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Event Day(s):
10:30-12:30, Great Asby. Meet: bus shelter on the green, directly opposite the lych-gate at the western end of the churchyard of St Peter's. Booking required: please email info@westmorlanddalesfestival.org
Explore the history, heritage and industry of a traditional Westmorland Dales village with Keith Cooper. Followed by an optional sandwich lunch at the village pub, The Three Greyhounds.
Great Asby is seen by some historians as an example of so-called 'planned' Norman villages, probably reconfiguring earlier settlements, created soon after William Rufus's conquest of The Lands of Carlisle in 1092. We'll examine the village in the light of that context, viewing some of the linear farmsteads which have developed over the years on those 12th Century plots. We'll go on to look at the village well, speculating about the origin of its name; a small barn, which housed the storage batteries for electricity produced by a turbine at Rutter Force from the 1920s to the 1950s and which powered the village; a possible area for growing watercress (an important supplement to medieval diets); the location of the medieval and early modern archery practice-ground Butts Green; the site of an 18th century tannery; the shared meadows of the medieval manors of Asby and the site of a short-lived, mid-19th Century commercial venture to produce 'marble', Marble Mill, before visiting the location of a watermill swept away in a Great Flood of 1480 and considering how the power of Asby Beck was managed thereafter. We'll conclude with looking at the exterior of Asby Hall and its various phases of building, before examining the 14th Century core of the Rectory, and reflecting on the origin of the name of the village pub, the Three Greyhounds.