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The following notes are based mostly on the lawyer's brief for the 1794 King's Bench hearing [in Whitehaven Record Office- D/Pen/bundle 74a]
The manor of Austhwaite had been granted by the Lord of Millom (who controlled all territory between the Esk and the Duddon) to an ancestor of the plaintiff, though the Stanley family did not acquire it until Nicholas Stanley married Constance, the heiress of Austhwaite, in 1345. Birker, long the property of the Irtons, was bought by the Stanleys much later from William Fletcher of Moresby Hall- in 1671 [see WRO D/Stan/3/28]. A tenant of one had no common rights in the other, and the two were actually governed by different sets of rules. And yet, by 1715 [see WRO D/Pen/172] the two had been joined together for administrative purposes (together with the old monastic farm of Butterilket/Brotherilkeld, which seems to have been acquired from the cash-starved Government in 1611, through a London agency specialising in such deals). Although the Stanley family had also owned the manor of Birkby, on the west side of Austhwaite, since 1566 [see WRO D/Stan/2/1-5], they did not merge that.
The manor of Ulpha had been governed directly by the Lords of Millom (since about 1200, the Huddleston family) until about 1754, when it was bought- as was the manor of Bootle- from heiress Elizabeth and her husband, by William Singleton of Drigg, Mary's father (who also thus acquired the right to receive a "quit rent" of £1/3/6 yearly, payable to the Lord of Millom by Stanley "in respect of his manors").
When George Edward Stanley had come of age, in 1769, he rode the bounds of his manors- Ponsonby, Birkby, Austhwaite and Birker. His lawyers found the records of the routes, but to be on the safe side they dug out all the old deeds they could find with boundary information, and made copies to show to anybody who objected {see WRO D/Stan/3/14]. Though they found the original medieval deeds relating to Austhwaite, there was apparently no corroborating evidence available for Birker, and the only surviving boundary route combined Austhwaite and Birker (with Brotherilkeld) together:
Birks Dike Nook, to Stake of Green Cragg, to a Gray Stone in Whiteholm Moss, to Thorny How, to White Wall, to Dubbs, to Dovic Water, to Gray Borrens, down Linbeck, up the Esk past Brotherelkeld, to Tongue Bridge, to Scarth Larthen Moss, to Esk Cove, to Esk Hawse, to Hanging Knot, to Ewer Gap, to the top of Boefell, to the height of Adam Cragg, to Rush Gill, to Mosedale Head, to Raven Cragg, to the Highway at the Old Wall, to Demmin [or Demmen] Cragg, to the top of Harther Fell, to Birks Dike Nook.
During the 1793-4 case, witnesses supplied some detail of intermediate points:
From Birksdike Nook to a grey stone on Long How, to the Cloven Stones, to the Stake of Green Crag, along the Bank to the grey stone in Whiteholme Moss, to Thorney How to Red Scarr to Whitewall, to Foul Flosh (where the Eskdale-Ulpha road crosses the border, as acknowledged by the local officials who are responsible for its maintenance in their respective townships- when the road to the north of Foul Sike was in bad repair not long before 1793, the Birker township authorities repaired it after being threatened with an indictment by Ulpha farmer John Wilson) to the corner of Woodend closes, round Woodend closes to the Old Wall (a substantial but semi-derelict stone wall, probably once about 6 feet high), along the Old Wall past the Parrock on the side of Seat How (a large enclosure where new sheep were pastured to begin teaching them their heaf) to Devoke Water, clockwise round Devoke Water past the Grey Borrans to Linbeck...
Others mentioned additional place-names without fitting them into their geographical context: Red Syke, the Two Stones, Red Dub.
The Ulpha boundary according to Singleton and Younger was somewhat different:
from a marker stone on the slope southwest of the Stake of Green Cragg, across the slope of Green Crag across the foot of Whiteholme Moss (in line with the low end of Green Crag, and somewhat west of the Stanley marker stone), to the west (low side) of Thorney How, to Whitewall, over Foul Sike and up the ridge of Seat to a stone marker (two slates- which were later temporarily removed by shepherd William Gunson, who carried them down to Dalegarth on his shoulders for inspection) on Seat How (aka Sate How), to the left of Seat How Crag and down to Devoke Water (incidentally going through the middle of the Parrock), anticlockwise round Devoke Water to the Grey Borrans which marked the boundary of Ulpha and Birkby.
Incidentally, Stanley's 1769 boundary of Birkby was also pretty sketchy, and in 1793 he relied on sheep-heaf boundaries to substantiate it:
Begin at Muncaster Steps [probably the Waberthwaite ford over the Esk], up Stainton Beck, to Buckbarrow [presumably not the modern Buck Barrow but perhaps an old name for the north-east buttress of Stainton Pike], to White Pike, to Storas [not "Stords" as on modern maps], to Gray Borrens, to Linbeck Mill, to Muncaster Steps.
The really tricky bit is Gray Borrens- it is consistently described by witnesses as being at the west end of the lake, so why (except on the word of the shepherds) does the Birkby boundary go from Stords Hill down to a point on the south shore of the lake (named on Ordnance Survey maps as "Watness Coy") opposite the island?
In the notes for the 1794 case it was claimed that the Stanleys possessed "a great variety of Grants & Boundaries" of their manors, but that because they were very old, "the places mentioned therein are not known by any names which they at present bear", so that the boundaries must depend on perambulations and "more especially upon the long enjoymt. of the Plt. his ancestors and Tenants..." Close examination of the 1769 file suggests that the truth was being stretched quite substantially in these claims, and that the last clause quoted was the important one, for the Stanleys had remarkably little documentary proof of their boundaries. As to the problem with old place-names, you can judge for yourself on other pages of this website. On the other hand, it was said of the Huddlestons, former lords of Ulpha, that they were not the sort of people to give up a right if they could make any claim to it.
Riding the bounds
Devoke Water (and Woodend)
Sheepheaves and other uses
Cast of characters
