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An
exciting new project investigating what it means to be Cumbrian.
Listen
to the programme online »
A Bit of Lad? And let’s not forget the lasses!
Now
that’s a phrase that could be used to describe many a Cumbrian
character.
Take for instance John Peel the famous huntsman from Caldbeck, immortalised
in song by John Woodcock Graves: you know with the coat so grey
and the sound of his hounds in the morning!
He’d set off with his dogs at daybreak and cover fifty or sixty
miles over some of the bleakest fell country around before retiring
for a little light refreshment at the Sun Inn at Ireby.
Oh, OK, perhaps he enjoyed the odd pint or six too. He was a tough
man without a doubt but if you look at the landscape he lived in
you soon realise that John Peel and his contemporaries had to be
tough.
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| Low
Greenrigg |
The house
near Caldbeck where John Peel grew up
They were sometimes snowed in for weeks on end. The links with other
towns and villages were poor.
There were no waterproof clothes and tractors with cabs were just
a blissful dream in those days.
It was a case of survival of the fittest, and some people reckon that
it’s this self-sufficient survival instinct that’s provided
the genes for today’s modern Cumbrian character.
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| Nan
and Kathleen, also from an old Caldbeck family, next to the
original fireplace in John Peel’s childhood home |
There
are lots of myths about John Peel, Cumbria’s most famous huntsman,
but Nan Savage from Whelpo is his great great great granddaughter
and probably knows more about him than anyone else.
Listen
to Nan talking about her
notorious ancestor John Peel
>>
Of course the Cumbrian personality is a bit of a hybrid; there’s
a bit of the Cumberland character, some of the Westmorland, a decent
helping of Lancashire and a dash of the West Riding of Yorkshire
just to put the icing on the cake if that’s not mixing our
kitchen metaphors too much.
Ted
Relph, stalwart of the Lakeland Dialect Society, hails from the
characterful village of Crosby Ravensworth, slap bang in the heart
of Westmorland.
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| Ted
Relph |
He’s come across a manuscript written in the 1890s by one Dr
Mason from Kirkby Stephen who put his thoughts about the Westmorland
character down on paper.
In his opinion Westmorland folk are independent, intelligent, decisive,
self-controlled and witty (although he only reserved this quality
for the menfolk!).
Then again he was a Westmorland chap, so he’d hardly slate his
neighbours. We reckon his best comment is that Westmorland folks are
'capable of great things but not easily fired to do them'. Anyone
recognise that as a Cumbrian trait?!
Cumbria
is a predominantly rural county. The average population density in
England and Wales is 3.2 people per hectare. In Cumbria it’s
just 0.7.
In Eden there are just 0.2 people per hectare. Officially that’s
called 'supersparse' which has a certain kind of ring to it!
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| Sue
Wrennall |
Sue Wrennall,
a farmer’s wife from near Carlisle, is convinced that this rural
outlook is bound to have affected the Cumbrian personality.
Sue’s completing a PhD at Lancaster University about the identity
of livestock farmers and she’s sure that many non-farming Cumbrian
folks share a lot of characteristics with their agricultural neighbours.
Hear
Sue talking about the
personality make up of a livestock farmer.
More
>> The Cumbrian melting pot
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