History Of The Parish

THE HISTORY OF THE PARISH

Following the last glacial event, some 9,000 years ago, this huge boar grazing amongst the pot holes on Leck Fell missed its footing and plunged to its death.

Little research has been done on the fells of Ireby and Leck though a number of sites have been listed and with modern dating technology, it is now possible to say with confidence that people have been farming these fells since the Bronze Age, clearing the stone from the pasture and depositing it in small, round cairns. The scheduled settlement site to the east of Leck Beck,on a southwest facing spur of land above Leck, dates back at least to the Iron Age (800BC to 42AD). Its modern name, “Castle Hill”, is fanciful and misleading,but it was still a formidable complex, a defensive enclosure with three earth banks and two ditches protecting at least two hut circles.

The indigenous population was already well established here before the Roman armies marched from the south in the second half of the first century; to build their fort by the River Lune at Burrow and continue north, driving their great military way onward through the Lune Gorge. Later in more peaceful times, a villa would be built overlooking the river but there is little evidence of any cultural influence extending from the newcomers to the settled population.

Although it is generally agreed that Leck took its name from the beck that tumbles northeast to southwest through the parish, the linguistic source remains unresolved. Modern research appears to favour the ON loekr (stream/beck) which places it in the period of Norse settlement from Ireland during the early years of the 10th century. This is almost certainly true of Ireby, taken from the ON Iri+ ON by/boer, the farmstead or settlement of the Irish.

There is evidence that Ireby was detached from Thornton-in-Lonsdale during this pre-Conquest period, when Norse settlers were arriving as immigrants rather than hostile invaders and establishing distinct communities throughout the north west.
By the time of the Conquest, Ireby and Leck had become part of the extensive lordship of Whittington held by Tosti, the renegade brother of King Harold. A total of six loughlands or carucates are recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 and as Tosti had been slain at the Battle of Stamford Bridge these lands now reverted to the crowm. This was an area of good fertile pasture, with woodland concentrated around Leck Beck.By 1200 the community at Leck had been absorbed into the manor of Tunstall held by the family of de Tunstall, possibly incomers or perhaps local landowners, who saw the political wisdom of abandoning the old pre-Conquest names in favour of the Norman William, Roger, Thomas etc. The family prospered and by 1402 as “king’s knight” Thomas Tunstall was granted leave to enclose and empark 1000 acres of meadow, wood and moor at Fairethwayte in Leck. This would have been valuable park land not only for hunting deer but for rabbit breeding,turbary,timber and pasture. Throughout the medieval period grants of land are recorded. Although remote the pasture represented a valuable asset, as did the patronage of the church at Tunstall.At the time of Henry 11,this was held by Croxton Abbey in Leicestershire but  would have reverted to the crown when the abbey was dissolved.

The Manor of Ireby was linked not with Tunstall but with Tatham.The first mention of the Manor of Ireby and Tatham appears in a charter [1189-1193]when Richard son of Walthef, Lord of Tatham and Ireby appears as a witness.The family had adopted the normanised surname of de Tatham as had the Tunstalls, and were to remain manorial lords until 1317 when the manor passed into the hands of the Hornby family. The Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem obtained land within the manor and in 1334 John de Hornby of Ireby was permitted to found a chantry within the church at Tunstall serviced by a chaplain whose annual fee of £4 was to be sourced from lands in Leck and Ireby.
From 1445 the manor was held by the Redmayne family of Ireby Lathes but the land was gradually sold off until by the close of the 17th century, the manor as such had effectively ceased to exist.

Small and remote, the communities may have been but civil disturbance was not unknown and occasionally recorded. The Lune Valley witnessed serious miltary clashes during the Civil War, with Thurland Castle taken by the parliamentary forces in 1643 after a seven week siege.

In 1814 an Act of Parliament was passed authorising the enclosure of the moor in the Parish of Tunstall. This included 3450 acres of Leck Fell but not Ireby. After Ireby Fell was stinted, with sheepgates and grazing rights apportioned to the farmers. In Leck however a serious effort was made to exploit the fell’s economic potential. The road from Cowan Bridge was extended from Bank House to meet up with the old fell road beyond Fell Side Barn and careful provision was made for drainage and water management. The land was thought capable of agisting 3045 cattlegates (five sheepgates= one cattlegate)and one cattlegate was awarded to the poor of Leck. The number of limestone quarries and lime kilns testify to the importance of the industry in the local economy and much of the Award is taken up with clarifying the rights of individuals to access and work the turbary enclosure, another valued asset.

Sandstone lime kiln, probably built 1825 at the time of the enclosure of Leck Fell.

A well-built shepherd or workman’s shelter. Shown on OS map.

Between 1771 and 1937 the grouse moor on Leck Fell remained in the hands of the Welch family. Robert Welch of High House, Leck was a prosperous member of the local gentry, wealthy enough to purchase the manor of Tunstall and the distressed Thurland Castle. Both were sold by his son but the family retained the lands in Leck and had the architect John Carr design a more fitting residence to replace High House, thereafter known as Leck Hall. In 1952 the Hall with its estate was purchased by the fourth Lord Shuttleworth. The family had held  a neighbouring estate at Barbon since the end of the sixteenth century.

The ruins of Anneside in 2010. Recorded in the 18th century as the centre of a small upland estate, the house was probably built in the 17th century on a much older site.
The name suggests  a Norse shieling  of the 10th century – Anna’s saetr although the OE side meaning a long hill-slope would also seem appropriate.

This brief history would not be complete without mention of two simple gravestones, side by side in the churchyard in Leck; the fever graves. The School for Clergy Daughters in Cowan Bridge immortalised by Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre lay just beyond the parish boundary. Four of the Bronte children, attended the school, each for only a few months but Maria and Elizabeth returned home to die and Charlotte and Emily were bitterly unhappy. Consumption and typhoid amongst children were  commonplace but the inscriptions on the Leck tombstones are unusual.

Mary Tate died August 14 1829 aged 17
She died delirious mid the fever’s rage.
Nor could the thing’s of Heaven her soul engage.
But sign was needless: she had liv’d to shew,
What God’s renewing grace in Christ can do.

Emma Tinsley died June 6, 1831, aged 16.
Short was her course but long enough to prove
In sweet reality a saviour’s love.
And when life’s latest storm began to swell
Her peaceful confidence no tongue can tell.
Amid the wreck of nature Christ was near
With hidden bread and hope of heaven to cheer
And when the angry waves their work had done
Her soul’s eternity of peace begun.

Sarah Bicker
died in the Clergy School
Sept.28. 1826
aged 11 years
There is beyond the sky
A heaven of joy and love;
And holy children, when they die,
Go to that world above.

 (Article written by Carol Howard)