General Introduction

This is one of a series of ‘flights’ across  the Cumbrian parish of Asby, part of the ‘Westmorland Dales’ extension to the Yorkshire Dales National Park.  It forms part of a series of videos by members of the Asby History Group which uses Google Earth technology to explore the  historic landscape of the parish.  This presentation uses and develops the content of a series of educational walks led by Keith Cooper in recent years.

“Little Asby Walk”

This is the fourth in a series of walks to explore the historic landscape of Asby Parish.  For the most part, the walk focuses on exploring how evidence about field-names can shed light on agricultural activity and changes in that activity, triggered by factors such as population increase and decrease, war and changes in livestock management practices.

But it begins with two short detours. First, to a substantial, almost certainly prehistoric earthwork, and second, to the possible location of the Asby Parish Poor House.  Our journey across the landscape continues, with brief stops at a number of points, including:

• Upper Whygill Head, to note that the farmhouse here was once one of four locations used for Baptist services within the Church of England parish of Asby, before the Baptist Chapel was constructed in Great Asby in 1863.
• The clapper-bridge, one of only forty surviving in England, which spans Potts Beck at Waterhouses.
• The site of the water-mill of Little Asby Manor, close by, once powered by the water of Potts Beck and probably destroyed, or at least severely damaged, by a great flood in 1822.
• The ruinous farmstead of Potts, to reflect on the derivation of the name of the eponymous beck.
• And finally, to explore the field names of what would once have been the cultivated common fields, or ‘town-fields’, of Little Asby manor, to seek clues that hemp, for sacks and rope, may have been grown here and taken through its first stage of processing.

  - Keith Cooper

The Video

** NOTE for viewing this video:

Use the ‘CC’ button to toggle (auto generated) captions on or off.
Click on gear wheel to select best quality video (1080p).
Finally, for the best view, always play in Full Screen mode