Old Cumbria Gazetteer

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	placename:-	Rock of Names
	site name:-	Thirlmere
	parish	St John's Castlerigg and Wythburn parish, once in Cumberland
	county:-	Cumbria
		memorial; rocks
	coordinates:-	NY320153
	coordinates:-	NY34220705
	10Km square:-	NY31
	site name:-	Dove Cottage
	locality:-	Grasmere
	parish	Lakes parish, once in Westmorland
	county:-	Cumbria
	1Km square	NY3215
		The rock was 'rescued' again in 1984, transferred to the garden of Dove Cottage where the pieces were incorporated into a model of the original rock with missing letters re-carved.
		Rock of Names -- Thirlmere -- Dove Cottage -- Grasmere -- St John's Castlerigg and Wythburn and Lakes -- Cumbria -- Cumbria / -- The rock as re-erected behind the Wordsworth Museum. -- 15.2.2006
		Rock of Names -- Thirlmere -- Dove Cottage -- Grasmere -- St John's Castlerigg and Wythburn and Lakes -- Cumbria -- Cumbria / -- The upper initials:- -- 'W.W / M H' -- 15.2.2006
	guide book:-	Philip/Wilson 1890s
		'THE ROCK OF NAMES.'
		'O thought of pain / That would impair it or profane! / And fail not thou loved Rock! to keep / Thy charge when we are laid asleep.'
		So wrote Wordsworth. The rock was on the right hand side of the old road now submerged, and on it were carved the initials:-
		W.W. (William Wordsworth).
		M.H. (Mary Hutchinson).
		D.W. (Dorothy Wordsworth).
		S.T.C. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge).
		J.W. (John Wordsworth).
		S.H. (Sarah Hutchinson).
		As the rock could not be saved from submergence, various applications were made to the Corporation of Manchester for leave to remove it, and ultimately it was agreed to allow it to be taken to the Wordsworth Institute, Cockermouth. In attempting to do this, however, it went to pieces - it was blown up by the workmen making the dam. The fragments containing the initials were preserved, and have been built into a cairn on the solid base of the mountain, at a point above the new road diversion, in a line with the rock from which they were taken. This was done by persons in the neighbourhood.
	placename:-	Rock of Names
	date:-	1895
	period:-	19th century, late; 1890s
	descriptive text:-	Rawnsley 1894
		vol.2 pp.218-225:-
		We have now reached the little cairn perched on a boulder rock above the road, just beyond the "Straining Well" for the Manchester water-conduit. The cairn, carefully built, contains only the fragments of certain letters, which are all that we are able to save from the cruel blasting powder of the contractor who wished to quarry the "Rock of Names" for material to make the water-dam. There, by the old road just beneath us, had stood, carefully guarded by moss and lichen, unknown save to the readers of the bard, that memorial of the tryst of the poets. For they are all poets who wrought their initials painfully upon the hard volcanic ash, and graved upon the "rock's smooth breast," letters
		Wordsworth, the tallest of the party, cut his initials highest up, W. W. Next to him, because she loved him so, were wrought out the initial letters of the maiden name of his late affianced bride, M. H. ... And underneath the initials of Mary Hutchinson came the letters D. W. Below and close to Dorothy Wordsworth's name was written the initials of the man who, more than any other, Wordsworth excepted, honoured and understood Dorothy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was for his sake that the tryst was held here, he was then living at Keswick; ...
		... other poets' names are on the Rock, for John Wordsworth and Sara Hutchinson had all the poet's feeling within their souls, and they too laboured with the penknife; he, the sailor, perhaps, with more skill than they all. At least on infers that brother John ... is responsible for the initials J. W. It is impossible to believe, had it been otherwise, that Wordsworth would have written the lines descriptive of the company of stone gravers:
		It was with the sorrow of that brave saior's untimely end heavy upon him that Wordsworth wrote the poem entitled The Rock of Names; and pathetic it is to think of the power the Rock had to console and comfort:
		to give our world-blinded souls a light, and to preserve the wayside shrine of the poets, a sanctuary for high thought and inspiring association still.
	placename:-	Rock of Names
	date:-	1894
	period:-	19th century, late; 1890s
	map:-	Parker 2002
		Position where the rock was first re-erected, east side of road.
		Parker, John Wilson
	coordinates:-	NY320153
		photographs
		The rock was 'rescued' again in 1984, transferred to the garden of Dove Cottage where the pieces were incorporated into a model of the original rock with missing letters re-carved.
		Rock of Names -- Thirlmere -- Dove Cottage -- Grasmere -- St John's Castlerigg and Wythburn and Lakes -- Cumbria -- Cumbria / -- Initials:- -- 'DW' -- 7.10.2009
	hearsay	There is a plaque by the lake:- THE ROCK OF NAMES / Fragments of a rock on which William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their friends had carved their initials 1801-1802 were preserved by Canon Rawnsley in a cairn at this spot 1886-1984. / They were given by the North West Water Authority to the Dove Cottage Trust in 1984 and may be seen incorporated in a rock face behind the Grasmere and Wordsworth Museum. / The original 'Rock of Names' lay beside the lake and was blown up in constructing the much larger modern reservoir.
	Old Cumbria Gazetteer - JandMN: 2008

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  email:- JandMN@norgate.freeserve.co.uk
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