Eccle Riggs Again

I'm still back in the 1960s, at Eccle Riggs, the hotel near Broughton-in-Furness which I wrote about yesterday, where we used to stay often when I was a child.

It was, in many ways, still back in the Victorian era. In the grounds were many plants that had originally been brought by the first owner, Viscount Cross, from the Empire - huge clumps of bamboo, for one thing. Years ago, a square of trees had been planted to make a playhouse for some children - perhaps the same Victorian children whom I thought shared the attic with me.

And of course, now, in the sixties, the trees, once thin saplings in a square, were huge, their trunks squashing into each other. There were huge rhododendron bushes and, in the spring, violets and primroses everywhere in the grounds. It was a place of secret corners, of fallen trees, of chaffinches.

Inside Eccle Riggs all was darkness, peace and wooden panelling. The three spinster owners, the Misses Preston, knitted dolls' clothes and sold dolls, complete with clothes, in aid of the local church. I was given one as a present - I still have it. Let's face it, I still have everything from my childhood really since I've lived in the house where I am now, on and off, since I was three.

Because the owners of Eccle Riggs were devout Christians, a lot of Salvation Army people tended to stay there and I remember them as being very friendly, if a trifle over-jolly. There was a big lounge with huge windows and tables with magazines. No television, of course, dear me, no. In the evenings we sat in the lounge and talked and read the many Readers' Digests that were about: I retain an affection for this much-mocked magazine to this day.

At nine o'clock in the evening the Misses Preston brought in a proper trolley with proper white tablecloths, teapots, crockery and home-made cakes. And, after that, everyone drifted off to bed, hoping the weather would be good for exploring the Lake District the next day.

If it rained - and, this being the Lake District, it sometimes did - there was the library.

Nobody but me ever seemed to go into the library, which was off the entrance hall and which was full of old Victorian books. Most were too heavy and too dull to be worth attempting - but there was some things I liked, such as a very early edition of Edward Lear's nonsense verse, and even that uplifting tale of that Welsh girl who tramped halfway across Wales to get herself a Bible in Welsh. I spent hours in there, reading dull poems by bad Victorian poets, and I loved it.

Such an atmosphere and such a place would not suit every child but oh, boy, it suited me. Hills and streams during the day: good food: plenty to read: places to make dens: freedom to run around outside.

Lucky? Yes, I was.

Idyllic? Yes, it was.