Tourism Objects

Jonathan Otley (1766-1856) first published this map in 1818 and the guidebook in 1823, but they were so successful that they were republished many times over the following decades. The guidebook came with a copy of the map inside. The guidebook describes the natural features of the area, recommends trips, and ends with chapters on botany, geology and meteorology. Otley wanted visitors to appreciate the natural history of the area as well as its beauty. Otley’s map of the Lake District was more accurate than any previous map and was incredibly useful for tourists. The Lake District was spread across Cumberland (outlined in yellow on the map), Westmorland (outlined in green) and Lancashire (outlined in pink).

Otley moved to Keswick from his childhood home near Loughrigg in 1791. He lived and worked in King’s Head Yard, “up t’steps” which you can still see today. Otley started as a watch and clock maker, but geology was his passion. He became known as “the father of Lake District geology” because of his important research. For example, he divided the local rocks into three main units, which we now call the Skiddaw Group, Borrowdale Volcanic Group and Windermere Supergroup. Otley made his own scientific instruments to study the Lake District, including a clinometer (used to measure the heights of hills while standing on ground level). These instruments are now in the Keswick Museum collection.

Many important scientists came to meet and work with Otley. He first met John Dalton, who developed the theory of atoms, when Otley saw Dalton using his own clinometer to measure the height of Skiddaw in 1812. Otley and Dalton worked together regularly over the next 25 years. Otley was also a close friend of Adam Sedgwick, a geology professor at Cambridge (where a museum is named after him) who proposed various geological time periods. Otley and Sedgwick first toured the Lake District together in 1823.

Peter Crosthwaite’s map of Derwentwater—described as being ‘situate in the most delightful Vale which perhaps ever Human Eye beheld’—was first published in 1783 and this updated version was published in 1809. It was made for the growing number of Lake District tourists, directing them to natural features including “lofty” Skiddaw and the Bowder Stone, as well as significant buildings such as Crosthwaite Church. Prominent houses are also included with the names of their owners. Small squares mark the ‘viewing stations’ listed in Thomas West’s guidebook, as well as Crosthwaite’s own suggestions, where tourists could enjoy the ‘picturesque’ views.

This is one of a series of Lake District maps which Peter Crosthwaite published over the years and then bound together as a book to sell at his museum in Keswick. The maps are recognised as being the first accurate maps of the lakes themselves. Crosthwaite sent agents around England to show the maps to important town officials and encourage them to visit the Lake District on a patriotic holiday.

Edmund Elsden, a visitor from King’s Lynn in Norfolk, visited Crosthwaite’s museum and bought this book of maps for 10 shillings and 6 pence on 29th July 1809. Elsden wrote in the front that it was a “very rainy” day in Keswick. The modern Keswick Museum is also a popular place for visitors to take refuge from wet weather!

Peter Crosthwaite was born on a farm near Thirlmere in 1735. After working for the East India Company, he returned to Keswick in 1779. Crosthwaite described himself as ‘Guide, Pilot, Geographer & Hydrographer to the Nobility and Gentry, who make the Tour of the Lakes.’ In 1781, he opened a museum in Keswick, one of the first public museums in Britain. It was a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ displaying unusual objects from around the world. Crosthwaite collected many of them while working for the East India Company. He also found natural history specimens in Cumbria and bought other wondrous objects from dealers and collectors. Visitors could buy copies of his maps, artworks, fossils, minerals and aeolian harps (a harp played by the wind).

Thomas Hutton, a local guide and boatman, opened a rival museum in Keswick in 1785. Crosthwaite was furious! He called Hutton’s maps ‘unlawful, worthless, pretend maps of the Lakes’ while pointing out that he had sold thousands of copies of his own maps. After Crosthwaite’s death in 1808, his descendants continued to run the museum until it was closed in 1870 and the collection was sold at auction. The modern Keswick Museum only has a few of Crosthwaite’s original objects.

This spade was used to cut the first sod of the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway on 21 May 1862. The ceremony took place near Crosthwaite Church. Thousands of people attended including navvies (the railway builders), local clergy, tradesmen, schoolchildren, soldiers and bands. They walked in a procession from the Moot Hall. After a hymn and prayer, T.H. Hoskins, the railway chairman, used a specially made wheelbarrow and spade to cut the first sod. The wheelbarrow is also in Keswick Museum’s collection. Three rounds of gunfire followed, and the bands played ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘God Save the Queen’. A party was then held at the Derwentwater Hotel.

The railway opened for passengers in 1865. It connected the mainline at Penrith to the line that ran between Cockermouth and Workington. The Keswick Hotel was built right next to the train station by the railway company, and visitors went down Station Street to reach the town centre. The railway caused Keswick to grow massively, with many new streets of terraced houses built to accommodate visitors. The annual Keswick Convention began in 1875 and became a major event, attracting visitors from around the world who arrived in Keswick by train.

This whistle is decorated with the initials of the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway. It was made in 1862, when the railway started to be built. It was used to let people know that a train was departing and to communicate with other railway workers.

This is a Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway train ticket from 20 October 1909. The passenger was travelling from Threlkeld to Maryport, so they had to change onto the Maryport & Carlisle Railway line at Workington.

The last train travelled on the Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith Railway line on Saturday 4 March 1972. The railway had been used for over 100 years. Motorcars became much more popular from the 1920s onwards, and local roads were improved for their use. The transportation of goods on the railway declined due to economic depression and alternative routes.

Most of the railway structures were demolished but the line quickly began to be used as a footpath to Threlkeld. In December 2015 it was devastated by Storm Desmond—three bridges were washed away. Exactly five years later, the renovated railway footpath was re-opened to the public. It is 5 kilometres long and thousands of people use it every year.

This is a visitors’ book from the Nag’s Head Inn in Wythburn (at the south end of Thirlmere) with entries dating from 1887 to 1895. The inn was used by people travelling between Keswick and Ambleside, but it became especially popular for walkers going to the summit of England’s third highest mountain, Helvellyn. Douglas and Jane Easton ran the inn from 1872, and Jane continued to manage it herself after her husband’s death in 1887.

The visitors’ book shows that guests came not only from across the United Kingdom but as far afield as the USA, Australia and even Japan. The guests often described their walks (including how long it took them to get to the top of Helvellyn) and sometimes included a poem or a sketch. On this page, a guest named Ralph Mosley Robinson has drawn a picture of the inn and walkers making their way up Helvellyn, with Red Tarn labelled.

This visitors’ book dates from a time of great change for the people of Wythburn. In 1879, an Act of Parliament gave permission for Thirlmere to be turned into a reservoir to supply the growing city of Manchester with water. A tunnel for an aqueduct was excavated under Dunmail Raise between 1886 and 1890, and a dam at the north end of Thirlmere was constructed between 1890 and 1894. Thousands of men were employed to work at the site and most of them lived in specially built huts.

The aqueduct was opened in 1894 and the water is transported by gravity alone along the nearly 100 mile route. The water level was first raised in 1895 and it was brought to its current level in 1916, 54 feet higher than it had originally been. The pages of the visitors’ book on display show that two men staying at the Nag’s Head in January 1891 had come to bury their brothers, who had died while working at the reservoir.

The Nag’s Head was not affected by the flooding of Thirlmere and continued to welcome visitors. However, Manchester Corporation wanted to get rid of the inn, blaming it for polluting the reservoir. They closed the inn in 1929 and used it as workers’ accommodation until the building was demolished in 1966.

This set of postcards was published by G.P. Abraham (1846-1923), a photographer based in Keswick. He and his sons, George and Ashley, produced some of the most memorable and iconic images of the Lake District. The set includes photographs of Keswick itself as well as the surrounding lakes and hills. The Abraham family realised that postcards would be a popular souvenir for Lake District tourists. They used an ‘Instanto’ field camera, a wooden box that had adjustable tripod legs so that it could stand up on any outdoors terrain.

George and Ashley Abraham had their own photography shop built on Lake Road in 1887—the building is now occupied by George Fisher, the outdoor clothing shop. Both brothers loved rock climbing, so in 1896 they started to take photos for O.G. Jones, a professional rock climber. They later produced many of their own books on rock climbing. The brothers scaled rock faces with the heavy camera equipment roped to their backs. George was the better climber so he would hang onto the rock face, sometimes for minutes at a time, while Ashley set up the camera to capture the perfect photo.

Ashley was the first president of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club, founded in 1906, while George became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Ashley died in 1951 and George died in 1965. George’s son Geoffrey continued to run the family business until his retirement in 1967, when it closed.

This information card was given to visitors to the Bowder Stone in Borrowdale by Mary Thompson, who lived there and acted as a guide. Mary took payments from visitors who wanted to climb the stone and asked them to sign a visitors’ book. She would also shake hands with visitors through a hole in the bottom of the stone.

The Bowder Stone is a boulder in the Borrowdale valley, measuring 8 metres tall and 18 metres wide—the biggest freestanding piece of rock in the Lake District. It is remarkable not only for its size, but also because it appears to be defying gravity by standing on its side. William Wordsworth said that it looked like ‘a stranded ship, with keel upturned’. It is andesite (volcanic rock) which fell from Bowder Crag over 10,000 years ago.

The Bowder Stone was turned into a tourist attraction by Joseph Pocklington, who bought the site in 1798. He installed a ladder so that visitors could climb on top of it, as well as a fake ‘druid stone’ and chapel nearby. The top of the stone was decorated with garden plants and a bench was installed. Pocklington also built Bowderstone Cottage as a home for a tour guide. One of the early guides was Mary Caradus, who was married to a local slate miner. A visitor in 1829 called Mary ‘an ancient dame, who seems herself a chip of the old block, and lives in a house about half as big as this Bowder Stone’!

Mary Caradus’s daughter, Mary Thompson, took over as guide when her mother died in 1833. Mary, described by one visitor as a ‘talkative female’, remained the Bowder Stone guide until her death in 1890, at the age of 86. Her daughter, Elizabeth Weightman, had been living with her and took over as guide until her own death in 1917.

The National Trust purchased the Bowder Stone in 1910 as part of a memorial to Edward VII. The Pepper family took over the management of the stone and ran the cottage as a tearoom and gift shop in the 1920s and 1930s. The National Trust bought and renovated the cottage in the 1960s, and it is leased to the Northumbrian Mountaineering Club. The Bowder Stone is now free to visit.

This wooden board of pens and pencils was sold as a souvenir set in Victorian Keswick. It was produced by John W. Grisdale (1832-1906), a woodcarver and pencil-maker with a shop at 16 Lake Road. The pencils were made by different well-known local manufacturers, while the pens (which each have unique carved ends) were all produced by Grisdale.

The board itself is made of wood from two different trees: an ‘antique’ oak tree from Fitz Park (formerly part of the Monk Hall estate) and a chestnut tree from the garden of Greta Hall, the former home of Robert Southey. According to Grisdale, the wood came from ‘a branch that waved before his bedroom window, which he will have looked at thousands of times.’ The branch blew down in a storm and it was ‘made up into fancy goods as souvenirs of Keswick.’

Grisdale worked primarily with cedar wood, making not only pencils but also carved texts, kettle holders, letter openers and giant pencil walking sticks. Visitors to his shop could also buy postcards, oil paintings and watercolours of Keswick and the local area, as well as brooches and earrings made from Skiddaw and Scafell granite set in silver.

Grisdale was a supporter of the Liberal party and in 1885 he sent ‘the largest usable pencil ever made, in the form of a walking stick, lead all through nearly half an inch square’ to the Prime Minister, William Gladstone. It was both a statement of support and a publicity stunt.

Grisdale was a successful businessman, and he opened a second shop at 5 Station Street. He died in 1906 when he was 74 years old and was buried in St John’s churchyard.

The top of this ivory fountain pen contains a very small engraving of Honister Crag, a fell between Borrowdale and Buttermere. The image can only be seen through the convex lens in front of it, which makes it look 300 times larger. This system was patented by René Dagron in 1861 and based on the Stanhope lens used for microscopes. ‘Stanhope Optical Viewers’, as they became known, were very popular in the Victoria era. Many Lake District tourists bought objects like this as souvenirs.

The microphotograph inside the pen shows an engraving by William Banks, an artist based in Edinburgh. His engraving of Honister Crag was originally made for Harriet Martineau’s A Complete Guide to the English Lakes, first published in 1855.

Even at the height of its popularity, microphotography was dismissed as a novelty. However, during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 microphotographs were used to carry sensitive information. Even today, archives and libraries use microfilm to store copies of their documents, allowing researchers to easily access the information while keeping the originals safe.

These small, collectable objects all show Friar’s Crag, a popular spot on the edge of Derwentwater with incredible views of the lake and surrounding hills. Since the Lake District became a tourist destination, Friar’s Crag has been celebrated by artists and writers. J.M.W. Turner painted the view from there. Robert Southey wrote that if he had the money, he would build a house in the field next to it because it had the best close-up view of the lake. These objects show that Friar’s Crag had become a symbol of Keswick.

The medals were made to celebrate the coronation of George V and Queen Mary in 1911. One side shows George and Mary wearing their crowns. The other side shows Friar’s Crag with Keswick’s town motto, “Montes Unde Auxilium Meum” (my help comes from the mountains). The motto is a reference to Psalm 121.

Monks are believed to have sailed from Friar’s Crag to reach St Herbert’s Island on Derwentwater from the 800s. In 1920, Friar’s Crag was given to the National Trust in memory of one of their founders, Canon Rawnsley. Rawnsley had spent years protecting the shores of Derwentwater from development. There is a plaque dedicated to Rawnsley on the approach to Friar’s Crag.

The handle of this brass caddy spoon shows the profile of John Ruskin. It is based on the Ruskin Monument at Friar’s Crag. A caddy spoon is used to measure out dried tea leaves for making a pot of tea. They first became popular in the late 18^th century. Other souvenirs showing Friar’s Crag and the Ruskin Monument include paintings, postcards, medals, badges, cufflinks and even miniature models.

The Ruskin Monument commemorates art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900). Ruskin first visited Keswick in 1824 and he later wrote: “The first thing which I remember, as an event in life, was being taken by my nurse to the brow of Friar’s Crag on Derwentwater.” Ruskin lived at Brantwood, near Coniston, for the last 28 years of his life.  On the front of the monument is a bronze portrait of Ruskin cast by Signor Lucchesi and underneath is Ruskin’s quote about Friar’s Crag. The inscription was carved by W.G. Collingwood, Ruskin’s friend and assistant.

On the back of the monument is a quote from one of Ruskin’s lectures about how the Spirit of God is all around us. The quote was probably chosen by Canon Rawnsley, the vicar of Crosthwaite Church and one of the founders of the National Trust. Rawnsley was a friend of Ruskin’s, and he championed the creation of the monument.

This fern was collected by Maria Wright in 1851. Wright pressed the fern and attached it to a sheet, then put it in a volume with over 30 other ferns. She catalogued and labelled them according to G.W. Francis’s bestseller An Analysis of British Ferns and their Allies (first published in 1837), which was one of the earliest books about ferns.

Maria Wright was a well-known botanist who lived on St John’s Street, Keswick. Wright explored the local landscape looking for interesting and unique plants, especially ferns. She collected them to sell to visitors as single specimens or entire books of pressed plants. Her finds are included in many 19th century collections.

Wright was so knowledgeable that other collectors sent plants to her for identification. A botanist wrote in praise of Wright: “Anyone would be repaid by making her a call, as she speaks from personal observation and knowledge.” Wright’s career lasted for over 40 years. Her love of the outdoors also had a funny side—when Derwentwater’s Floating Island (decomposing plants brought to the surface by the release of gas) re-appeared in 1862, she put a small flag-pole and banner on it! Wright died in 1886 at the age of 67.

A ‘fern craze’ swept across Britain and beyond in the 19th century. Wilhelm Hofmeister discovered that ferns (a non-flowering plant) reproduced by releasing spores and the invention of Wardian cases allowed people to grow them at home. Hundreds of books were published on how to find and care for ferns. The Lake District is home to many different fern species, so tourists came to collect them while locals were able to earn money as guides and by selling ferns. William Askew set up a successful fern nursery in Grange, Borrowdale, which lasted for many decades. However, the fashion for fern collecting put rare species at risk. Even Maria Wright could be overly keen—for two years in a row, she collected all the round-leaved saxifrage that she could find near the foot of Causey Pike and then could not find any more in the following years.

This Lake District guidebook was written by Eliza Lynn Linton in 1864. It was illustrated by her husband, William James Linton. It includes popular walks, as well as describing the geography and early history of the ‘Lake Country’. The couple thought that “a pleasant book could be made by treating the Lake Country with the love and knowledge—artistic and local—belonging of right to natives and old inhabitants.” She called it a “love-book” because she wanted to share her love of the area with her readers.

Eliza Lynn Linton was born in Keswick in 1822. She was the twelfth child of Reverend James Lynn, the vicar of Crosthwaite Church. Lynn Linton’s mother, Charlotte, died shortly after her birth. Lynn Linton’s upbringing was chaotic. Her father was extremely strict and controlling, but she was given very little formal education. She learned what she could from her father’s library. Lynn Linton disagreed with her father on many issues and by early adulthood she was agnostic (meaning she did not know whether she believed in God). However, he did pay for her to move to London to pursue a writing career when she was 23 years old.

In 1848, Eliza Lynn Linton became England’s first salaried female journalist when she was hired by the Morning Chronicle. She also wrote for magazines including Charles Dickens’ Household Words. Her novels shocked Victorian readers because they challenged traditional attitudes towards religion and sex. Lynn Linton had been a defender of women’s rights, but she became strongly anti-feminist as she grew older. Her 1868 article ‘The Girl of the Period’ caused an uproar because she accused young women of being immoral. She also called women who wanted the right to vote a ‘shrieking sisterhood’. Her controversial opinions made her famous.

Lynn Linton spent most of her adult life in London, but often visited the Lake District. She married William James Linton in 1858 and spent the summer months at Brantwood, his home overlooking Coniston Water. Brantwood later became the home of art critic John Ruskin. Lynn Linton separated from her husband in 1867. She died in London in 1898, aged 76, but had her ashes scattered in Crosthwaite churchyard.

Brandelhow Park is 108 acres of land on the western shore of Derwentwater. It was the first Lake District property bought by the National Trust. In 1902, the Trust was able to raise the £6,500 (around £500,000 in today’s money) needed to buy the estate in just five months. This was the beginning of the National Trust’s important role in caring for the natural beauty of the Lake District and making it publicly accessible. Today, the National Trust owns about 20% of the land in the Lake District National Park.

Brandelhow Park was officially opened to the public on 16 October 1902. Princess Louise (Queen Victoria’s daughter), President of the National Trust, came for the ceremony. She was presented with a sonnet written by Canon Rawnsley, one of the Trust’s founders, which celebrated the Lake District. She and the founders then planted oak trees. She declared that the park was “to be held by the National Trust for the use of the nation and the enjoyment not only of the present, but of far-off generations”. It was a very windy day, so when the Keswick Street Theatre Players reenacted the royal visit for its 100th anniversary, their play was titled Blowing A Gale.

The National Trust was officially established on 12 January 1895. This flyer explains that the object of the National Trust was to acquire land and buildings notable for their beauty or historic interest. They did this for the enjoyment of the nation, not for the profit of their subscribers. The Trust had three core founders: social reformer Octavia Hill, Lake District defender Canon Rawnsley, and solicitor Robert Hunter.

This is the proof copy and published version of one of the earliest official Keswick guidebooks. The proof copy was made between 1912 and 1913 by a sub-committee of the Keswick Town Improvement Association. It is handwritten and unfinished, so it is full of crossings-out and pencil notes. A proof like this would usually have been thrown away, so it is incredible that it has survived for over a century. It was first published in 1914 and this updated version dates from the early 1920s. It recommends places to visit, walks and tours with photos and maps, but also includes adverts for Keswick businesses including hotels, pubs, boarding houses, shoemakers and chemists.

The Keswick Town Improvement Association (KTIA) seems to have been founded soon after the creation of Keswick Urban District Council in 1894. The KTIA aimed to ‘promote the well-being of Keswick district by advertising its attractions’. The KTIA made a series of guidebooks like this one to publicise the area. They also made posters that were put up in railway stations across the country, filmed a video of the area, and even put weather reports in newspapers to prove that Keswick did have sunny weather—sometimes!

The KTIA wanted to establish Keswick as the unofficial capital of the Lake District. They called Keswick the area’s “hub” and Derwentwater the “Queen of the Lakes”. The guidebook proudly discusses the area’s rich cultural and literary heritage and claims that Keswick has unparallelled access to “the principal Lakes and Mountains”. Although this was intended to bring more visitors—and money—to the area, the love that the authors felt for Keswick also shines through. They were people who knew Keswick well and wanted to share it with visitors.

This miniature cannon was used in the Keswick Regatta, an annual boat race on Derwentwater. The regatta was started by Joseph Pocklington, the owner of Derwent Isle, and Peter Crosthwaite, who ran a museum in Keswick. It first took place on 28 August 1781—despite heavy rain!

The regatta included a mock invasion of Derwent Isle by a fleet of ships, while the island was defended by a fort and half-moon battery. The local elite watched from the island itself. ‘Admiral’ Crosthwaite demanded that ‘Governor’ Pocklington surrender the island, which he refused to do—leading to a battle. This cannon was used in the show, along with three others in the Keswick Museum collection. The echo of the cannon fire reverberated across the surrounding fells.

The Keswick Regatta initially ran from 1781 until 1790, when the boat race and naval battle were the key events. Peter Crosthwaite dropped out after the 1789 regatta because Thomas Hutton, who ran a rival museum in Keswick, told the spectators on the island that the battle had been cancelled and sailed them away!

The regatta was revived sporadically from 1810 to 1849, with the addition of blindfolded boat races, horse races, dog races and Cumberland wrestling—but no naval battle. The events moved to Crow Park (by the jetties at the north-east end of Derwentwater) in 1818, where a new racecourse had been built. However, when the Leeds millowner John Marshall bought the land in 1832 he refused to allow the regatta to go ahead unless ‘vagrants’ and ‘gamblers’ were banned. The people of Keswick were delighted when the regatta was revived in 1841 further down the lake, but it did not take place every year and the final regatta was held in 1849.

Alfred Wainwright wrote a very popular series of illustrated guidebooks, A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells (1955-1966). This is the fifth volume, which focuses on the northern fells including Skiddaw and Blencathra. Wainwright described the books as a way to ‘go on fellwalking in spirit long after my legs had given up’. Each page of Wainwright’s handwritten and illustrated draft was photographed and printed to look exactly like the original. This is part of what makes Wainwright’s guidebooks so special. His handwriting is recognisable in both the letter and guidebook on display.

Wainwright was born in the industrial town of Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1907. He was always fascinated by lists, numbers and maps, and had a successful career as a civil accountant. A trip to Windermere in his early twenties inspired his love of the Lake District. He took a considerable pay cut to transfer his job to Kendal in 1941, where he wrote and published his Pictorial Guides. Wainwright’s television appearances in the 1980s solidified his status as a household name. By the time of his death in 1991, his books had sold millions of copies. Today, walkers continue to climb the 214 summits (known as “the Wainwrights”) listed in his guidebooks, so that they can proudly claim to have ‘bagged’ them all.

This letter was written by Alfred Wainwright, the celebrated guidebook author, to George Bott, future president of the Keswick Mountaineering Club, on 15 August 1958. In the letter, Wainwright describes an attempted ascent of Blencathra via Sharp Edge with his son Peter. In an experience familiar to many Lake District walkers, the trip had to be cut short due to poor weather: a “continuous rain and thick mist” made it “silly to go on”.

Wainwright wrote a huge number of letters to friends and acquaintances, sharing stories of his walks and advice on where to go. He highly recommended walks in the Keswick area, particularly Blencathra.

These climbing boots were made by F. Birkett of Keswick in about 1947. The Birkett family were a leading manufacturer of outdoor footwear in Keswick from the end of the 19^th century until the 1960s. The cast iron hobnails hammered into the soles make them ideal for difficult terrain and gripping onto small holds.  The distinctive ‘two-ring’ hobnail pattern of these boots was designed in the 1890s by George Abraham, a Keswick photographer and climber.

These boots reflect Keswick’s important role in the development of rock climbing. Rock climbing became popular in the late 19^th century as visitors wanted to reach mountain tops by more challenging routes. These boots are designed for demanding climbs in the Lake District’s most difficult and varied conditions; the hobnails hammered into the soles add grip and slow down wear. The hobnails are made of rust-prone cast iron, but British climbers argued that, by gradually melding together during the rusting process, the melded nails gripped better than they would individually. Climbers preferred round eye holes for their laces rather than hooks, because hooks might break during difficult climbs. Climbers also wanted their boots to be made of relatively thin leather with soles no wider than 2cm. Outdoor boots stopped having metal nails hammered into their soles from the 1960s.

By the time these boots were made, the Birkett family had already been producing boots and shoes for over 150 years. Originally they worked from home in Wythburn, but at the end of the 19^th century Robert Birkett moved to Keswick to open a shop on St John’s Street. He became a prominent member of the local community, serving as chairman of the local council, director of the Keswick Building Society and a trustee of the Cumberland Savings Bank. Robert’s son Frederick—a talented curler, golfer and violinist—took over the business in 1910 and the family moved to a handsome cottage on Chestnut Hill, overlooking the town. However, 25-year-old Frederick also suffered the loss of his first wife and became a single father at this time.

The First World War threatened to close Birkett’s shop, as the young men who worked there had to go and fight. In 1917, Frederick pleaded in court to have his employees exempted from service as five men had already been called up and one had been killed in action. While recognising that the shop was a large local enterprise that needed enough staff to survive, the claim was denied. The court argued that since the shop mostly sold rather than made boots, most work ‘could be done by a woman’ instead. In 1933, Frederick Birkett died aged just 43 years old. His widow, Elizabeth Doris (known as ‘Dottie’), was left to run the family business and care for their young children. The shop remained open until Dottie’s retirement in the 1960s.

This medical bag belonged to Dr John Lyth (1887-1963) who lived in Portinscale. Lyth was a founding member of the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team in 1947 and served as their Medical Officer until his death in 1963. Lyth used these painkillers during mountain rescue missions. Although they were the most effective painkillers available at the time, they are no longer used. Pharmacists do not mix morphine and atropine today, due to the risk of side effects. Nikethamide is no longer sold since it contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Lyth’s medical bag also contains other medical equipment for his work as a GP including sutures, bandages, sterilising cream and a stethoscope.

Lyth held annual first aid courses for all Keswick Mountain Rescue Team volunteers and every Medical Officer since has followed his example. However, Lyth also believed that people stranded on mountains should be given alcohol, especially brandy—something that his colleagues debated with him and is not recommended today! The treatment for shock, he explained, was ‘wine, warmth and sustenance. Wine (or other alcohol if you have it, the stronger the better), works like magic.’ He also recommended giving an injured person a cigarette.

Lyth loved to walk in the fells and published a book of poems about it in 1954 titled One More Cairn. Alongside his role as Medical Officer for the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team, he also served as president of the Keswick Mountaineering Club and was a member of the Fell & Rock Climbing Club. He published poems in the journals of all three organisations.