Wetheral

My father’s whole family came from the area east of Carlisle around the small market town called Brampton.  If you go to the village of Irthington, you can see all their graves.  Farm workers in the 19th and early 20th centuries did not move around geographically much, and I guess the furthest many of them would have been in their lives was the Carlisle.  My great grandfather who went by the distinctive name of Joseph Spottiswood Farrer, pulled himself up a class by becoming an early pioneer of photography.  As a child my grandmother lived in Wetheral just by the side of the river Eden in this cottage.

Now it is a lovely looking (and listed) old cottage which is probably worth a fortune (seeing as how Wetheral is, and even when I was a child, was, a very pretty village with a commuter rail line).  This is its view.

One of my grandmother’s jobs was to wash the glass photographic plates in the river before she went to school up the famous “99 steps” (there are not 99 – only either 91 or 92 dependent on whether you believe my count or R’s).

I then walked across the viaduct.  R, who as I may have mentioned is not fond of heights, did not.

This is the “national speed limit applies” road out of Wetheral.