THE National Trust and other websites have promoted a path running through High Nook Farm and skirting under Burnbank Fell as the Loweswater Corpse Road. However, we are grateful to Dr Roger Asquith, a retired research engineer with an interest in local history, for discovering this is an error and the path through Holme Wood is almost certainly the true corpse road.
He points out the Loweswater Enclosure map shows the higher path, in 1865/6, whereas the first edition of the Ordnance Survey map (OS1) of 1863/4 did not show it. Hence we know the age of the path to within a year or so. This higher road therefore dates back just over 150 years – some way short of the corpse road era over 600 years ago. Indeed, Dr Asquith also notes that the vicar of Loweswater in 1929 – J Rowland – wrote of “the tradition, which still exists in the parish… the dead from Loweswater used to be carried via the ‘corpse road’ through Holmwood, for burial at St Bees” (A Few Notes on the Church & Parish).
Dr Asquith adds: “The Maggies Lonning - Watergate - Hudson Place - Jenkinson Place - Iredale Place - Fangs path shown on the OS1 (surveyed in 1863/4) was the ancient way on the south side of the lake, linking the habitations before heading off towards Lamplugh. Clear from the maps and on the ground is the fact that this ancient track was well made, well defined and important. Until modern times it had a wall on either side before emerging onto and crossing the common to join the Fangs to Lamplugh road.”
Research by Derek Denman indicates parochial status was granted to Loweswater in 1403 and ‘the dead have not been carried to St Bees for over 600 years’. Dr Asquith adds: “What was formerly The Holme, now Holme Wood, was finally enclosed after much dispute, in about 1597 so, at the time of the corpse road, beyond Watergate lay open common.”
We’re grateful to Dr Asquith for ‘restoring’ the correct corpse road route and there’s an extra advantage: For the most part the corpse road through Holme Wood is a well-made wheelchair-friendly path making it accessible to many more people. It’s only as it climbs towards Fangs Brow that that path gets tougher. The higher path may have been incorrectly promoted as a corpse road but it is nonetheless a path that offers breath-taking views of the fells and you may wish to use it to make your return journey for a different perspective of Loweswater.
Shortly after leaving St Bartholomew’s Church, the corpse road drops down into the valley through Maggie’s Lonning. ‘Lonning’ is a dialect term for ‘lane’ and most of the lonnings surviving in the county are still only footpaths. Maggie’s Lonning is now a tarmacked road but has not lost all of its character. It is a single track road (NY 136 210) that leads to the impossibly-small car park by Loweswater. We suggest only trying to use this car park midweek in the middle of winter. It quickly gets full-up and there is almost nowhere to turn round once you are stuck in the traffic jam. It’s a Lake District feature that needs a serious rethink. There is not much parking elsewhere in the valley so we recommend parking in one of the lay-bys beside the lake or by the side of the road at Fangs Brow (and therefore do the corpse road in reverse). Since the corpse road is essentially one half of a round-the-lake walk it does not matter too much where you start.
This is a lovely walk but there’s not much history or legend to go with it. However author HC Ivison includes an intriguing entry in her book, Supernatural Cumbria (2010) about a ghostly funereal procession apparently witnessed by the lake: “The apparitions of three nuns carrying what appeared to be a shrouded corpse, was a reported unexplained event that made the national newspapers. It was in the early 1920s, and four young ex-soldiers were walking along by Loweswater Lake in the moonlight, when they witnessed this sight. In spite of later ridicule, they held to their story and the fact that they were sober. Frank Carruthers comments that local records attest to an apparently similar apparition being seen by several witnesses some 21 years before, which would make it around the turn of the 19th and 20th Century. There is as far as my present knowledge goes, neither explanation, or any story or legend that might possibly account for these events. Local folklore does talk of monks and a monastery in Loweswater Valley but thus far no mention of nuns.”
It’s a fascinating and suggestive tale but we have been unable to find the report in any newspapers or any mention in the works of Frank Carruthers.
Corpse Roads of Cumbria is available from bookshops.
