Re: nordic skating or anything but Beckfoot!


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Posted by Peter H on August 14, 2007 at 21:10:56 from 86.147.153.101 user Peter_H.

In Reply to: nordic skating or anything but Beckfoot! posted by andyb on August 14, 2007 at 13:37:49:

Where is Peter H when we need him?

Andy – kind of you to ask after me. My view is that Beckfoot was probably not an earlier house that was substantially altered in the 19th century. Contrast Dixons Farm or Holly Howe (Bank Ground). Dixons is plainly a rebuild of a lake district ‘statesman’s house’, ie ‘a low rough-cast building with a porch and gallery and mullioned windows, . . .and massive chimneys, sometimes round and sometimes square’ (W G Collingwood). At least one ‘massive’ round chimney was retained at Dixons, as you can see from the drawing on p 45 of Swallowdale, and the ground floor windows might well be the old mullioned ones. (By the way, mullioned windows pre-date sash windows, which are mainly a 19th century introduction, so what appear to be ‘casement’ windows are not necessarily modern.) Dixons is not all that dissimilar from Townend in general style.

Bank Ground is clearly, I would have thought, a tarted-up statesman’s house. There is a ‘massive’ square chimney in a 1930s photograph, for instance. I can’t check further on the BG website because it is down at the moment.

Everything I have read in the magnificently detailed postings by Ed K and others convinces me that Beckfoot was a 19th century build - probably Victorian. Houses began to be built in the Lakes during the Industrial Revolution – the rise of the middle classes and all that. Tent Lodge, at Coniston, where Emma Holt (model for the G.A.) lived has been described (by George Melly) as ‘Regency’. I think Beckfoot is Victorian – perhaps a doctor or lawyer’s house or maybe a successful local tradesman’s.



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