80 



guide, who at this place had a second breakfast after descending 

 from the top of Helvellyn. They had here set before them 

 muttonham, epgs, buttermilk, whey, tea, bread and butter, and 

 were asked to have cheese — and the charge was sevenpence each ! 

 Plentiful as was the spread in this case, the hostess of the "Cherry 

 Tree" seems to have been able to hold her own, as a grandmotherly 

 old lady between eighty and ninety informed them that she had 

 seen sixteen landlords out of a house that wished to oppose them. 

 Whether the opposition place was "Nag's Head," in Wythburn, or 

 " King's Head," Legburthwaite, we are not informed, but it was 

 probably one or the other. 



The landlord of the " King's Head," John Stanley, was known 

 as a facetious character, and many anecdotes of him are still 

 remembered in the vale. There is the story of the bagman riding 

 up to his door one dark night and enquiring how far he was from 

 the "Nag's Head," an inn not far away. "Only t' length o' t' 

 neck," was the prompt reply of the landlord. The traveller, 

 thinking from the remark that he had reached the end of his 

 journey, dismounted, took a bed, and stayed for the night. In 

 the morning he discovered his mistake, whereupon he tackled 

 "mine host," but was obliged to admit, on explanation, that he 

 got a correct answer to the question put by him the night before — 

 that, although he was still a few miles from the "Nag's Head," 

 Wythburn, the inn which he intended to patronise, he was only 

 the length of the neck from his own nag's head. The signboard 

 belonging to John Stanley is still kept at the " King's Head," 

 Thirlspot, and is in a good state of preservation. The rhyme is 

 said to have been his own composition ; it reads thus : — 



I. Stanley lives here, and sells good ale, 

 Come in and drink before it grows stale, 

 John succeeded his father Peter, 

 But i' th' old man's time 'twas never better. 



A favourite house of call on the road between Penrith and 

 Keswick, in the old coaching days, was the " Sun Inn," Hutton 

 Moor End. It was kept for nearly a decade of the last century, 

 and during the whole of the first half of the present one, by a 



