“Saw ye the charming Ettie,
As she swept along the vale?
There is no girl so pretty
In our glorious Silverdale.
Mr Burrow of Silverdale, a former member of the Society brought Mr Abbot’s poems to light. A Mrs Cole, an Abbot descendant, researching her family, saw a known name over the Butcher’s shop in Silverdale and stopped to make enquiries. Mrs Cole has kindly supplied the details of Richard Abbot’s life and a copy of his poems.
In 1901 a Richard Abbot published, in Darlington, a book of poems. He was 82 years old then, and much of the book is standard Victorian versification on suitably elevated subjects. There are however some more personal poems which have reference to the Arnside/Silverdale area in the 1820’s.
His parents, Richard Abbot and Margaret Burrow were married in Beetham in 1817. Young Richard was christened in Burton in Kendal on December 25th 1818. His mother died when he was only three. She is buried in Beetham churchyard, though she died in a cottage at Gateside, near Kendal. One of Richard Abbot’s happier poems recalls details of his early life there; the kindly cobbler who kept guinea pigs in cages, the clang of the smith’s anvil the sound of the bagpipes played “by th’ itinerant, kilted, bare-kneed Scot” and the dame school where he learned his ABC and also to “lake”1.
The father was a Contractor on the Lancaster and Kendal canal, and also farmed on the Ingleborough fells. Richard attended school at Ingleton till he was eleven, when his father took him away to start work as a shepherd on his farm. When Richard was sixteen his father was incapacitated by an accident. Richard had to go out to work, first in quarrying and then on the railways. He moved to Teesdale where he rose to be manager of a large quarry.
From his poems it is clear that some of his childhood was spent in Arnside, his mother’s birthplace.
Hail! Arnside next my mission is to thee;
Hail! to thy green woods and thy rocks so blue
Thy war and time-worn tower – grey and green
Around this pile I’ve wandered hand in hand
With pretty Esther Borrow my young aunt
Richard still knew Arnside when he was old enough to woo Etty, “The Rose and Pride of Arnside” He wooed her “by Beelah’s Stream And Beetham’s bonnie braes” and sang her praises by the Fairy Steps and ” In Sylvan shades nigh Dallam Tower“, but he did not marry her. She died and was buried in “Yon sacred Fane of Beetham“. Richard certainly courted other young ladies. “Sweetest Lucy _Lucy Swan” and Nancy Swales who was “brown but bonny, ” and still another with golden hair and “beauty ripe.”, but which of them, if any, was the Sarah Greenfield he married in 1839 is not known. It remains however Etty, who is most clearly brought to life in a clear setting. Perhaps Arnside’s “blue” rocks are a little unexpected, but then they had to rhyme with “knew” two lines further on.
- Lake Oxford English Dictionary To play, take a holiday from work. Earliest examples go back to the 13th century ↩︎
Published in Mourholme Magazines Issue 16 1991