page_title: Hardwicke Rawnsley
section_title: Vicar of Crosthwaite
hierarchical_section_title: Hardwicke Rawnsley / Life and career / Vicar of Crosthwaite
caption_attribution_description: English: Personal photograph taken by Mick Knapton on March 23rd 2006
context_page_description: Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley was an Anglican priest, and a poet, local politician and conservationist. He became nationally and internationally known as one of the three founders of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in the 1890s.
  Rawnsley was descended from a line of Church of England vicars, and after briefly considering medicine as a career he graduated from Oxford and took holy orders. In the mid-1870s he worked with the urban poor in London and Bristol, before being appointed in 1877 to a rural parish in Westmorland in the English Lake District. He soon became a vigorous activist in the campaign to preserve the region from excessive industrial development.
  In 1883 Rawnsley was appointed Vicar of Crosthwaite, Cumberland, in the north of the Lake District. He remained in the post for 34 years, becoming known locally and nationally for his energetic efforts to improve life for working people. He and his wife founded the Keswick School of Industrial Art, and he led campaigns to make access to the countryside available for everyone.
context_section_description: During the time the Lake District Defence Society was being formed, the Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, offered Rawnsley the post of vicar of St Kentigern's, Crosthwaite and rural dean of Keswick. Goodwin said, "In my opinion the post which I offer you is as near Heaven as anything in this world can be". Rawnsley took up the appointment in July 1883.
  By contrast with the tiny parish of Wray, which had a population of about 100, Crosthwaite was substantial, with not only St Kentigern's but five outlying churches in the surrounding countryside. The parish was founded in the sixth century, and there was much to appeal to Rawnsley's sense of history. He revived the traditional symbols of St Kentigern – a robin, a tree, a bell and a salmon with a ring in its mouth – incorporating them in the mosaic floor of the church. He threw himself vigorously into parish life, "friend to both landowner and boatman, tourist and local" in Griffiths's words. At the same time he continued to campaign on a large number of national issues, not only supporting conservation but opposing such practices as vivisection, rabbit coursing, the cruel trapping of animals, and what he called "murderous millinery" – the killing of birds to use their feathers in hats. "If there was a committee, he was on it; a church fete, he was opening it", commented Griffiths. One of his parishioners called him "the most active volcano in Europe". Both Murphy and Griffiths add that his reforming zeal sometimes made him "intolerably authoritarian"; his gardener referred to him as a "peppery old swine".
  In November 1884 Rawnsley and his wife began organising classes in metalwork and wood carving. There was considerable unemployment in Keswick and the surrounding area, particularly in the winter months, and the Rawnsleys aimed to provide productive and satisfying work. 
  Rawnsley was mindful of advice given to him by William Morris: 
  We must get the worker to delight in the use of his own hands and then to express his own natural desire for a thing to be shapely and harmonious in colours.
   The classes, for men only, were held in the parish rooms near the centre of the town, under the supervision of Edith Rawnsley, assisted by a local designer and another professional from the South Kensington School of Design. This led to the establishment of the Keswick School of Industrial Art.  It flourished and quickly gained a reputation for high-quality copper and silver decorative metalwork. By 1888 nearly seventy men were attending the classes. By 1890 the school was exhibiting nationally and winning prizes. To accommodate the increased numbers of students Rawnsley raised funds for a purpose-built home for the school, adjacent to the River Greta. It opened in 1894 and in 1898 a full-time head, Harold Stabler, was appointed, succeeded in 1900 by Herbert Maryon. The school was mainly financed from sales of its products, and continued in operation until 1984. For the women of Keswick and the district the Rawnsleys introduced spinning and weaving classes, led by Marion Twelves, a protégée of Ruskin. Rawnsley was proud that when Ruskin died in 1900, the pall for the coffin was handspun and handwoven in Keswick under Twelves's direction.
  In 1887 Rawnsley revived the moribund Keswick and District Footpath Preservation Society, with the principal aim of stopping landowners blocking public rights of way across their land. The owner of Fawe Park, Portinscale, had done so between the Derwentwater shore and the slopes of Catbells. When persuasion failed, Rawnsley led hundreds of demonstrators to demolish the barriers. Bott comments that this dispute roused local passions, but that the next confrontation between Rawnsley and local landowners earned national headlines. The owner of Latrigg, a fell overlooking Keswick, attempted to block access along two paths and challenged the objectors to trespass, with a view to bringing a test case in court. The barriers were torn down and more than 2,000 people marched to the Latrigg summit. The case came to trial and a compromise was reached: one path re
caption: The view from the top of Latrigg
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