The following pages are based mostly on the lawyer's brief for the 1794 King's Bench hearing [in Whitehaven Record Office- D/Pen/bundle 74a]

On 1 June 1792, to acknowledge her coming of age, Miss Mary Singleton, Lady of the Manor of Ulpha, had her land agent Mr Younger ride the bounds of the manor- or so they believed. George Edward Stanley Esq., the Lord of the adjacent manors of Birker, Austhwaite and Birkby thought otherwise. When he heard what route she had taken, he had his lawyer, William Benson of Egremont, send her a legal notice (dated 23 July) requesting a meeting at Devoke Water on 1 August at 10am. Neither she, nor anybody representing her, turned up. On 24 May 1793, Stanley had Benson send another notice, demanding acknowledgment of his rights by 1 June. This time, Miss Singleton replied, challenging him to take her to court- so on 29 May she received a writ. Her reply, written the same day at Drigg, suggested a comparison of the boundaries given in their respective deeds.

Finally, that summer, the case came to court at Carlisle Assizes (as did two other completely unrelated boundary disputes- it was evidently something of a sport among wealthy landowners to bend each others' boundaries). To his amazement, Stanley lost- but as it turned out, several of the jurors were almost equally unhappy, and gradually some clues emerged. It seemed that when some of the jurors had been to inspect the disputed territory for themselves, the defendants had made themselves available for interview...

Based on this and other evidence gathered by Stanley, the higher Court of King's Bench took the unusual step of allowing an appeal without further cost to the plaintiff. The new case alleged that the defendants' feet had done 40s worth of damage to Stanley's grass in their various visits, and that horses belonging to them had eaten or trampled another £5 worth; they had also dug up 10 perches of land, and erected 10 marker posts with 10 stones.

I haven't yet found whether Stanley won his damages, but he certainly won the case, as a look at the parish boundaries on a modern map will show. The lawyer's brief prepared for the King's Bench hearing still survives, as do numerous other documents relating to the manor boundaries (with some very interesting omissions) and the following pages attempt to summarise the wealth of information they contain.

The boundaries

Riding the bounds

Devoke Water (and Woodend)

Sheepheaves and other uses

Cast of characters