Ennerdale Church

Little seems to be known about the early history of Ennerdale. During the middle ages the parish was served by the Benedictine Abbey of St Bees. In 1534, William, Abbot of St Mary's York, granted to the people of Ennerdale the right to bury in their own churchyard, provided they retained a chapel and its ornaments and paid a curate at their own charge.

Map and Gallery:

 Location Map

 The first parsonage was very near the church - one of Church Cottages- and this was later replaced with a larger parsonage at Scaur Head. Church and civil matters were administered together by the parish overseer and the curate.

 An entry in old church record books affords a glimps of the hardships endured by the poor in those early days. 'this chapel was pewed on September 1st 1786 by a fine which was laid upon one Matthew Jackson of Low in the Parish of Millom, whovillainously brought one Sarah Ashburn into the Parish of Ennerdale'. It appears that Sarah Ashburn had paid Matthew Jackson £70, a vast sum in those days, to maintain her for the rest of her life, but took the money and abandoned her in the Parish of Ennerdale as a destitute. She finding she could get no relief from William Hail, the overseer of the parish, set out to walk to Calder Bridge. The hills were covered with snow two feet thickm and poor Sarah was frozen to death.

 Though the curate (later the vicar) and the overseer were responsible for the overall administration of the whole parish; it was found convenient to divide it into two townships - Ennerdale and Kinniside. The dominant occupation was farming. In 1831 the overseer and vicar were responsible for the census. This gave the population of Ennerdale as 192, and Kinniside as 227. A breakdown of the figures for Ennerdale show there were 94 males - 43 of which were aged over 20 years. The employment of these 43 was broken down into three categories:- Agriculture 34; Retail trade 8; Capitalists, Clergy, Clerks and other educated men 1.

 The mediaeval chapel remained in use until 1857, when is was demolished and replaced by the present church, designed in the Romanesque (Norman) style by Charles Eaglesfield, architect of Maryport. The new church was consecrated by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle on the 28th of June 1858. An few years later the old parsonage at Scaur Head was replaced with a new vicarage near the junction of the fell road and the road to Cleator Moor.

 In the late 19th century with the start of local government in England; the administration of church and civil affairs was split apart. The new civil parish of Ennerdale and Kinniside was formed. Church affairs then came under the administration of the Vicar, Churchwardens and Parochial Church Council of Ennerdale. In 1977 the church administration was combined with the neighbouring parish to form the new parish of Lamplugh - with - Ennerdale.

 In St Mary's Church, apart from the installation of electric lighting, there was little change for over 100 years. A new organ was installed in 1978. In the 1980s it was found that the roof was in poor state. Funding was obtained from various sources, the church closed for some months for the work on the roof. At the same time much work was done to the fittings and furnishings inside the church. Some of the old pews, shelves and cupboards were removed from the west end of the building. The remaining pews and wooden flooring were retained, cleaned and stained. The church reopened in July 1991. In 1993 the Victorian vicarage was sold and replaced with a modern house to the north of the village in Vicarage Lane.

 The church building is simple in outline, with dark grey granite walls and a high-pitched slate roof and a small pointed bell-tower in the south eastern corner. The windows and doors are round headed with minimum decoration. Over the porch is an arch, Norman in style, of local sandstone, with a single line of dog-tooth carving. One small section of the carving is much older than the rest - Pevsner's Guide dates this as Norman and probably originated from St Bees and used in the first building. One part of the step is well worn and again is likely to be part of the old chapel - or could this amount of ware be experienced since 1858? The walls are plain white, on to which the sun streams through the small round headed windows of the nave.

 The wooden roof is high pitched and airy, a plain timber structure, simple and well proportioned. The pews are of pine with brass umbrella stands. The apse at the east end is framed within another Norman style arch. Here again the builders of 1858 incorporated a small Norman section from the first building. The roof timbers in the apse form a dome over the sanctuary which has 3 windows that are glazed with Edwardian stained glass. The entrance to the bell tower is in the south east corner and the bell is pre-reformation, and bears the inscription 'Sancta Bega ora pro nobis'. St Bega was an Irish abbess who about the middle of the seventh century founded a nunnery at St Bees. The nunnery was destroyed by the Danes but in the twelfth century re-established as a Benedictine monastery which itself was dissolved in the reign of Henry VIII. It seems probable that the bell was from the old monastery, and therefore could be as much as 700 years old.

 The church plate consists of several ancient silver items. The oldest is a chalice bearing the inscription 'The gift of Mr John Patrickson 1680'. This gentleman, in his will proved May 12th ,1680, instructed his friend, John Hudson, of Egremont, to buy the chalice for 40 shillings and to give 2 shillings and six pence for buying it. The paten, probably seventeenth century, bears the inscription 'Chapelry of Ennerdale'.

 The old part of the churchyard (around the church building) had graves dating from 1741 to 1900. It was of this churchyard that William Wordsworth wrote in his epic poem ' The Brothers' after he and Coleridge visited Ennerdale in 1799. The old parsonage at Scaur Head overlooked the church, and Wordsworth described the parson and his family in these words:

To Jane, his wife:-
Thus spake the homely Priest of Ennerdale,
It was a July evening; and he sate
Upon the long stone seat beneath the eaves
Of his old cottage, - as it chanced that day,
Employed in winter's work. Upon the stone
His wife sate near him, teasing matted wool,
While, from twin cards toothed with glittering wire
He fed the spindle of his youngest child,
Who in the open air, with due accord
Of busy hands and back-and-forward steps,
Her large round wheel was turning.

 In the graveyard near the church door is an old pre-reformation font which was discovered in 1929 among the ruins of Laverick Hall. In the north east part of the graveyard, surrounded by iron railings, is the grave of the Dukes family. William Dukes was the vicar in 1856 that persuaded the locals and the Church Authorities to rebuild the church. Nearby is a very fine beech tree.

 In 1860 the rebuilt church had been in use for only a year. The parsonage was still in use as the vicar's residence but this was soon to be replaced by the new vicarage to the west. There is only one road wandering through the village and up the valley; the road to the north of the school being a dead end. The inn at the end of this road had its front on the west side and was for many years called the Dog and Gun. The inn opposite the church is probably the oldest in the village and has had several different names. It appears to have been the 'Fox and Hounds' initially but by 1765 it was the 'Bridge Inn' (the bridge over the Rowland Beck - sometimes called Monk's Bridge- is between the inn and the church. In 1794 the was called 'The White Bear'. Legend has it that the parson at that time rescued a dancing bear from a travelling show and kept it in the field between the parsonage and the church. Sometime about 1850 the inn became the 'Hare and Hounds'.

 By 2003 there have been many changes. What was the parsonage is now Scaur Head and the new vicarage in the 1860s became the old vicarage in 1993. The road out of the village towards Kirkland was opened in the 1870s. The Forestry House were built in the 1950s and there have been many new houses added since 1975. The road through the village up the valley was re-routed and straightened between the wars to make it easier for the forestry vehicles to have access to the valley. This left the old road past the church a quiet minor road. The graveyard was extended onto the opposite side of this road. The old 'Dog and Gun' became 'The Shepherd's Arms' and this building has had two major extensions. The old inn near the church has reverted back to its original name 'The Fox and Hounds'. The new innovations in the village are the off road path and the community recreation area. This area, called Bridge Park is situated just to the west of the main bridge.