A Bit More of Stalmine Grange

We’ve already covered the mysterious platform jutting out of the hillside at Stalmine Grange in a previous article (the article previous to this one in fact, so if you’re interested you’ll have to scroll down or look back through this board or something because we’re strapped for space here; you know where the links are in the right-hand column, so just try looking under ‘mediaeval history’ if it’s fallen off the bottom…we can’t do everything for you, y’ know?) and we’ve admitted that, as yet, we’ve no idea what it is. (Although we do have a few ideas.) We’ve also said that the grange belonged to Furness Abbey. However, we haven’t said anything about the location of the building itself yet.
Yes…granges were actually buildings. It’s easy to think of them as being fields full of sheep or corn or field mice or what have you, with the occasional monk/lay-brother pottering up and down picking mushrooms and herbs and being investigated for murder by Brother Cadfael. But monks/lay-brothers, of course, needed somewhere to eat and sleep and pray and beat themselves with whips and cut bald patches out of their hair and store their cattle and grain in the winter (and documents record, I should add, that Stalmine Grange, as well as growing wheat, corn and oats, also kept cows) and to do all the other stuff that monks/lay-brothers used to do for reasons best left to themselves. And for all that a sizeable building would have been required. (Incidentally, did you know that the modern word ‘labourer’ is derived from those hard working, tonsure sporting lay-brothers of the mediaeval period? Well you do now.)
Obviously the first place to look for the grange then would be Grange Farm itself, on the off chance that the farmhouse was built from ecclesiastical rubble. The photograph below, therefore, shows the actual building, constructed in 1682 (according to the date stone above the door at any rate) and surrounded by the largest collection of chickens, bantams and peacocks we’ve ever seen. (Although, for some reason, most of them went into hiding the minute I took out the camera.)

We can tell you who was living here when it was first built, if you like. According to the records it was Thomas Smith, who must have owned the house prior to the Stewart rebuild as well, because he’s listed as living at Stalmine Grange as early as 1651. Before then, in 1618 to be precise, Dorothy Pike owned the place. Presumably, shortly after Furness Abbey fell to the dissolution in the mid-Sixteenth Century, some sort of temporary building was erected on the site, more than likely, as previously suggested, using the rubble from the grange itself.
Let’s take a look at that date stone in a bit more detail.

How’s that for a solid old door? (Pity the rest of the building isn’t quite as solid, otherwise we might have been allowed inside.) If you click on the thumbnail and look at the larger version you should be able to make out the initials T.S. (for Thomas Smith, obviously) and the construction date of 1682. The farmhouse, itself, is constructed of Tudor-style bricks with the exception of the cobble-built extension at the rear and a shored up section of one wall that’s also constructed from cobbles and lime mortar. You want a photograph of the cobbled bit? Fair enough…we’re always happy to oblige wherever we can. There we go, part cobblestone, part brick. But which came first? Well, all matters considered (the fact that Thomas Smith was living here thirty odd years previous to the construction of the farmhouse, the original pitch of the roof as seen in the photograph, and the manner in which the bricks at the end of the Stewart section interlace with the cobbles) it seems that originally the building was a typical random-build Fylde longhouse, half-inched from the remains of some monastic building belonging to Furness Abbey. (As we’ve already suggested…twice.) But it wasn’t the grange building itself, because it’s far too small for that. Perhaps a better suggestion for the location of the original grange then would be in front of the aforementioned farmhouse, almost on top of the hill (where you’d expect it to be) now disguised as the barn in the following photograph. It’s about the right size, although, obviously, it isn’t typical of mediaeval construction techniques. Further investigations are obviously required, but because we’ve already sent our one remaining reader to sleep, those’ll have to wait until next time.