Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley - Friars Crag, Keswick, Cumbria, UK. - Citizen Memorials on Waymarking.com

The memorial plaque dedicated to the memory of Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley is set into a stone wall located beside a footpath at Friars Crag, a promontory jutting into Derwentwater.

Canon Rawnsley, vicar of Crosthwaite and one of the founders of the National Trust worked hard to ensure that much of Borrowdale was preserved from development. On his death in 1920 Friars Crag, together with Lords Island and Calf Close Bay were given to the Trust as his memorial. A plaque to his memory is set into a wall beside the Friars Crag Path.

The plaque is inscribed as follows;

TO THE HONOURED MEMORY OF
HARDWICKE DRUMMOND RAWNSLEY 1851-1920
WHO GREATLY LOVING THE FAIR THINGS OF NATURE AND OF ART
SET ALL HIS LOVE TO THE SERVICE OF GOD AND MAN
WAS CANON OF CARLISLE CHAPLAIN TO THE KING
VICAR OF CROSTHWAITE 1883-1917 AND ONE OF THE FOUNDERS
OF THE NATIONAL TRUST INTO WHOSE CARE FRIARS CRAG
LORDS ISLAND AND A PART OF GREAT WOOD WERE GIVEN
BY SUBSCRIBERS WHO DESIRED THAT HIS NAME
SHOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN 7 SEPTEMBER 1922

Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
"Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley was an Anglican priest, and a poet, local politician and conservationist. He born on 29th September 1851 near Henley. He was the son of Rev Robert Drummond Burrell Rawnsley (1817–1882) and his wife, Catherine Ann, née Franklin (1818–1892) and was one of a family of 10 children.
When he was young, he wanted to be an Arctic explorer. He was influenced by the poems of Tennyson which were read in the family – Tennyson’s guardian was Hardwicke’s grandfather.

In December 1877 Hardwicke Rawnsley moved from East Anglia, where his father was a vicar, to become vicar of Wray Church near Ambleside.
He married Edith Fletcher of Ambleside, in January 1878 and a year later they had their only child, Noel.

Hardwicke involved himself in local campaigns to protect the countryside, and formed the Lake District Defence Society (later to become The Friends of the Lake District), which had amongst its members Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin and the Duke of Westminster.

In 1883 after five years at Wray, he was moved to St Kentigern’s Church, Crosthwaite, just outside Keswick.
In 1884 he and his wife began classes for metalwork and wood carving, which resulted in their forming the School of Industrial Art in Keswick, which lasted until 1986. He helped form the Newton Rigg Farm School at Penrith, the Westmorland Nursing Association, and supported the founding of Keswick High School. In 1909 he bought Greta Hall, once home to Coleridge and Southey, which he then rented to Keswick School.

He became an Honorary Canon of Carlisle Cathedral in 1891, and Chaplain to the King in 1912. In 1896 he went to Moscow for the coronation of the Czar. Also in 1896 he erected a memorial to Wordsworth in Harris Park, Cockermouth, a fountain with a graceful bronze figure of a child.

He was a champion of the Lakes,and crusaded hotly for the formation of a National Trust to buy and preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest for the nation – an ambition he achieved in 1895,
He worked as Honorary Secretary to the Trust for 26years until his death and was responsible for a campaign to raise money to buy Brandlehow Wood, which was the National Trust’s first purchase.

He was one of the most prolific writers of sonnets in the history of literature, some 30000, as well as writing many books on the Lake District. He wrote a biography of John Ruskin. He published his poems and sent them to newspapers, always regarding them as an agreeable way of saying whatever he wanted to say. He was a keen amateur naturalist, an antiquarian, an ardent traveller, and a campaigner against objectionable postcards.

In 1900 mainly due to the efforts of Canon Rawnsley, a memorial was erected to John Ruskin at Friars Crag, and in 1913 he and others bought Castlerigg Stone Circle, which is now owned by the National Trust.

After 34 years at Crosthwaite he retired in 1917 to Grasmere, where he had bought Allan Bank, in 1915, the house in which Wordsworth had lived for three years. He died there in 1920, and is buried at Crosthwaite. He left Allan Bank to the National Trust." SOURCE: (visit link)
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Website with more information on either the memorial or the person(s) it is dedicated to: [Web Link] Location: Friars Crag promontory Derwentwater

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