Old Cumbria Gazetteer - Dickens House, Hesket Newmarket


	Dickens House, Hesket Newmarket
	Dickens House
locality:-	Hesket Newmarket
civil parish:-	Caldbeck (formerly Cumberland)
county:-	Cumbria
locality type:-	buildings
coordinates:-	NY34033865
1Km square:-	NY3438
10Km square:-	NY33
references:-	Listed Buildings 2010

	BVD25.jpg (taken 5.8.2011)

evidence:-	presumably old text:- Dickens 1857 placename:- Hesket Newmarket Inn
source data:-	Book, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, by Charles Dickens, 1857. goto source Page 9:- "..." "... The Innkeeper, had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake." "The Innkeeper was not idle enough -was not idle at all, which was a great fault in him - but was a fine specimen of a north-country man, or any kind of man. He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells. (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.)" "The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-side, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the house. What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number. They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the paternal affections from under little cupping glasses; but Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunts country boy, before and after his pie, were on the wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had all her colours (and" goto source Page 10:- "more) flying, and was making great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady's collar. A benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp packed for travelling. Everything became a nick-nack in this curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest possible distance from the fire-place, and said, "By your leave, not a kittle, but a bijou." The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish, with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa, and therefrom proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose. Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulent member of the family." "There were books, to, in this room; books on the table, books on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner. Fielding was there, and Smollet was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was a really good choice of good books for rainy days or fine. It was very pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome by-place - so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house - so fanciful to imagine what a wonder a room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village - what grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in" goto source Page 11:- "the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland - ..."

evidence:-	database:- Listed Buildings 2010 placename:- Dickens House placename:- Queen's Head Inn
source data:-	courtesy of English Heritage "DICKENS HOUSE / / / CALDBECK / ALLERDALE / CUMBRIA / II / 72389 / NY3404238648"

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