TALES OF OLD LANGDALE

By A. H. Griffin

” Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark, Brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerh.”

Kipling

There was once a small boy who, having been asked in an examination paper the date of the Great Fire of London, adroitly wrote down ” Don’t know, but William the Conqueror landed in 1066.” When the Editor wrote to me asking for an article on the ” climbs, etc.” within easy reach of our club cottage, I remembered this small boy and replied that I knew of no rock-climbing in Little Langdale but that I had some knowledge of the illicit whisky distilling and smuggling activities in the valley several years ago. Would this do ? Glad to have hooked a fish, even if it was not of the required breed, the Editor said that he thought the Club would be particularly interested in the whisky side of my subject, and if I could drag in something about the “climbs, etc.,” so much the better.

I think I should first tell you something about the situation of this our first cottage. You all know well enough that it is in Little Langdale, close to the Tarn, but some of you may be unaware that it is neither in Cumberland nor in Westmorland, but in dear old smoky Lancashire where the cricketers come from. Because of this fact the people on our side of the Brathay pay different rates from those paid by Mr. Delmar Banner, the painter, and those other neighbours who live on the other side. It also means that we have got to cross into another county every time we want a drink or to go the nearest shop, but as this only entails crossing Slater’s Bridge and strolling a couple of hundred yards up the fell there is no great bother.

But to get back to whisky. The next time you happen to be at the cottage, have a quiet look round and see if you can see any signs of a still. Perhaps you may have no luck, but I know that about 100 years ago the great Lanty Slee had one of his at ” Hall Garth ” in Little Langdale, which could only mean our cottage or High Hall Garth a little further up the lane

Now Lanty Slee, I am sorry to have to tell you, was one of the greatest men Little Langdale has ever known, for he is mentioned in several books and there has even been a play written about him. If he had been a good man and stuck to his farming and slate quarrying, people would not still be talking about him now, 73 years after his death. But sad to relate, Lanty did not think very much of the Distillery Act of 1834, so he took to making his own whisky and also to smuggling it out of the district. He must have been very good at both these enterprises for he will probably be the only Lake District Distiller and smuggler to go down in history.

Although Lanty was born in Borrowdale, all his distilling and smuggling work was centred on Little Langdale where he lived most of his life and where he died. As I write – April, 1951 – there is still living at the age of 87 years a retired Broughton-in-Furness farmer, Mr. Adam Slee, the only surviving son of Lanty, and I know several dalesfolk whose fathers or grandfathers either knew or worked with the great man. For Lanty, it should be remembered, was a character in his own right, in almost the Auld Will Ritson tradition. He has been described to me as ” a turble strong, rough man and a gurt age when he deed ” and I think he was also something of a philosopher. It is said that after his big trial in 1853 he summed up the situation in these words: ” There’s nea aid ship, hosiver battered by t’storm, but she’ll be ment up and gang agen.” And, sure enough, the old sinner was very soon at the same game again, operating from new stills, some of them high up in the hills.

I can think of one goodish story about Lanty. After a night in the cells he appeared one morning before the magistrates on the usual charge, and the chairman, very stern, looked down on the poor prisoner and observed : ” We are told that you are able to furnish your friends with a glass of spirit at any time, but I think we have broken the spell this time.” Lanty had no difficulty in coping with this one. He promptly dived into a hidden pocket and drew from its depths a full bottle of the best. ” M’appen ye’r wrang,” he quietly observed, ” will ye have a touch ? “

The old reprobate of Little Langdale was a farmer at Low Colwith for some time and then moved up the fell to the isolated farmstead of Low Arnside, high above the road between Skelwith Bridge and Coniston, a place which might have been designed for his dangerous game. He could pick out the Excisemen on their way up long before they could even see the farm and Lanty was generally able to hide the evidence in time. The still was in a field close to the farm and the place is still called Lanty’s Cave, but I have had another story of this still from Mr. Fleming Mawson of Great Langdale, whose grandfather, Ned Mawson, worked hand-in-glove with Lanty for years. According to Mr. Mawson, Lanty had his ” worm ” at Low Arnside hidden under the flags of the kitchen, and a long pipe, cunningly contrived, carried the exhaust steam out of the house and into a hedge in an adjoining field.

But this was only one of Lanty’s stills. There was one at Hall Garth, which perhaps a Y.R.C. member will trace one day, and there was another in an old quarry at Atkinson Coppice, between the Brathay Ford where some of us leave our cars and the new quarry at Moss Rigg. (Incidentally the indefatigable Jim Birkett, looking particularly ferocious with a red beard, undoubtedly one of the finest rock climbers in England, was working at this quarry when I last called there, and lives in this area.) A brother-in-law of Lanty’s son Adam, Mr. Charles Dixon of Burneside, tells me he remembers once finding the site of this still. Apparently it was at the bottom of a deep hole, and Lanty used to go down there on a rope in pot-holing style, so that he could prepare his ” brew ” in private.

Lanty’s conviction in 1853 finished his Low Arnside activities, but although he was an elderly man even then he could not get the game out of his system and he built other stills elsewhere. One of them was said to be at a house called Ivyhowe in Little Langdale, about one third of a mile before you reach the Post Office. Lanty built this house so that he could become respectable. There were other stills away up in the fells and I have heard that one of these was on the shore of lonely Red Tarn, a mile ahove the Three Shire Stone, between Pike o’Blisco and Cold Pike.

They say that Lanty made very good whisky indeed, but all that he asked for it was about 10s. per gallon. No doubt he would have done rather better to-day. In negotiating a purchase you had to know the ropes and the correct thing to do apparently was to enquire of Lanty whether he had had ” a good crop of taties this year.” Once you. were across this fence he would be ready to talk business.

Quite a lot of Lanty’s liquor used to be sold to the discerning gentry of the Lakeland countryside, but very much more went over the old smugglers’ road across Wrynose and Hardknott passes, and down to the busy port of Ravenglass where most of the inhabitants had an interest in ” the trade.”

These years, and many generations before Lanty’s time too, were exciting times in the long, colourful story of Little Langdale, and many a score of full-blooded adventures, reading like pages from Stevenson, took place – costly at night – on those pleasant slopes just west of the club cottage. No old road in Cumberland or Westmorland smacks more of the days of the smugglers than does the road through Little Langdale and over Wrynose. Along this wild road, on many a rough night, went Lanty’s whisky, sometimes in bottles but more often in bladders, and the feet of the ponies as they went trotting through the dark were bound in straw or sacking so that they should make no sound.

More than once Lanty and his men were surprised by the Excisemen, sometimes right up by the Three Shire Stone, and there were several fights and scuffles in the mist, with a few broken heads and no questions asked in the morning. On one occasion the smugglers were saved by Lanty’s dog, which suddenly sat up with its ears well back and its nose pointed into the wind. ” There’s summat up ” says Lanty, ” luk shairp and git amang them staens,” and sure enough the Excisemen rode through the mist and over the top a moment later.

Sometimes Lanty and his men would meet ponies dropping down Wrynose into Little Langdale laden with fresh salmon, great sacks of it, poached from the Duddon, for whisky was by no means the only illicit cargo to be taken past the Three Shire Stone. Whether or not Lanty operated far into the _r Cumberland fells I cannot say, but for all I know he might have used the lonely ” trod ” around the back of Great Gable and down to Honister as well. Perhaps too, he would be involved upon occasion in those running sea fights that used to take place off the coast with the Government sloops from Silloth and Annan or the revenue cutter from Whitehaven. Certainly Lanty Slee, the Little Langdale farmer, would know all about these things, and even more about Fell Foot, the last house on the smugglers’ road, and perhaps the real centre of the Lake District smugglers of long ago.

It was in this remote spot that the smuggling men used to meet to exchange stories and contraband. Look behind the old house, which used to carry the arms of Fletcher Fleming over the door, and you will see a curious terraced mound. Historians compare it with the Thing-mount of the Vikings, and say that here, on the main high road east to west and at the meeting place of passes to the north and south, the Viking settlers met for their annual Parliament. So there is any amount of history and romance in Little Langdale and on Wrynose, even though I cannot find you much in the way of climbing.