"WONDERFUL WALKER"
[To the Editor of the SPEc-raTon.] Sin,—The writer of your recent article makes no mention of the fact that the Rev. Robert Walker commenced his famous ministry at Buttermere, and afterwards remoVed to Seathwaite, where he died. The early part of his life was really the most interesting, because it was at Buttermere that he first carried out the ideas which made him famous and led • -Wordsworth to idealize him as the " Wanderer " in The .Excursion. .
The diocesan authorities purchased the ancient miller's house at Buttermere for a parsonage, but he took out a licence for it in his brother's name, and it was subsequently carried on as the Bridge Inn, the forerunner of the present Victoria Hotel, a new parsonage being erected near by. In Buttermere Church he taught school for eight hours a day, making a desk of the communion table and working a spinning- wheel at the same time, connected with a " contraption " inside the altar rails for dealing with the local Herdwick wool.
This is all recorded in Bradley's Highways and Byways in the Lake District, Smiles's, Self-help, and in a note to the first edition of The Excursion, showing that Wordsworth was one of his admirers.
These records refer to his church having been the smallest in England, but they do not explain that it is not the present edifice which is referred to. The original church was nearly a mile away, and had apparently been erected in memento mori on the old battlefield where the Norman lord, Ranulf de Meschines, was defeated by the local people under Earl Boethar. The defeat was evidently a very serious one, as it led to the transfer of Ranulf de Meschines to the Earldom of Chester.
"Wonderful Walker" becomes a link in this history because he was the last curate-in-charge of the old Memorial Chapel, and the first in charge of the present church.
The miller whose house was purchased for a parsonage was the last of a long line who operated the water-mill founded in Norman times, and used for feeding Earl Boethaes army of refugees froin the devastated areas in Yorkshire and Lan- cashire, where William the Conqueror had created a desert.—
I am, Sir, &e., NICHOLAS SIZE1 Victoria Family Hotel, Buttermere.
Previous page
