Coniston, Tarn Hows, Black Fell & Holme Fell

“Some men become national heroes for superlative acts of bravery in service to their country. Others become heroes locally, because they stand up for the underdog when the establishment runs roughshod over them.” Jimmy Hewitson was both. I hear his remarkable story from his grandson, John. It’s a story of courage, compassion and the redemptive power of the Cumbrian landscape.

Courage

On the radio, a mother bravely describes losing her son in the Manchester Arena bombing. She says, “as soon as I heard about the explosion, I knew he was dead”. Some unfathomable maternal instinct tapped into something deeper than radio silence and sensed a severed emotional connection. By morning, she knew for certain that he hadn’t been admitted to any of the city’s hospitals, but it took a full twenty-four hours for the police to confirm her worst fears.

I can’t begin to imagine how those twenty-four hours felt. What that poor woman went through. What she is still going through. Every hour must have seemed an eternity, hoping against hope she was wrong, powerless do anything but wait for that dreadful knock on the door.

Benjamin Kirkby’s mother waited almost a year.

Ben was a Coniston lad and a quarryman. When World War One broke out, Ben, like many of his mates, answered Lord Kitchener’s call for volunteers. He enlisted in the King’s Own Lancaster Regiment (now the Duke of Lancaster’s) and was assigned to 1/4 brigade. Ben didn’t see action until the Somme, on 8th August 1916; after that, he would take no further part in the war. He was killed that day, as were two of his friends, Richard Usher and Sol Robinson. Richard and Sol’s deaths were confirmed within days, but Ben was reported as wounded, then wounded and missing. It was a full eleven months before his parents heard their son was dead.

I’ve just come from The Ruskin Museum in Coniston where curator, Vicky Slowe, has been showing me a file of remembrance; it has a page for each of the soldiers. A display case holds some personal artefacts: Ben Kirkby’s commemorative scroll; Richard Usher’s death penny and the official army communique to his parents, informing them of their son’s death. It also holds a painting by Richard of a boat on a lake, presumably Coniston Water. It looks peaceful and serene, evoking a long, lazy, carefree afternoon. A happy memory he held with him, perhaps, in the bitter, bloody turmoil of the trenches.

Beside the display case is a Matchless motorcycle that belonged to James Hewitson, another local lad who fought beside Ben, Sol and Richard in The Somme. Vicky and I were joined by John Dodd, James’s grandson, who recounted his grandfather’s remarkable story.

Some men become national heroes for superlative acts of bravery in service to their country. Others become heroes locally, because they stand up for the underdog when the establishment runs roughshod over them. Jimmy Hewitson was both. His grave lies in the Coniston churchyard, beside the fine Celtic cross of the war memorial, designed by W. G. Collingwood, who founded the Ruskin museum and designed Ruskin’s gravestone, as well as a series of war memorials including those at Hawkshead, Ulverston and St Bees, and the plaque on top of Great Gable.

This year, on April 26th, a new plaque will be laid beside the Coniston memorial to mark the 100th anniversary of the action that earned James Hewitson the Victoria Cross.

Hewitson survived the Somme; by 1918, he had been promoted to Lance Corporal, and his brigade had moved to Givenchy. A photograph in the museum shows a boy, seemingly too young for the military uniform he is wearing, but his courage and daring on April 26th were outstanding. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross in May 1918, and on 28th June, this report appeared in The London Gazette:

“For most conspicuous bravery, initiative and daring action. In a daylight attack on a series of crater posts L/Cpl Hewitson led his party to their objective with dash and vigour, clearing the enemy from both trench and dugouts, killing in one dugout six of the enemy who would not surrender. After capturing the final objective, he observed a hostile machine-gun team coming into action against his men. Working his way round the edge of the crater he attacked the team, killing four and capturing one. Shortly afterwards he engaged a hostile bombing party which was attacking a Lewis gun post; he routed the party, killing six of them. The extraordinary feats of daring performed by this gallant non-commissioned officer crushed the hostile opposition at this point.”

King George V presented James with his Victoria Cross in France, on 8th August 1918. It must have been a day of bittersweet emotions for him, as it was the second anniversary of the Somme action that killed his friends.

Defiance

When the troops returned home in 1918, the mood was very different from the surge of patriotism that had seen so many enlist, four years earlier. The men bore deep scars, emotionally as well as physically. Today, we recognise post traumatic shock disorder. Back then, it was little understood and was known crudely as shell shock. Soldiers showing symptoms in the trenches had been shot for cowardice or desertion; demobbed squaddies kept shtum and suffered in silence. Many others were conspicuous by their absence.

The survivors were less reticent when it came to demanding change. Across Britain, there was a feeling among veterans that if they were going to risk their lives fighting for their country, they wanted a say in how it was governed. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 gave the vote, not only to women, but to all working-class men.

In a politically opportunist attempt to recapture some patriotic fervour and whip up a sense of triumphalism, The War Office presented many British towns and villages with war trophies. Ulverston received a German tank which stood at the bottom of Market Street until the 1960’s (the roundabout on the A590 is still known as “tank square”).

Coniston was presented with a German howitzer. It’s hard to imagine a more clumsy and insensitive gesture to a community licking its wounds and mourning its dead than to foist upon it the very instrument of its grief. It would be an understatement to say it didn’t go down well with the residents, especially those who had served. One evening, some young veterans were enjoying a pint when the conversation turned to the hated gun. Opinion was unanimous: they’d all spent enough time staring at the front of one of those things; there was no way they wanted to stare at the back of one now. After a few more pints, they decided to do something about it.

Jimmy Hewitson was at home, but such was his standing, they decided to run their plan past him, first. Jimmy’s wife answered the door; her husband had already gone to bed. When they told her what they were planning, she ran straight up the stairs to rouse him. It took no time at all for Jimmy to shout his response from the landing, “Give me a minute to get some pants on, and I’ll give you a hand”.

The howitzer had been placed outside the Ruskin museum. Being a field gun, it was on wheels. The men got behind it and, with a lot of heaving and shoving, managed to push it down the back street, past the Black Bull, over the bridge, and down to the lake. It must have been a struggle to keep something that heavy under control on the downhill stretch. They were aiming for the steep drop into the deeper water, but in the dark, they steered to the left of it, near the stone-built jetty, and pushed it into the shallows. It didn’t sink very far.

A half-submerged howitzer wasn’t quite the act of good riddance they’d been hoping for, so one of them suggested they have a word with Prissy. Priss was the captain of the Steam Yacht Gondola that ran daily excursions up and down the lake, acting as a water bus for locals and a sightseeing experience for tourists. He was only too happy to help and told them to be ready in the morning when he’d sail the Gondola past the spot on the way to her first pick up. The next day, they tied a rope around the gun and threw the end to Priss; he towed the howitzer out into the middle of the lake, where he left it to rust on the bottom.

John was only little when his grandad died, but his older brother recalls hearing the story first hand. John does remember seeing the howitzer exhumed sometime in the very late 1960’s or early 1970’s. It was pulled from the lake, loaded on to a trailer without fuss or ceremony, and swiftly driven away to sit in some private collection.

Purification and Renewal

In his post-war years, James Hewitson dug ditches, cut hedges and repaired roads, but he was hospitalised several times for shell shock and for surgery to remove shrapnel. Like many of his peers, Jimmy’s heroism came at a high personal cost. As a nation, we were ill equipped to help. Shell shock was seen as form of a neurasthenia: a supposed mechanical exhaustion of the nerves (it’s no longer a recognised condition in western medicine). Treatments were experimental and sometimes barbaric. We can only hope Hewitson escaped our worst medical follies. Certainly, he seems to have seen some improvement in later years: he was able to attend two regimental reunions and the museum has a wonderful photograph of him as an old man astride his beloved Matchless motorbike.

On leaving the museum, I walk down through a field of charcoal-fleeced Herdwicks to Coniston Hall, on the lake shore. In the soft grey light of an overcast afternoon, the rugged grandeur of this Elizabethan building appears sculpted from the earth, rough-hewn from Silurian stone, abandoned to ivy, repurposed as farm-house, a wide grassy ramp rising to its once opulent hall stripped of its oak panelling in its rebirth as a barn. Its conical chimneys stand tall and turret-like against a pale wash of sky.

Beyond is the lake, the water gently ridged with ripples, a soft bluish pewter, silver where it escapes the shadows. I walk the shore path to Torver, and most of the way to Brown How. Underfoot, the beach is mud, stone, moss and shale, overhung with a twiggy latticed canopy of naked branches, as if lightly sketched in soft graphite where they spring from heavily shaded trunks. I pass stone boat houses and little wooden jetties where an orange dinghy and an orange buoy are isolated splashes of colour amid the soft, earthy monochrome. To the north, is the high mountain drama of the Fairfield Horseshoe, stark in snow, a skyline rigidly defined, mighty and intimidating. But here, beside the water, is tranquillity.

I think of Richard Usher’s painting. Is this where he came in his head to escape the harsh reality of French battlefields? I think of the lake’s benevolence in swallowing the gun, and I think of James Hewitson’s battle with shell shock; I wonder if he found solace here. Across the beach lies the uprooted trunk of a silver birch, its branches outstretched like limbs reaching out to touch the water. The Coniston war memorial is a Celtic cross. In Celtic mythology, the birch was a symbol of purification and renewal.

Two days later, I’m at Tarn Hows. After some harsh weeks of winter, spring is here, pregnant with the promise of light and warmth. In a few hours, the circular shore path will be thick with sightseers, but at half past eight, I have it almost to myself. The water is a perfect mirror, rendering the dark curtain of trees in ink wash. The shore is a Ruskin watercolour of russet and brown. I pass a bench that bears an inscription: “In memory of Jane Aldworth (1959 – 1995) who loved this place”. Thirty-six is a tender age to die. War is not the only thief of youth. I wonder what happened to her; what comfort she found here. And again, I’m struck by the redemptive power of the landscape. Purification and renewal.

I leave the shore and climb a path that joins the Cumbria Way, which I follow east for a few hundred yards, then turn left to climb to the wilder summit of Black Fell. As a landscape yawns awake from hibernation, it’s possible to experience all seasons at once. Black Fell is a perfect podium for the humble punter. The Fairfield Horseshoe is draped in thin grey clouds, like wisps of Herdwick wool; on Red Screes and the Kentmere Fells, flecks of snow cover mellow tints of autumn. Windermere is a long stretch of sombre silver, Esthwaite Water, a white shimmer, disrupted by the hatched reflections of branches. Tarn Hows is a prelude to Coniston, pale blue beyond; Wetherlam is mighty, dark and wintery, and largely lost in cloud. As I watch, Bowfell and Crinkle Crags are swallowed entirely. And yet above, a summer-like sky is blue and streaked with the slenderest wisps of cirrus. A church bell rings below in Hawkshead, and I shed an outer skin, warm in spring sunshine.

I walk on through a landscape of seasonal transition, of spring skies and winter trees, of distant snow and imminent growth. I pass a farmhouse where a woman skilfully executes a Tai Chi kata. I cross the Coniston to Ambleside road and climb the track past a paddock of belted Galloways to Hodge Close quarry. Sheer faces of rock, tunnelled with caverns and streaked with rich veins of red mineral, fall to a deep pool of copper blue. Many of the King’s Own Lancaster volunteers were quarrymen. Some may have worked here. Now it’s a playground for climbers and divers.

Beyond the quarry, I follow a path up to the old reservoir, an azure jewel in a cloak of russet and straw grass. A boggy expanse leads to the craggier outcrops of Holme Fell. I scramble up a rock step to reach the summit. Coniston Water stretches out below, a languid sheen of white sparkle. I drink coffee from a thermos and think about Jimmy Hewitson and the howitzer.

In January 2014, the then Education Minister, Michael Gove, wrote a piece for the Daily Mail in which he attacked dramas such as Oh What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder for perpetuating “left-wing myths” that depict World War One “as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”. His point seemed to be that criticism of the war and the military tactics somehow “denigrate(s) virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage”. As Philip Hedley pointed out in The Guardian, Gove was so keen imagine a left-wing conspiracy, he conveniently ignored a significant fact: “important source material (for Oh What a Lovely War) came from the Tory MP Alan Clark’s book, The Donkeys, the title of which came from the phrase describing the soldiers as ‘lions led by donkeys’.” Gove was being disingenuous: historians may argue over the donkeys, but the courage of the lions has never been in question.

Mr Gove may not agree with the wide-held view that The Somme was the “epitome of military futility”, but Vicky told me there is some evidence that Sol, Ben and Richard came under friendly fire. I’m not really sure it would have made much difference to their mothers whether it was German, French or English hands that fired the fatal rounds. They’d have been devastated it was anyone.

If you re-read Michael Gove’s piece now, you’ll find he’s keen to draw parallels with modern challenges: “migrant populations on the move, rapid social upheaval, growing global economic interdependence, massive technological change and fragile confidence in political elites” – themes he’s revisited several times since, in the context of the European Union. In retrospect, it reads very like a politician hoping to use the WW1 commemorations to lay the groundwork for a referendum campaign. Whatever your view on Brexit or contemporary politics, manipulating the memory of ordinary men who made an extraordinary sacrifice, is cheap. It’s political opportunism, not a million miles away from placing a German howitzer in front of a grieving population. If you’d pulled a stunt like that on men like Jimmy Hewitson, Michael, I have a sneaking suspicion they’d have told you to jump in a lake.

For a map and directions for the Tarn Hows, Black Fell, Holme Fell walk, visit WalkLakes:

https://www.walklakes.co.uk/walk_111.html

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