CAPÍTULO II. ¿Justicia y Paz?: Aproximación a un proceso socio político
2.3. La situación de las víctimas con Justicia y Paz
The poor law union of Ulverston was co-extensive with Furness and Cartmel which
comprised the hundred of Lonsdale North of the Sands, and was completely isolated by
the sea from the remainder of the county. The area was altogether ‘so different in face,
soil and custom’ that, as Rothwell put it in 1849, ‘an inhabitant of south Lancashire
24 Rothwell, Agriculture of the Countv of Lancaster, pp. 30-32, 140; Beesley, Agriculture in Lancashire, p. 22.
25 Binns, Notes on the Agriculture of Lancashire, pp. 120, 126; Baines, Directory and Gazetteer, vol. II, p.629.
3.5 THE TOWNSHIPS OF
ULVERSTON UNION
Aldingham Lower Allithwaite Upper Allithwaite Blawith Broughton East Broughton West Cartmel Fell Church Coniston Claife Colton DaltonDunnerdale with Seathwaite Egton with Newland Hawkshead & Monk
Coniston with Skelwith Lower Holker Upper Holker Kirby Iredale Lowick Mansriggs Osmotherley Pennington Satterthwaite Staveley Torver ULVERSTON V < f Urswick u / (J M/ WESTHOIltANt) 1 YORKSinKt (W.atXUb*) MONKL O O N I S T O / <J T D R V & R . i S A T T e .R T H U lA ( T £ i UJ J 6 UJ Of C O L T O N Si u
s
IB <n \ \ UPP&R Holker%
Hi jef*A ''
COLTONr
Three - Rural Lancashire: the Study Area
could scarce believe he was in the same county’.27 Indeed the natural affinity with the
Lake Counties was recognized by the Poor Law Commission who included Furness
and Cartmel in the district of the Assistant Commissioner for Cumberland and
Westmorland.
Furness was an area which would shortly experience the meteoric rise of Barrow and
the rapid expansion of its haematite extraction, but these were events for the ensuing
decades and, during the period of this study, agriculture was by far the most important
industry. Barrow had only 28 houses in 1843, a population of only 690 in 1851, and
would not launch its first ship until 1852. Furness mines were small and primitive in the
early decades of the century. Ore was raised by horse gin and miners were lowered into
the pit in baskets; pit drainage was non-existent and mining ceased when the water
table was reached. In comparison, steam engines ‘of great power’ were employed at
most large Lancashire collieries by 1815 . 28
Until the completion of the Ulverston-Lancaster Railway as far as Camforth in 1857,
and late in relation to the rest of west Lancashire, the mountains and sea limited
communication with the rest of the country. The turnpike road was so lengthy and so
dusty that people and coach operators preferred to cross over to the rest of Lancashire
via the sands at low tide.29 As an illustration of this preference, a Special Meeting of
the Ulverston Board of Guardians was unable to take place on the proposed date and
time because the representatives from Cartmel would be unable to cross the sands
21 Rothwell, Agriculture o f the County of Lancaster, p.6.
28 W. B. Kendall, pamphlet, ‘The Village o f Barrow in the Parish o f Dalton-in-Fumess: Owners and Occupiers in 1843’, with Notes by W. B. Kendal, 6 Jan. 1903 and supplementary notes by H. Gaythome. (reprinted from the Annual Reports, Proceedings, etc., of the Barrow Naturalists’ Field Club, XVn, (Barrow 1909), pp. 5, 181-191; J. D. Marshall, Furness and the Industrial Revolution. (Barrow-in-Furness, 1958), p.281; Dickson. General View, pp.67, 74
Three - Rural Lancashire: the Study Area
then.30 Goods were also exported and imported by boat from the several creeks and
small ports along the indented coastline of which two, Rampside and Bardsea, were
also watering places.31
About seven-eighths of the district of Furness consisted of lakes, woods, moors and
mountains with various valleys intervening. The mountains and moors provided sound,
hard sheep pasture. Most of the valleys were very narrow and used for pasture or
meadow, but wherever they were of a suitable breadth and not too hilly, grain and
potatoes were grown mainly for home use. On the lower heights the farmers of High
Furness bred cattle and horses, raised calves, made cheese and burned limestone.32
Coppicing, in the thousands of acres of deciduous woods, for conversion into
implement handles, baskets, bobbins and charcoal, provided further agricultural
employment, while copper, stone, and the valuable blue and green slate were extracted
• 33
from various parts of the mountains.
In Low Furness, to the south, the land was mostly arable and ‘fit for any crop’. It
was one of the three areas along with the Fylde and the Lune valley, and the grain tract
in the south west between the Mersey and the Ribble, which were the main wheat-
producing areas of Lancashire. Cattle were principally limited to pastures on the banks
of rivers and brooks. Towards the end of the 1840s iron ore was increasingly extracted
in the Dalton to Pennington area to be shipped to Wales for smelting.34
30 Lancs. CRO, PUU/1/5, Ulverston Gdns’ Mins., 4/11/1850.
31 A Harris, ‘The Seaside Resorts o f Westmorland and Lancashire North of the Sands in the Nineteenth Century’, T.H.S.L.C. 115, 1963, p. 148
32 Rothwell. Agriculture o f the Countv of Lancaster, pp.7-8; J.D. Marshall, ‘The Lancashire Rural Labourer in the Early Nineteenth Century,’ T.L.C.AS, 71, 1961, fii. 73, p. 111
33 Rothwell, Agriculture of the Countv of Lancaster, p.8; Dickson, General View, pp. 39, 78-9; Baines, Directory and Gazetteer. 1, 1924, pp. 634 -35, 652.
Three - Rural Lancashire: the Study Area
The union’s industry was concentrated at Upper Holker in Cartmel, where the
township included two cotton mills and a gunpowder works, in addition to an iron
mine. Farm land around Cartmel was excellent and under arable cultivation. The
extensive tract of Cartmel Fell had recently been enclosed and partly planted up with
trees. The mossy remainder was under mixed farming but with the emphasis on
potatoes and grain crops. The southern portion also included several large estates
including Holker Hall, the seat of the Earl of Burlington, extensive landowner within the
union and elsewhere throughout England, and to be the long-standing, active chairman
of the Board of Guardians from its inception.35
Ulverston Union consisted of 27 townships, the complete product of the
multiple-township parishes of Cartmel, Ulverston, Kirkby Ireleth, and Hawkshead, and
the single-township parishes of Colton, Pennington, Aldingham and Dalton, the old
capital of Furness. Ulverston township’s population o f4,876 in 1831 was the highest in
the four rural unions of this study, and with an increase of 24% from 1821-1841 it most
nearly matched that of the market town of Ormskirk. Though both populations and
rates of increase of Ulverston and Ormskirk were insignificant when compared with
those of industrial towns, they were at least buoyant, not nearing stagnation like
Kirkham, or declining like Garstang. Ulverston Union also had a slightly more even
spread of Guardians than the other three unions. The market centre itself had four
representatives while six other townships had each two. The remaining twenty
townships returned one Guardian each thus making a total of 36.
35 RothwelL Agriculture of the County of Lancaster, p.9; Mannex, Directory. 1851. p.381
Three - Rural Lancashire: the Study Area