Westmorland House

5 and 5a Highgate Kendal Google Streetview

Between 3 Highgate (the Commercial Hotel later Kendal Hotel or the Kendal and Commercial Hotel) and 9 Highgate (Barclays Bank)

Mentioned in "Kirkbie-Kendal, Fragments collected relating to it's ancient Streets and Yards; Church and Castle; Houses and Inns", John F Curwen, 1901 p32

Westmorland House

The large premises, now taken by the County Club, were erected in 1854 upon the site of four very small shops, which have been well depicted by the late Richard Stirzaker, as a background to the famous scene of 1818. This picture, now at Dallam Tower, represents the entrance of Lord Lowther into Kendal in one of Dunn's Lancaster and Kendal Coaches. It is an animated street scene, the coach having just drawn up, with its boisterous band of drum and brass instrumentalists seated on the top, and with one or two others none the less exubriant in the waving of their Lowther banners. But to us, concerned here more with the old appearance of the town than with such jovial company, the most interesting parts of the picture are the rough cobbled-road paving and the old shop frontages behind. The first two shops next the 'Commercial' are occupied by Dowson, printer and bookseller, with Stubbs, the painter and gilder's premises above. Then, on the southern side of the narrow entry known as Brumwell's Yard and beneath a lottery office, is Dowson's genuine tea and coffee shop. An epithet perhaps more needed in these latter days than then.

Behind, on the sloping ground, where Thomas Head afterwards built his residence, stood an old building of some 300 years, which had formerly been of considerable splendour and importance, but subsequently fell into utter ruin. In the old deeds it is first named 'Holly Hill', but subsequently it became the head hostelry of the town, and was known as 'Fox's Inn, being owned by a certain William Fox, one of the principal inhabitants of Soutergate in 1575. And so great was the fame of this house that a country fellow might as well return from London without looking into the face of Royalty as for a traveller to pass through Kendal without alighting here 'to wet his whistle'.

It was here that on the 3rd day of August, 1616, Sir Augustine Nicholls, the 'Just Judge', died. To his 'renowned memorie' a monument is erected in the Parish Church and another in Faxton Church, Northamptopnshire, where he was born, and where a traditional story still goes that he was poisoned at his inn by four witches of Kendal. The figures of Justice, Fortitude, Prudence and Temperence placed on the cenotaph at Faxton are accountable for this 'pretty compliment' paid to the womankind of Kendal by the four cardinal virtues, how good our good have been.

However, the inn that witnessed this traditional scene has since then passed through many vicissitudes, the history of which is almost entirely lost. Before the coaches enlivened the road its doors were closed, and vast emptyness reigned alone. About the year 1780, one, Jonathan Robinson, gathered around him a somewhat famous school in a few of the rooms, which he kept until his death in 1816. History records him as being a man 'skilled to rule and stern to view'.

'But past is all his fame, the very spot, Where many a time he triumphed, is forgot'.

Years after, one of the upper rooms was rented as an Independent Methodist Chapel, by George Robinson, a hosier and grocer in Kirkland, who died in 1845, and still later by another religious body - the Mormons, or 'Latter-Day Saints'. An adjoining room, once most resplendent, was rented to a tailor for a workshop, and on the ground floor John Fisher had his carpenter's shop. But enough -

'T were long to tell, 't were sad to trace, Each step from splendour to discrace'.

Down Brumwell's Yard were also the old-established works of a tailor chandler conveniently adjacent to the Butchers' Rows, and from the Cumberland Pacquet for September 16, 1794, I gather that they were let as a well-going concern by the owner, James Teasdale, the tallow from upwards of thirty butchers being contracted for. When Parker & Head bought the premises in 1853, they also bought up this property.

Latterly shops in this frontage have been Lunn Poly travel agents and later Greenhalgh's in 5 Highgate and Thompson travel agents in 5a Highgate.