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Lost Places

24/3/2014

10 Comments

 
This weekend, as I was driving, I got to think about lost places of my childhood, places that are now either inaccessible, or changed beyond recognition. A place I remember with much fondness is the Pillar Hotel in the Langdale Estate, our holiday destination every July for at least eight years.

Back in the day – late 1960s into 1970s – the people I knew never went abroad. Holidays were more likely to be a week on a farm in Criccieth, a visit to an aunt in Suffolk, or Butlins in Blackpool.

In the seventeenth century the Langdale Estate, by the fast-flowing Great Langdale Beck in Elterwater, was the site of small woollen mill. Later it became a gunpowder factory. In 1931, during the depression, the gunpowder factory ceased to be profitable, so it was transformed into a wild and magical holiday resort with a small campsite, and barn dwellings for rent, and The Pillar Hotel, looking like a Swiss chalet, in the centre. Lush and luxurious baskets of geraniums hung all along the wooden veranda. There was one large light dining room with windows on three sides. A gong would sound for dinner, and every day had its particular set meal that didn’t change by the year. On Mondays a whole baked onion arrived with the meat, and there were exotic puddings with names like Peach Melba, and Pear Belle Helene. Three plain white bathrooms were shared by the guests of ten bedrooms, so creeping out at night to the toilet we children ran the embarrassing risk of meeting an adult in pyjamas.

The estate was wild and lovely, with waterfalls, woods of larch and spruce, a clear stream where trout basked between emerald weeds, and a hill we climbed every evening to watch the sun set behind the Langdale Pikes. There were old tennis courts, surrounded by Rhododendron and bracken, and Langdale Beck we reached by clambering through the ruins of part of the gunpowder factory. The riverbed was glorious – great slabs of slate, carved out into gullies and bowls, smooth as silk with the endless rush of water, and pools of icy green water that made our bones ache as we slipped into it screaming. One year it was in spate, wild and rushing and white. We slept and woke to the roar of water. Another year there was a drought – a trickle of water between the rocks and boulders, and flickering lights in the hotel that relied on hydro-electric power.

Year after year the same visitors arrived for that last week in July, and became our friends. Year after year we played scrabble together, children and adults, in the sitting room after dinner – with at least five tables of four, forming a kind of scrabble championship. It was during that week that I discovered the world of trolls too – trolls of the 1970s with their brilliant coloured hair and simian faces. I looked forward to that week for months, and back home in suburbia I missed the mountains and rivers more than I could say.

It all ended when Mr Baines, the congenial owner, chef (with Mrs Baines) and only waiter, left the hotel and bought a café in Ambleside. The regular visitors drifted away. We returned for one more holiday, but it wasn’t the same.

Not long after, the Langdale Estate became a luxury timeshare. There was much building, the wilderness was tamed, the beck-side flanked by smart apartments. What happened to the hotel, I don’t know. People have different expectations of holidays now.

I hoped to find a picture of the old hotel on the internet, but there’s nothing. I wouldn’t like to go back now. They were brilliant holidays.

10 Comments
Graham Baines
9/2/2015 06:53:58 pm

You have just made my day. I was just preparing a talk about Langdale for a gathering this evening when I came across your blog. I googled Baines / Elterwater gunpowder works trying to find the date that my great grandfather was killed in an explosion there. Harold and Mary Baines were my parents and I was in my teens. Have been living in Cornwall for the last 40 years but still love visiting Langdale. Died sadly died about 25 years ago and Mum is in a care home suffering from dementia but those years they spent at the hotel, whilst being very hard work, were fantastic years. Thanks for the memories !

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Nick Hill
10/10/2017 03:22:25 am

Hi there, we remember our far too short time in the Lakes, now retired and camp in Langdale, often do our walk over the quarry like walking to school. 'Clogger' Bray, the Myers clan the Birketts, Spiby, Norah Walker, Got in touch with Mrs Langhorn's daughter, I went in to teaching because of her.
As you know we went to Devon and had a similarly interesting childhood in a hotel in Totnes.
Mum and Dad came back to the Lakes, Natland , Bowness, Lindale, and Kendal. Dad died 11 years ago, Mum is in a home in Longridge.

All the best Graham!

Nick Hill.

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Jackie Drake
28/5/2018 02:49:54 pm

Hi Graham I was driving through Elterwsyer today and thought of you and the 70’s . Do you remember me ? Jackie

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Barrington Brown
21/4/2016 04:51:17 pm

I too remember with pleasant memories our stays at the Pillar Estate. We had a chalet. I remember a trout stream running through the site.

While the daytime was spent up in the hills, each began and ended with meals at the hotel ... and my recollections fifty-plus years later are that these were very agreeable affairs.

Entrepreneurs out there, surely there is demand for something similar in 2016.

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Tricia
23/4/2016 12:26:06 pm

Good to hear how you loved it there too. I went back in February, following my father's death. It's so different now, but still beautiful in its way.

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Tim Hague
8/5/2017 08:11:34 am

I too spent a lot of my childhood with family on and around the Langdale Estate from c 1965 to 1973; my grandmother Winifred Hague lived in a lovely cottage on the estate.....and I believe had worked in the Pillar Hotel. Very fond memories indeed. I have a vague memory of running up and down somewhere called 'Beef Hill', but no trace exists...and indeed the estate is almost unrecognisable, bar what used to be the gatehouse/post office (iirc)

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toft, roger
14/4/2019 08:03:45 am

I used to stay in the Pillar Hotel with my parents and brother in the late 1940s. One year the summer was so warm the beck, which churned noisily through the grounds, fell silent.The grounds were so wild and wonderful in which to wander.

I wanted to take a look to see on the Net had become of it : I couldn't recognize anything, and I can't say I would be temped to stay there now I see what it has become.

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Martin Bennett
21/2/2020 08:11:29 am

It's great to know others recall tge magic of the place. I was tgere only once, in 1959, when our school form mistress took one of the chalets for a group of we 3rd formers during the Summer holiday. I had my 14th birthday that week. We walked up Helvellyn, Scafell Pike and other Lakeland hills but it was the place that sticks in my mind with local strolls through the quarries and down to Elterwater. It was some years later that I took up climbing seriously and of course this has taken me back to Langdale time after time, never passing without remembering that week. A group of us are planning a mini reunion weekend in May and it's already been suggested we should try to get permission to walk through the grounds. Thanks for the reminders. All the best. Martin.

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Marilyn Smith
3/7/2020 02:36:17 am

With too much time on my hands during this unnatural period of lockdown, nostalgic thoughts creep in. One of those such thoughts was of wonderful holidays in the Lake District that I had as a girl with my parents, sister and grandparents. I was delighted to come across this Blog account of the Pillar Hotel, where we spent several wonderful holidays in the late 60s. It was a fabulous place, I remember particularly the open fronted balcony running along the length of the upper floor, the bedroom doors opening out onto it. Here it was that I first remember my grandfather attempting to take up sketching, sitting in the grounds drawing the outline of the hotel building, pencil in one hand, pipe in the other.
This is exactly how I remember it. We too, at the time, were alarmed to hear of its transformation into a timeshare and luxury resort, certainly not the spirit and soul of the Lake District I grew up with.
Wonderfully happy times, if only we had appreciated how much.
Thank you for this memory, it’s brightened a wet and windy lockdown July day!
Marilyn Smith
Burton in Lonsdale

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Vicky Welch (nee Smith)
3/7/2020 08:49:58 am

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve talked to people about the paradise called The Pillar Hotel in Elterwater. My sister Marilyn & I stayed in the annexe with our wire haired fox terrier called Susie; she was charged a shilling a day for the privilege! Mum, Dad (Alan & Joan) & grandparents Albert & Emma stayed in the hotel.
I remember Mr Baines’ fantastic Christmas pudding - in May! The packed lunches were in white paper bags with strong handles & took some eating. We always stayed there during the Whitsuntide holidays & forged lovely relationships with families like us returning each year. One family springs to mind called the Highams from London, probably because they too had a Vauxhall Victor as was our family car. Yes, we managed to squeeze in four adults, my sister, me & our dog....and the luggage! Another family consisted of parents & older children who I think had forgotten to leave home, but the father played the piano often before the gong sounded at night for dinner.
Oh, thank you for reminding me again of these wonderfully happy & uncomplicated days....

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    Tricia Durdey dances, writes, and teaches Pilates.

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