Keswick ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Cumberland unitary authority area of Cumbria, England. It lies within the Lake District National Park, just north of Derwentwater and from Bassenthwaite Lake. The parish had a population of 4,658 at the 2021 census.
There is evidence of prehistoric occupation of the area, but the first recorded mention of the town dates from the 13th century, when Edward I of England granted a charter for Keswick's market, which has maintained a continuous 700-year existence. The town was an important mining area and has been known as a holiday centre from the 18th century; tourism has been its principal industry for more than 150 years. Its features include the Moot Hall; a modern theatre, the Theatre by the Lake; one of Britain's oldest surviving cinemas, the Alhambra; and the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery in the town's largest open space, Fitz Park. Among the town's annual events is the Keswick Convention, an Evangelical gathering attracting visitors from many countries.
Keswick became widely known for its association with the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Together with their fellow Lake Poet William Wordsworth, based at Grasmere, away, they made the scenic beauty of the area widely known to readers in Britain and beyond. In the late 19th century and into the 20th, Keswick was the focus of several important initiatives by the growing conservation movement, often led by Hardwicke Rawnsley, vicar of the nearby Crosthwaite parish and co-founder of the National Trust, which has built up extensive holdings in the area.
Toponymy The town is first recorded in Edward I's charter of the 13th century, as "Kesewik". Scholars have generally considered the name to be from the Old English, meaning "farm where cheese is made", the word deriving from "cēse" (cheese) with a Scandinavian initial "k" and "wīc" (special place or dwelling), although not all academics agree. George T. Flom of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1919) rejected that derivation on the grounds that a town in the heart of Viking-settled areas, as Keswick was, would not have been given a Saxon name; he proposed instead that the word is of Danish or Norse origin and means "Kell's place at the bend of the river".Flom, George T. "The Origin of the Place-Name 'Keswick'" , The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 18, number 2, April 1919, pp.221–225 Among the later scholars supporting the "cheese farm" toponymy are Eilert Ekwall (1960) and A.D. Mills (2011) (both Oxford University Press), and Diana Whaley (2006), for the English Place-Name Society.Ekwall, p.273; and Mills, A.D. "Keswick" , A Dictionary of British Place Names, Oxford University Press, 2011; Oxford Reference, retrieved 23 June 2014
History Pre-history
Evidence of prehistoric occupation in the area includes the Castlerigg stone circle on the eastern fringe of the town, which has been dated to .Barrie, p.90 Neolithic-era stone tools were unearthed inside the circle and in the centre of Keswick during the 19th century. The antiquary W. G. Collingwood, commenting in 1925 about finds in the area, wrote that they showed "Stone Age man was fairly at home in the Lake District".Collingwood, p.6 There is little evidence of sustained settlement in the area during the Bronze Age, but from excavations of hill forts it is clear that there was some Iron Age occupation, circa 500 BC, although scholars are not agreed about how permanent it was.Bott, p.3
In Roman Britain Cumbria was the territory of the Carvetii.Charles-Edwards, p.11 As the site of the western part of Hadrian's Wall, it was of strategic importance. The north of the county is rich in archaeological evidence from the period, but nothing is known that suggests any Roman habitation in the Keswick area, other than finds that point to the existence of one or more Roman highways passing the vicinity of the present-day town.Rice, p.92; and Bott, p.4 Such nearby settlements as can be traced from the era of the Romans and the years after their departure seem to have been predominantly Celtic. Many local place names from the period, including that of the river Derwent, are Celtic, some closely related to Welsh equivalents.
Several Christian saints preached the Gospel in the north of England in the late 6th and early 7th centuries AD; in Keswick and the surrounding area the most important figures were St Herbert of Derwentwater and his contemporary St Kentigern.Bott, pp.4–5 The former, the pupil and friend of St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, lived as a hermit on an island in Derwentwater, now named after him. Kentigern, who lived and preached in the area before moving to Wales, is traditionally held to have founded Crosthwaite Church, which was the parish church of Keswick until the 19th century.Wilson and Kaye, pp.5–6
Middle Ages
Keswick's recorded history starts in the Middle Ages. The area was conquered by the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria in the 7th century, but Northumbria was destroyed by the Vikings in the late 9th century. In the early 10th century, the British Kingdom of Strathclyde seized the area and it remained part of Strathclyde until about 1050, when Siward, Earl of Northumbria, conquered Cumbria.Charles-Edwards, pp.12,575; Clarkson, pp.12, 63–66, 154–58 In 1092, William II of England, son of William the Conqueror, marched north and established the great baronies of Allerdale-below-Derwent, Allerdale-above-Derwent and Greystoke, the borders of which met at Keswick.Bott, p.11 In 1181, Jocelyn of Furness wrote of a new church at Crosthwaite, Keswick, founded by Alice de Romilly, the Lady of Allerdale, a direct descendant of William II's original barons.Wilson and Kaye, p.8 In 1189, Richard I granted the rectory of Crosthwaite to the Cistercian order of Fountains Abbey.Rice, p.103
During the 13th century, agricultural land around the town was acquired by Fountains and Furness Abbeys. The latter, already prosperous from the wool trade, wished to expand its sheep farming and bought large tracts of land from Alice de Romilly in 1208. She also negotiated with Fountains Abbey, to which she sold Derwent Island in Derwentwater, land at Watendlath, the mill at Crosthwaite and other land in Borrowdale. Keswick was at the hub of the monastic farms in the area and Fountains based a steward in the town, where tenants paid their rents. Furness also enjoyed profitable rights to the extraction of iron ore.Rice, p.95
Keswick was granted a charter for a market in 1276 by Edward I. This market has an uninterrupted history lasting for more than 700 years.Bott, p.12; Jackson, p.119; and "Keswick" Visit Cumbria, retrieved 29 August 2014 The pattern of buildings around the market square remained broadly the same from this period until at least the late 18th century, with houses – originally timber-framed – fronting the square and sturdily enclosed gardens or yards at the back. According to local tradition these stout walls and the narrow entrances to the yards were for defence against marauding Scots. In the event it appears that the town escaped such attacks, Scottish raiders finding richer and more accessible targets at Carlisle and the fertile Eden Valley, well to the north of Keswick.Bott, pp.12–13
16th and 17th centuries: agriculture and industry
With the Dissolution of the Monasteries, between 1536 and 1541, Furness and Fountains Abbeys were supplanted by new secular landlords for the farmers of Keswick and its neighbourhood. The buying and selling of sheep and wool were no longer centred on the great Abbeys, being handled locally by the new landowners and tenants. This enhanced Keswick's importance as a market centre, though at first the town remained only modestly prosperous: in the 1530s John Leland wrote of it as "a lytle poore market town".Linton, p.58 By the second half of the century, copper mining had made Keswick richer: in 1586 William Camden wrote of "these copper works not only being sufficient for all England, but great quantities of the copper exported every year" with, at the centre, "Keswicke, a small market town, many years famous for the copper works as appears from a charter of king Edward IV, and at present inhabited by miners".Camden, p.170
Earlier copper mining had been small in scale, but Elizabeth I, concerned for the defence of her kingdom, required large quantities of copper for the manufacture of weapons and the strengthening of warships. There was the additional advantage for her that the Crown was entitled to royalties on metals extracted from English land.Bott, p.17 The experts in copper mining were German and Elizabeth secured the services of Daniel Hechstetter of Augsburg, to whom she granted a licence to "search, dig, try, roast and melt all manner of mines and ores of gold, silver, copper and quicksilver" in the Keswick area and elsewhere.
As well as copper, a new substance was found, extracted and exploited: this was variously called wad, black lead, plumbago or black cauke, and is now known as graphite. Many uses were quickly discovered for the mineral: it reduced friction in machinery, made a heat-resistant glaze for crucibles and when used to line moulds for cannonballs, resulted in rounder, smoother balls that could be fired further by English naval cannon.Bott, pp.22–23 Later, from the second half of the 18th century, it was used to make pencils, for which Keswick became famous.
The copper mines prospered for about seventy years, but by the early 17th century the industry was in decline. Demand for copper fell and the cost of extracting it was high.Bott, p.20 Graphite mining continued and quarrying for slate began to grow in importance. Other small-scale industries grew up, such as tannery and weaving. Although the boom of the mid-16th century had finished, the town's economy did not slide into ruin and the population remained generally constant at a little under 1,000.Bott, pp.28–30
18th and 19th centuries: beginnings of tourism
The historian George Bott regards John Dalton (1709–63) and John Brown (1715–66) as the pioneers of tourism in the Lake District. Both wrote works praising the majesty of the scenery and their enthusiasm prompted others to visit the area. The poet Thomas Gray published an account of a five-day stay in Keswick in 1769, in which he described the view of the town as "the vale of Elysium in all its verdure" and was lyrical about the beauties of the fells and the lake.Gray, p.325 His journal was widely read, and was, in Bott's phrase, "an effective public relations job for Keswick". Painters such as Thomas Smith of Derby and William Bellers also contributed to the influx of visitors; engravings of their paintings of Cumberland scenery sold in large numbers, further enhancing the fame of the area.Bott, p.39 In 1800, the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote, "It is no small advantage that for two-thirds of the year we are in complete retirement – the other third is alive & swarms with Tourists of all shapes & sizes."Lindopp p.165 Coleridge had moved to Keswick in that year and together with his fellow Lake Poets (see below) was possibly the strongest influence on the public esteem of Keswick and the Lake District.