Hawkshead in 1839
Hawkshead is in Furness, near the head of the small lake Easthwaite Water, on a brook flowing into the lake: it is 267 miles from London and 27 from Lancaster by Cartmel. The parish contains 22,220 acres, with a pop. in 1831 of 2,060 : the township of Hawkshead (one of four into which the parish is divided) contains 6,700 acres, with a population of 797. There is no manufacture in the town, but the weekly market (on Monday) is considerable, the town being the centre of business for Furness Fells. There are four yearly fairs. There is a neat town-house ; and near the town are the remains of an old building in which one or more monks, representatives of the abbot of Furness, performed divine service, and in which the abbot's bailiff exercised temporal jurisdiction. The church is an ancient building repaired and modernized by Sandys, Archbishop of York, a native of this town, in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The living is a perpetual curacy in the archdeaconry of Richmond and diocese of Chester, of the clear yearly value of £110 with a glebe-house. There were in the township in 1833, a grammar-school, founded by Archbishop Sandys, with 20 boys ; three other day-schools with 87 children, and a Sunday-school with 110 children.
There are iron-works and slate quarries in the mountains in the neighbourhood. |