Finding Maggy

Maggy's Lonning, Loweswater

Finding Maggy

Maggy's Lonning at Loweswater has not quite lost its character despite it being a tarmacked road. It is a single track road (NY 13587 21016) that leads to the impossibly-small car park by Loweswater and I've always had a soft spot for it. Perhaps it's the loneliness in the north-western corner of the Lake District that gives it its appeal or perhaps it's the name. Who was Maggy and why was the lonning named after her? And there's also a packhorse bridge nearby called Maggy's Bridge (even OS mark it as such) so she appears to have been at one time a famous or well-loved person in the valley. I did once ask the farmer who Maggy was but he said no-one knew. Well, thanks to the astonishing work of the British Newspaper Archives, I've now found out something about her.

The British Newspaper Archives are slowly but surely scanning in 400 years of newspaper archives into digital format, making the easily accessible and, more importantly, searchable. I've used it many times and was randomly surfing one morning when a search for lonning came up with a note about Maggy's Lonning at Loweswater. It was in The Cumberland Pacquet for 1833:

VILLAGE FAME - A clever and worthy old lady, sister to the eldest of the three venerable men named in the preceding paragraph (ie John Mirehouse, of Miresike, who died aged 102) and who died at the good old age of 98 years, although never the owner of a foot of land has had the honour of having her name perpetuated in her native vale (Loweswater) in Maggy's Lonning (lane or road), Maggy's Bridge, Maggy's Gate, Maggy's House, Maggy's Garden and her 'flowers grown wild' and even the very birds in Maggy's Robin and various anecdotes of Maggy's sayings and doings. Poor Maggy! her garden no longer smiles, and her house now lies in ruins.

The preceding paragraph talked about the Mirehouse family which "furnishes such instances of longevity as are rarely to be met with". In particular it spoke of Maggy's brother, John Mirehouse, who died in 1807 at the age of 102. A further Google search revealed that The Literary Panorama (Published 1808) told how on his 100th birthday he "received a very numerous party of his neighbours ("all his juniors") seated in a new oak chair, and cloathed in a new coat, which, he pleasantly observed, might, with care taken, serve his life-time."

But what more of Maggy? The tantalising paragraph indicates she was indeed well loved and something of a village character but sadly not much more. Research in this age of Google can almost be too easy but a family tree on geni.com and references in Google Books revealed she had been born on St Valentine's Day 1714 in Loweswater and later married to become Margaret Longmire. She died in 93rd year (ie 1807) on Tuesday, July 14th  according to The Athanaeum Vol 2 (published 1807) at Thrushbank, Loweswater. But the Pacquet said she lived to be 98. Further research may resolve that mystery although the burial records kindly put online by the Lorton & Derwent Fells Local History Society does not include her.

So for now, we can at least revive the identity of Maggy as Maggy Longmire (nee Mirehouse) who was born on February 14th, 1714 and died in 1807 or 1813. And at least we still have her lonning - and bridge.