Tuesday 3rd August 1819
Tuesday 3rd August We passed this beautiful morning in sailing about the lake. We landed at the Ferry house & ascended through a pretty garden to a Tower called one of West’s Station there is a nice room in the interior which commanded a fine view of the Lake we were much amused with an ingenious contrivance of stained glass to represent the lake at the different seasons of the year on this manner. Blue for Winter
Yellow for Summer Orange for Autumn Green for Spring there are several small Islands in this lake which are all called by different names on the largest of them Mr Curwen has created a handsome mansion surrounded by fine trees returning to Bowness we entered the Church to see the painted glass which been brought from Furness Abbey but it is so mutilated as scarcely to be distinguishable after dinner we mounted a hill behind the Inn called Biscay How whence we had an extensive view of Windermere.
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS:
West’s Station Tower: Claife Station was built in the 1790s. The "stations" were viewpoints where tourists could enjoy the best views of the landscape, being encouraged to appreciate the formal qualities of the landscape and to apply aesthetic values. At some of these stations, buildings were erected to help this process.
The windows of the drawing room were the Station's most celebrated feature; each had a different aspect, viewed through different coloured glass to enhance variations in weather and seasons. The tinted glass in these windows was intended to recreate lighting effects in the landscape. Yellow represented summer, orange was for autumn, light green for spring, and light blue for winter. There was also a dark blue for moonlight and a lilac tint to give the impression of a thunderstorm.
2003: Claife Station below Claife Heights on the western shore of Windermere by Stephen Dawson, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Claife_Station.jpg
Tourists were encouraged furthermore to look at the views through a Claude-glass, a mirror which framed the landscape and allowed it to be more picturesque, literally more like a picture. This picturesque way of viewing the landscape was further popularised by books by the Reverend William Gilpin including Observations, relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, made in the year 1772, on several parts of England; particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland published in 1786, and Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape (1792). built in the 1790s and later expanded, the building had windows tinted with coloured glass, designed to recreate the landscape under different seasonal conditions. Yellow created a summer landscape, orange an autumn one, light green for spring, dark blue for moonlight and so on. From the description accompanying the above image at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Claife_Station.jpg
Hawkshead and Claife is a National Trust property made up of much of the town of Hawkshead and surrounding Claife Woodlands in Cumbria, England. Overlooking Windermere itself is Claife Station, the ruins of a residence notable for the fact that each room was glazed in differing coloured glass to give the effect of viewing the landscape in the changing seasons. Hawkshead is home to the Beatrix Potter Gallery, another National Trust property. The Trust also owns four miles of access along Windermere lakeshore.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkshead_and_Claife SEE ALSO https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/claife-viewing-station-and-windermere-west-shore
A MUST READ ABOUT TOURISM IN LUCY’S TIME: Thomas West published a guide book to the Lakes in 1778 - this was the beginning of a new wave of tourism in Europe. People were struggling to complete the ‘Grand Tour’ around the continent due to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, so following West’s guidebooks the Lakes became the fashionable destination for wealthy tourists. They set out armed with their guidebook and sketch pad, to ‘view’ the landscape in a pre-determined way. The Viewing Stations were a key part of this experience. Set in dramatic spots, the many trees and shrubs restricted the view as people walked up the path from the Courtyard, creating a grand reveal of the landscape when they reached the top. SEE ALSO: Thomas West produced a full guidebook, with directions to every rocky torrent and cloud-crowned peak, and the crowds began to come(1778) https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/may/14/paintings-lake-district-jenny-uglow
Belle Isle is the largest of 18 islands and the only one ever to have been inhabited. In 1774 Belle Isle House was erected on the island to designs by John Plaw and was sold along with the island to the wealthy Curwen family who renamed the island after their daughter, Isabella (Belle)
2012: Map of Belle Isle on Windermere. OS OpenData with modifications by Prioryman. This file is licensed by the Ordnance Survey of the United Kingdom under their OS OpenData License. You are free to distribute and modify the file as long as you attribute (including year), the Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right (year) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Belle_Isle_Windermere_map.png
1835: Bowness, from Belle Isle, Windermere, Engraving by J. Redway after T. Allom. https://antique-prints-maps.com/acatalog/ref1.php?imagefile=../largeimages/SEBownessBelleIsle12.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Isle_(Windermere)
Furness Abbey Glass was described more favourably by Thomas West, in A Guide to the Lakes, published by William Pennington, Kendal, and in London, 1778 to 1821. “In Bowness there is nothing so remarkable as some remains of painted glass, in the east window of the church, that were brought from the abbey of Furness.” http://www.lakesguides.co.uk/html/lgaz/lk01376.htm
Biskey How: Martineau’s Guide of 1855 recommends the view from the hill: “one of the most charming points of view in the neighbourhood,- a hill named Biscut How, crested with rocks, which afford as fine a station as the summit of Elleray for a view of the entire lake and its shores.” http://www.lakesguides.co.uk/html/lgaz/lk18842.htm
Can you help us?
Old Regency Prints, Pictures an Coaching maps: Do you have access to any prints or pictures showing what town and country would have looked like when Lucy travelled through? Any illustrations of what she would have seen in 1819 will enliven our research.
New Pictures: Do you have any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and views that would enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought?