121 Highgate
On the east side of Highgate between Yard 119 Highgate and 125 Highgate (Premier Care)
Previously undershot by Yard 123 Highgate, now part of the shop. The building previously projected further into the street. It has been refronted at least once - there were four windows shown on the first floor frontage in earlier photographs and the dormer window looks different now. The ground floor seems to have been set back under a projecting first floor and it now has a shop front.
It was described in an 1881 Westmorland Gazette article "... in Highgate is a house, a very ancient one..."
Currently occupied by the Wild Abandon shop.
Previously the Royal Oak, WR Chapman 'Outfitters and Universal Tailors', later Simmons Furniture shop. It had a large carriage lamp next to the entrance to the yard to the left
Curwen
121 Further towards the south stands a very ancient house with casement windows and those four delightful diamond chimneys on the ridge. For some time it was a well known public house under the sign of “ The Royal Oak,” a sign frequently met with, in memory of the famous escape made by Charles II. by hiding in the lopped branches of an oak at Boscobel. At one time it was the property of Alderman Edward Whitehead, mayor in 1720, and here he resided and carried on his cabinetmaking business down the yard. Lately it has been owned by Mr. Charles Wilkinson ; and at the end of the row of cottages down the yard is the warehouse where his father, James Wilkinson, carried on his woollen business. The two heights of doors opening to the crane hoist are still remaining. The warehouse has also been tenanted by Joseph Allen, who, according to the History of Ravenstonedale, “alone brought into this valley £50 a fortnight as the wages for knitting.” Before we come to the biscuit manufactory of J. Carr, we notice the old woollen manufactory of Wilson and Cartmell. They were shearmen dyers who bought the webs woven by the country people and dyed and finished them off here. John F Curwen, Kirkbie Kendal (1900) p73
