Ravenstonedale

Description

An Extraordinary History from Farm and Village Records

About this book:

‘RAVENSTONEDALE, An Extraordinary History from Farm and Village Records’ gives an insight into Westmorland village life three centuries ago. The text is faithfully copied
from the original handmade and leather bound book, whose pages are written in ink with a quill pen. The records begin at the end of the seventeenth century but some information is copied from earlier documents.The book was started by the Fothergill family and passed down with each generation carefully adding more records of farming life in and around Ravenstonedale.
As well as noting butter, cheese, wool and ham sales, there are poems and songs, notes about rents, expenses, hirings, cattle, sheep and horses plus some ancient recipes and
medicines including one to cure gout involving a hot buttered bun!
The book covers not only farming but also village life with details of one of the earliest lending libraries in Cumbria run by Anthony Fothergill, when the first record of a loan notes that in 1736, “Michael Knewstub borrowed Witchcraft, Vol. 2.” The text is illustrated with wonderful photographs from the Frankland family collection by kind permission of Roger Frankland and from Julie Tunstall including the cover image looking down Fell End from Fell End Clouds.
David Tunstall whose family have farmed at Fell End, Ravenstonedale, for generations was left the book by his uncle and aunt who farmed at Cold Keld. David is well known
as a director of Tunstall Tractors Ltd.
The book has been transcribed by Dawn Robertson and edited to arrange the text into subjects and date order, with additional explanations – the whole task has taken
around ten years but has been worth every minute – it is a very special book.

A sample page from the orginal book, dated 1708: