Key

I: = Interviewer, Julia
P: = Participant, Tim Whittaker
[time e.g. 5:22] = inaudible word at this time
[5:22 IA] = inaudible section at this time
word = best guess at word
- = interruption
… = trailing off or change of thought, mid-sentence

TW:
I’ve been in the village probably five years. I’ve known the village since I was an early teenager. I have family in the next village, cousins there, and also my family came from this village originally, so I’ve known it a long time, but I haven't lived in it a long time. In the medieval and 17th centuries a yeoman farmer village, so little, what they called statesmen in the Cumbrian idiom, of little owner occupiers of land, including the house we’re sitting in. There was always a lord of the manor, who were the Crackenthorpes, who lived at Newbiggin Hall. Historically the beck, the Crowdundle beck, was the division between Cumberland on the north side and Westmorland on the south side. It all became Cumbria in my childhood. It’s got a bridge there which the date’s about 1821, it’s an early 19th century bridge. It’s a nice bridge. I suspect it was just a ford before, I don't know if there was a medieval bridge before because it's not a major route. It links Culgaith to Newbiggin in a kind of roundabout way, the Crowdundle Beck, which historically divided on the northern side was the county of Cumberland, and the southern side, Westmorland, and so we’re in Westmorland here at Newbiggin. It has an early 19th century bridge which has a date on it, I think it’s about 1821 or something like that. I suspect before then it was just a ford, because the road just connects in a roundabout way, Newbiggin and Culgaith village, so I suspect it was just a ford before. Crowdundle Beck appear to race, as soon as there’s lots of water it really does fill up and becomes quite a torrent. Further up from Newbiggin the Crowdundle is joined by, I think the Millburn Beck, which is basically bringing water off the Pennines and off Cross Fell.

The fields between Newbiggin bridge and Acorn Bank itself were part of the Crackenthorpe estates, which were sold off in the late 50s, early 60s, and bought by the church commissioners. Halfway down the Settle-Carlisle railway crosses on a very high viaduct above Crowdundle there, a red sandstone viaduct of about 1870s. The bit between the railway and Acorn Bank, the river meanders more, it has quite lots of meanders. It may have meandered more in the past with oxbow legs and things, I’m not sure, but it does certainly wiggle waggle. And there’s some very early oak trees there, some actually very nice oak trees, but there’s one that must be 300 or 400 years old and it’s very, it’s looking a bit sad, but it’s wonderful. I’ve walked up many, many times, well we’ve collected puff balls there and cooked them, quite a lot of puff balls. They’re not that common, puff balls, so I’ve seen them there. on the bit of the field between the railway line and Newbiggin, the Cumberland side is almost red cliffs, almost, but it’s covered in primroses. It’s absolutely covered in primroses in, I suppose March, April.

We know the fish appear, and we only know this from my neighbour, he has fished and the biggest they ever get is a river trout at about six inches long, so to encourage fish to come up the river would be fantastic.

The walk down to Acorn Bank is a big thing for the village, and it is a National Trust, I think they’ve got it on a leaflet even, and it’s a right of way through the fields, following the south bank of the river to the back of Acorn Bank, and it’s a really lovely valley, and it’s a lovely walk. And villagers do it a lot and they walk down to Acorn Bank a lot because, I mean when we have people to stay, one of us will sometimes drive the car down with a picnic and leave two or three others to walk down and we meet them at Acorn Bank and do it that way. And it’s very well walked, you see an awful lot of walkers coming round on that route, going down the riverbank.

I was personally involved as a young man in 1980s as a, this was in the time of work experience, I worked on a vernacular building survey for the National Trust in the north west, in the Lakes, based in their then office at Ambleside, and one of the buildings we came to survey was the Mill House, the barn behind it, and the mill. And the mill, this would be 1986, I’m guessing, was very derelict, the roof was half fallen in, and it was in a terrible state then, and everybody thought it would be lost forever. But luckily the Trust did, they got their act together and they repaired it, and it’s now a working mill, and it’s really exciting to go and visit. And I love the mill yard, the cobbled mill yard.

So it is a real positive thing that that’s happened, and the flour is getting to London. There was always this romantic idea that the back of the hall, which there’s the 16th century wing, which I think is holiday cottages, behind it is the corner of the main body of the building which, at the back, is a medieval Peel tower by the looks of it. But Peel towers are generally quite a lot later than Knights Templars. I imagine it’s 16th century. As far as I remember it has a spiral staircase, which you expect in a Peel tower, so I imagine they had the Peel tower and then half of it got demolished and turned into a grand house. Plus there’s one of a battered base where the stone comes down at an angle which gives it a fortified feeling. But it wouldn’t be, Knights Templars are much earlier, and if you go up the Beck, which is, there’s a wonderful set of fields, and up there is a quarry where a lot of the village red sandstone comes from. It’s quite a soft red sandstone, it’s the same seen that goes out to St. Bees, on the coast. There’s two red sandstones in Cumbria, there’s the soft one, which is always known as St. Bees, which is what occurs in Newbiggin, and then there’s the harder red sandstone, which is a different age but much tougher, not quite as nice in a way to look at, it’s called Lazenby, and that’s from quarries at Lazenby. I think Acorn Bank is built of the local, soft red sandstone.

I was looking at the front façade of Acorn Bank and looking at the front façade of this house, this house is 1695, of one build, and I think the front façade of Acorn Bank, without the top storey, is roughly rebuilt at about the same period. I was looking, the masonry looks very similar. It’s very similar use of blocks of red sandstone and the pointing, very, very similar. It may be the same mason. And I know for a fact that this house, our upper floor is a poured gypsum floor, it’s a poured gypsum floor of 1695, so they quarried gypsum around Newbiggin and around Acorn Bank, and they did it certainly in open cast ways in, and it had certainly started by the 17th century, the floors here have oak joists, oak slats, a bit of reed from dried barley or whatever, and then poured with this about four inches of gypsum. And they’re very rare, gypsum floors. I know that Acorn Bank has one in that bit I was talking about which is reckoned to be earlier, the corner. I’ve come across them near Lincoln where there’s also outcrops of gypsum, sort of Nottingham, Lincolnshire area, and because they were fireproof, and they are fireproof, that’s the wonderful thing. Because plasterboard is fireproof, which is the same material, and so they were quite a high status thing to have. But of course they were locally just quarrying it. It would be easier to use gypsum than to try and find lime, because we’re not on a limestone section here. Up the valley is limestone but here is red sandstone.