INTRODUCTION 5 



and in 1826 when " Harry " Brougham was conducting the last of his 

 famous pohtical campaigns in Westmorland, he addressed the inhabi- 

 tants of Ravenstonedale from the gallery of the Black Swan Inn and 

 in the course of his speech, seeing several of the women and lads knitting 

 whilst listening to him, said " this parish ought to be called the knitting 

 dale." While the women laboured in the field the men sat knitting 

 stockings under the hedges basking in the sun. 



" The spinsters and the knitters in the sun." 



In 1801, 2400 pairs of stockings was the average weekly supply 

 in Kendal market, of which 1000 pairs would come from Ravenstonedale 

 and 560 from Orton. In 1868 there were six elderly knitters in Orton 

 who knit 72 pairs of stockings each month for Edmondson of Kendal, 

 when their united ages amounted to 478 years. Canon Simpson 

 relates in 1876 that he " had been told that carding and spinning wool 

 still went on in the neighbourhood (Kirkby Stephen), and that the 

 art of mixing black and white wool by ' tumming,' so as to produce a 

 beautiful self-grey, has not been entirely lost." An old name for the 

 self-grey was " Skiddow-grass." To ensure the stockings which the 

 family were to use wearing well, the heels were smeared with melted 

 pitch, " the glutinous mixture incorporated with the woollen, and 

 altogether formed a compound both hard and flexible which was well 

 adapted to resist the united friction of wood and leather." 



A passage called the ' hallan ' separated the kitchen from the 

 ' bower ' where the master and mistress slept, and from the ' mell ' or 

 dairy ; opposite this latter and behind the kitchen was the ' down 

 house,' a single storied building where the fire-elding was kept, and 

 where the brewing and baking was often done. The servants and 

 children slept above the kitchen and bower in the unceUed loft, the 

 sexes being divided by a curtain which was run across the room. The 

 approach to this part of the house was not unfrequently by stone steps 

 outside the back door. The Rev. J. Simpson, writing in i860, says 

 that " owing to the ill-arranged sleeping apartments a female servant 

 could not even undress without being overlooked," though matters in 

 this respect had been gradually improving and left little to be desired 

 by the end of the century. 



Wood trenchers were used as plates and small wood vessels called 

 ' piggins ' for liquids and hasty. In the richer statesmen's homes 



