Lowgill in 1949 | |
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The anonymous piece below portrays an endearing picture of Lowgill as a place left behind by the times where life was ‘Slow’. Much of it rings true, although it fails to point out that the hamlet had a telephone kiosk (admittedly reported to be ‘often’ out of action by the parish council over the previous two years), and that the parish council, at the request of Edward Knowles of East View farm, had specifically written to the county council two years earlier requesting a road sign ‘at the higher end of Lowgill village as the danger at this point to the children on the road is very considerable.’ Councillor Knowles was also part of the parish council’s campaign to get a better water supply for the village because of the ‘unsatisfactory state of the village water pump at Lowgill’. The Rose and Crown was also twice visited by the author Jessica Lofthouse in the years after the war. She portrays Mr Hird as sitting in his rocker by the fire in the stone-flagged bar while she perched on the settle and drank tea brewed by his wife from water boiled on the hob. The pub, owned by Yates and Jackson of Lancaster, closed in the early 1960s. The old school behind the Church of the Good Shepherd also closed in 1961 when the new school in Lowgill opened but it is still regularly used for village and church functions. The Tony Denby referred to in the article was indeed ten years old, having started at the school in June 1945 when his family moved from Arkholme to Lowgill House. Within a few years, however, his family had moved to Higher Greenbank, Botton. Tony recalls his walk to school took him down to Thrushgill and then over the fields to Ivah and on to Lowgill. Other pupils in the school register walked from Guy Hill and Greenside to the north and Ivah, Swans and Higher Lythe to the south, while yet others came from Botton Head, Lower Houses, Thrushgill and Park House over the parish boundary in Botton, and from Fourstones, on the county boundary with Yorkshire. The school log book suggests free school milk was available from 1942 but cooked school dinners from the kitchens at Hornby were first served in a new wooden hall at the side of the school on 28 April 1952. Mrs Gladys McIntyre was head teacher at the time, serving at the school from 1931 to 1969. The temporary village constructed for the workers on the Haweswater Aqueduct is described elsewhere on this website. A separate section on the school is also planned. Click images to enlarge |
Original copied from a transcript loaned by MS. |