Inglewood Forest

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Inglewood Forest is a large tract of mainly arable and dairy farm land with a few small woodland areas between Carlisle and Penrith in the English non-metropolitan county of Cumbria or ancient county of Cumberland.

Etymology[edit]

Inglewood is first attested in the forms Englewod’ (c. 1150), Engelwode (c. 1158) and Englewud (1227).[1] The name means "Wood of the English or Angles". This seems to reflect a situation where, at the time of the name's formation, Cumbria was still predominantly a Celtic-speaking region, and sometimes part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, and English settlement or land-ownership was still unusual enough to be a distinctive feature in a place-name. Noting that the other place-names of this kind are in places that were border areas between English-speaking and Britonnic-speaking cultures, Jayne Carroll and John Baker suggest that "this is perhaps not a case of a 'minority population' name, but one used with a particular political significance to mark a borderland area".[2]

History[edit]

Soon after the Norman Conquest of England this area became a royal forest. The word forest in this sense did not necessarily mean a wooded area but one that was set aside for hunting, though several areas of Inglewood were heavily wooded. The animals that were hunted in this area were mainly deer and wild boars.

The forest boundaries changed many times and included at one time most of the Cumberland wards of Leath and Cumberland but the core or heart of the forest was the parishes of Hesket-in-the-Forest, Skelton and Hutton-in-the-Forest. Higham[3] places the "core of the forest between the Chalk Beck and the River Petteril, in particular the townships and civil parishes of Dalston, Sebergham, Hesket, Mungrisdale, Catterlen, Hutton, Skelton, and Castle Sowerby".

The forest ultimately belonged to the English Crown and was governed by the strict forest law exercised by wardens. In the reign of Henry VIII the forest laws were repealed and Inglewood ceased to be a royal forest although it is still to this day marked on maps as such".[4]

The borough and city of Carlisle (the area within the city walls) was outside the forest though Penrith was within it and was the main administrative centre and market town for the southern part of the region.

Border reivers were active in the area and it contains a number of fortified buildings referred to as Peel towers.

Grid reference Name Location NHLE Sources for "peel"/"pele"
NY505458 Armathwaite Castle Armathwaite 1145496 Pevsner;[5] Ordnance Survey[6]
NY476384 Brackenburgh Tower Calthwaite 1145499 Pevsner; see Perriam and Robinson[7]
NY478320 Catterlen Hall Catterlen 1012829 Pevsner
NY475524 Cote House Wetheral 1111822 Perriam and Robinson,[8] and also Pevsner, say Bastle house; Ordnance Survey[6]
NY376515 Dalston Hall Dalston 1087441 Ordnance Survey[6]
NY551367 St Cuthbert's Church Great Salkeld 1100260 RIBA[9]
NY403433 High Head Castle Ivegill Perriam and Robinson
NY518302 Hutton Hall Penrith 1326922 NHLE;[10] see Perriam and Robinson[7]
NY460357 Hutton in the Forest near Skelton 1210817 Pevsner
NY433509 Newbiggin Hall St Cuthbert Without 1087720 Pevsner
NY396436 Thistlewood Ivegill 1326687 Pevsner; see Perriam and Robinson[7]
NY433499 Woodside St Cuthbert Without see Perriam and Robinson[7]

Literature[edit]

The Forest is the setting of many of the adventures in the late medieval Northern Gawain Group of Middle English chivalric romances.[11] Around the same time, Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Chronicle (written c. 1420) claims the forest as the original setting of the Robin Hood legend:[4]

Lytil Jhon and Robyne Hude
Wayth-men ware commendyd gude
In Yngil-wode and Barnysdale
Thai oysyd all this tyme thare trawale.

According to legend, Inglewood Forest is also home to the outlaws Adam Bell, William of Cloudsley and Clym of the Clough. Their story is told in Child Ballad 116.

Honour of Penrith[edit]

The manors of Penrith, Great Salkeld, Langwathby, Carlatton (not Carleton as it sometimes said to be), Castle Sowerby and Scotby were collectively known as the Honour of Penrith.[12] Glassonby and Gamblesby were sometimes included in the Honour. The manors were given to the Scottish crown in exchange for Scotland giving up its claim to all of Cumberland. In 1272 King Alexander III complained that a William de Leyburne, the local seneschal, has unlawfully appropriated the manors' rents. Later Edward I took them for himself. Later they passed to the Neville family but came back to being Crown property during the Wars of the Roses and remained so until the joint reign of William III and Mary II. The honour was also known as "The Queen's Hames" due to the fact the manors were often given to a Queen consort on her marriage or at the death of the previous consort. The last Queen consort to be Lady of the Manor or Honour was Queen Catherine of Braganza, consort of Charles II.

William III gave the lands belonging to the manor to his friend William Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland whose descendants later sold them to their relatives the Cavendish family.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Close Rolls, March 1244". British History Online. Retrieved 20 September 2020. (reference for the Englewud spelling) Mandatum est Roberto de Ros, justiciario foreste, quod in foresta de Englewud' faciat habere vicecomiti Cumberl' x. quercus ad reparandam et lambruscandam capellam in castro regis Karleoli. Teste ut supra.
  2. ^ John Baker and Jayne Carroll, 'The Afterlives of Bede’s Tribal Names in English Place-Names', in The Land of the English Kin: Studies in Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England in Honour of Professor Barbara Yorke, ed. by Alexander James Langlands and Ryan Lavelle, Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages, 26 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 112–53 (doi:10.1163/9789004421899_008); ISBN 9789004349490.
  3. ^ Higham, N. J. (1986), "The Origins of Inglewood Forest" (PDF), TCWAAS, 86: 85–100
  4. ^ a b Bain, Joseph, ed. (1884). Calendar of documents relating to Scotland, volume 2, 1272-1307. H.M. General Register House, Edinburgh.
  5. ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1967). Cumberland and Westmorland. Yale University Press.
  6. ^ a b c Labelled as a Peel on 1:25000 Ordnance Survey maps
  7. ^ a b c d For these entries, Perriam and Robinson list sources for "Peel" without comment
  8. ^ Perriam, Denis; Robinson, John (1998). The Medieval Fortified Buildings of Cumbria. CWAAS.
  9. ^ Royal Institute of British Architects. "St Cuthbert, Great Salkeld, Cumbria: the pele tower". Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  10. ^ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1326922)". National Heritage List for England.
  11. ^ Sean Pollack, 'Border States: Parody, Sovereignty, and Hybrid Identity in "The Carl of Carlisle"', Arthuriana, 19.2 (summer 2009), 10-26 (p. 10).
  12. ^ Winchester, Angus; Straughton, Eleanor. "Cumbrian Manorial Records". Lancaster University. Retrieved 12 March 2022.

Sources[edit]

  • Parker, F.H.M. (1905). "Inglewood Forest : part 1". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 5. Carlisle: The Society: 35–61.
  • Parker, F.H.M. (1906). "Inglewood Forest : part 2". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 6. Carlisle: The Society: 159–170.
  • Parker, F.H.M. (1907). "Inglewood Forest : part 3". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 7. Carlisle: The Society: 1–30.
  • Parker, F.H.M. (1909). "Inglewood Forest : part 4". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 9. Carlisle: The Society: 24–37.
  • Parker, F.H.M. (1910). "Inglewood Forest : part 5-6". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 10. Carlisle: The Society: 1–28.
  • Parker, F.H.M. (1911). "Inglewood Forest : part 7". Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society. 2nd series. 11. Carlisle: The Society: 1–37.

External links[edit]

54°47′N 2°55′W / 54.783°N 2.917°W / 54.783; -2.917

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