Penrith Walk. Stop 3.
Williamson Yard, Middlegate
Wood Stapler’s sign
Williamson Yard, initials RLE 1697. Symbol of a pair of shears. A circle. A circle with a
smaller circle inside, looks like a doughnut.
An inscription on a lintel, it was probably the premises of a wool stapler.
Need lots more information on the wool trade
Tradesmen.
This street was once occupied by weavers, tanners and tailors, the workers living in cottages
up narrow passages behind the employer’s premises facing the street.
In 1787 there were dyeworks and weaving shops (recorded as early as 1310), breweries,
hair-merchants, a tannery, and 2 eminent clock-makers in Penrith.
Tanning was important in Penrith. They are mentioned in deeds from 1379 – 1550s. Other
allied trades were saddlers, cobblers and shoemakers and glovers. Breweries. Iron
foundries. By end 18thc Penrith had acquired a good reputation for the manufacture of
checks for aprons and bedhangings, linen cloth for shirting and sheeting, and ginghams.
Much of the weaving was done by outworkers working in their own homes.
Burgage plots.
Border reivers. Long disputed border caused much strife through the centuries. Conflict not
solved until the Union of the Crowns in 1603. 14thc was almost ceaseless hostilities. Penrith
was pillaged and burned on several occasions. If raiders coming, herd the animals into the
centre courtyard area and then defend the narrow streets and passages of the perimeter.
Suffix ‘gate’ is an old Norse word for ‘street’ or ‘narrow passage’.
Brook Street coming in on other side of Middlegate. Queen Street was once the main road
north to Scotland. The Thacka Beck was still open, now in tubes underground, and the most
northerly of the town’s bridges, Fallowfield’s bridge, was here where Queen Street and
Brook Street meet. Slight hump in the road?