong possibility that it is in fact Elizabethan. If they're dovetailed and slide on runners on either dustframes or nailed directly to the side of the case, it's likely later, probably Victorian.
Two pieces mostly in oak by the looks of them, and in the north of England too where they probably originated. Rather well done, but not up to the finest standards expected from London workshops. These two pieces look like they're late 18th century or 19th century northern urban made. I'd guess anywhere between Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, or some of the smaller towns; places like that anyway.
There was at that time, if I recall rightly, a fashion for good country pieces or smaller city made pieces out of oak, ash, elm and other native species with solidity that sometimes featured heavy carving. The carving, when included was often a mix of saints, cherubs, gargoyles, griffins, acanthus things, fleur-de-lys, and even Greek inspired geometric carving all crammed on to one piece of furniture to satisfy prosperous merchants, farmers and other business owners. These pieces certainly seem to fit into that general category.
I remember growing up with a piece rather like the heavily carved cabinet. It was dated with deeply incised lettering, 1812, with a man and womans name also carved in. In that instance the piece was originally a dowry cabinet. I'd guess the cabinet you photographed is a hallway or reception area piece, but obviously I'm not sure of that.
Your piece shows the top plastered in to the ceiling, so it might have been built for that location. It doesn't fit exactly, but if you looked at the ends and they are also quite heavily carved, I'd say it's fairly certain that it wasn't built 'built-in', but moved there later. I have to say that I suspect the piece wasn't built for there because if it had been I wouldn't expect to see a gap between it and the walls either side. There's more than enough skill demonstrated in the piece to be certain the maker could have made a neater fit if it was made as a 'built-in'. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
Edited 4/26/2008 7:04 am by SgianDubh
All,
The Kirk Stile hotel is situated in the English Lake District (NW corner) in Cumbria, not far from Whitehaven, where that naval fellah of yourn John Paul Jones tried to invade during the War of Independence. I understand he and his crew merely got drunk in the local pubs instead, as he knew everyone in Whitehaven, having been born in Arbigland, across the Solway Firth in SW Scotland. The Lakes (as the district is known) is rather like a scaled-down version of the Swiss or Italian Alps. The Kirkstile lies between Crummock Water and Loweswater.
Those other places mentioned by Knuts are well to the SE, in the Pennines, where the landscape is all limestone or millstone grit and the fells are great bleak moors rather than faerie dells and dragon crags. The accents of the folk are also different, although many of the place names and names of landscape features are Norse in origin, in both areas. Lots of thwaites (clearing) becks (large stream) gills (small stream) and so forth. The fell (mountainous hill) that the ladywife and I climbed that day was Grasmoor (originally Grisemoor - wild pig moor).
The stone walls were mostly built by clearing the rubble left scattered by the glaciers. They are dry stone walls - no mortar - and the skill to make or repair them is still widespread. There are usually two rows of stone with a gap between, internal tie-stones across at 3 or 4 levels and a single row of capstones along the top. The interior is filled with smaller rubble. Good wallers are said never to pick up a stone unless they have the right place to put it within the wall they are building, which tests skill but also conserves energy and keeps the pace of building high.
I believe many (but not all) dry stone walls were built at the time of The Enclosures, when various of the rising middle classes, as well as the genry, got Parliament to pass a bill allowing what had been mostly common land to be claimed and walled/fenced. Perhaps this is what the phrase "All property is theft" refers to? :-) (I am no historian, btw).
At some point all the fells would have been wooded. The clearance of the forests began with farming, maybe 3000 years or more ago in that district.....? By historical times most of the forests were gone, although the Normans re-established new forest for hunting in (not in the Lakes) and Elizabeth I decreed that felling of much timber must cease for a period as there was insufficient large trees to make all the required ships for the navy. From the C17th onwards, a lot of the remaining timber in The Lakes was felled for use in local mines (slate, tin, copper and even gold) as pit-props, rail-beds and so forth.
In the Lakes there are some areas of old growth timber but it is mostly farmland in the valleys, open fell for sheep on the tops with some coppice-style woods and some more modern Forestry Commission plantations of mostly evergreens. Coppice working for wooden artefacts and charcoal is reviving in many parts of Cumbria, along with the management of old coppice woodland. There is also a move to replant a lot of areas with native woodland - partly for ecological reasons (biodiversity), partly for longer term cash crops like oak and partly because sheep farming is no longer very cost-effective so alternative uses are sought for all that poor-quality grassland. We tourists like to wander in a sylvan glade, that knows.
Any road up; thank you all for your interest, but especially DK and Richard for the educated guesses concerning that carved thing. It's a fascinating object and when the ladywife and moi go back for another stay I'll attempt to get some photos of it's construction. No one at the Inn knew anything about it's origins but it might appear in some local historians pamphlet or mini-book, I suppose.
Lataxe
Professor Latax. Thank you for the tour and history lesson. Loved it. A History lesson for you. Did you know the the sailors of the U.S. Navy still wear the black tie in remembrance of Lord Nelson? Too bad many, probably most, U.S. Sailors don't know that.Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Please tell me you sampled the lamb or the steak pie.
The wife who was reading over my shoulder, is thinking about making the journey to see it for herself, with me in tow.
Looks like a nice place to have spent some time.Andy
Edited 4/26/2008 1:20 pm ET by AndyE
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