Capper Lane

Curwen, 1900 p 157

Caper, Cappel, or Chapel Lane is one of the oldest byeways of Kendal. Record seems to point to all the cottages as having at first been thatched, two of which, covered with four feet of straw, probably the accumulation of some 150 years, were still existing in the year 1815. Two others were also standing at this time , one in Wildman Street and the other on Far Cross Bank.

In the early church registers the name of Thomas Capper, of Kirkland, frequently appears, and it is a very probable that he either built or purchased the property, and therby gave to it its name.

The spacious building within iron gates, still standing on the south side of Capper in a field called "Bogey Field" - so called from a favorite horse named "Bogey Rattler" - used formerly to be a foundry kept by Miss "Polly" Cornthwaite, of Collin Croft.

There were formerly two or three public-houses up the Lane, such as the "Fat Lamb," the "Rule and Square," and the "Blue Anchor" (1732); whilst another, standing in 1763, was called the "Boot and Shoe," with a sign representing an old cobbler stooping for his last with many waxed ends hanging down, under which there were the following lines:-

"I'm stooping for my last,

And looking for my end;

He that spends a penny wi' me,

I'll take him for my friend"

I illustrate here and on the previous page two curious bits of cottage architecture, one a the gable end of Cross Lane and the other immediately behind. At the head of the Lane near to the Well Sike stood a chapel, how dedicated or by whom cannot be ascertained. The Little Roods, evidently so called from a cross standing there, is reputed to have been a buriel ground to the chapel; and, when making the foundation for a house built by John Swainson at the corner of it, a quantity of human bones forming an entire skeleton were dug up.