Whale of a tale

A pointed archway at a bus-stop told mountain climbers that they were less than an hour away from the hills. Bill Angus, who is the 1950s was an engineering apprentice at ICI Heysham Works, was one of them. He recently retired after running his own engineering business in Derybshire. Now newly resident in Sunnyside, Kendal, Mr Angus, 66, set out to see if the landmark was still there, and to trace its origins. He found only half the answer.

Lancaster bus station at around 9am on any Sunday morning sometime in the mid-1950s. Groups of hikers are gathering, nailed boots are clattering on the concrete, voices are raised in greetings and there is a general air of anticipation.

We are waiting to board the number 68 Ribble service bus, a double decker that will transport us via Kendal to the Lake District. It will take about two-and-a-half hours and will set down or pick up at between 20 and 30 bus stops before it reaches Ambleside.

The conductor will shout "Blue Anchor" or "Milnthorpe Square" as the bus labours through every village and hamlet on its way north. Eventually, we pass through Kendal and there is the long pull up Windermere Road and round Cunswick Scar. Just before the highest point is reached, and we get our first proper view of the Lakeland hills, the conductor will call up the stairwell: "Next stop, Whale's Jaw Bones!"

Whale's Jaw Bones? Quite so. And if we look to our left from the upper deck of the bus our eyes are level with the apex of what appears to be the outline of a boat's prow pointing to the sky, or a slender Norman arch in grey stone.

In fact, as we pull away from the bus-stop a discussion will sometimes ensue - are they really the jaw bones of a whale, or just a couple of pieces of bent timber whimsically sited over the gateway to a field?

But before long they are well behind us and out of sight, and the bus is bumping over the level crossing into Staveley. We have more serious things in mind - equipment to be checked, maps consulted, routes decided; there are mountains to be climbed

Now, nearly half a century later I have come to live in Kendal, with time to indulge my curiosity. Are the bones' still there? Come to that, were they really the bones of a whale? If so, who put them there, and when?

First things first. Yes, they're still there - just. Eaten away by time and the elements, they are now only half their original height. They have been relocated further to the north when the bypass was built and are now difficult to see, half hidden among the encroaching bushes. And of course, they are no longer a bus stop.

As to their animal origins, the bones' are unquestionably bones. A fragment and photographs sent to my old friend Dr Paul Selden, at Manchester University, identify the creature as most probably Balaenoptera physalus one of the big whales that used its large jaws to gulp plankton-laden seawater by the ton.

So who did put them there? I thought this would have been fairly easy to find out - just a few inquiries at farms in the locality, a visit to the library perhaps, or even a browse in the county archive.

But no! "They've been there as long as anyone can remember," was the usual response from the local farmers. The library and the County Archive produced two or three old photographs showing the bones in place, but no record of their arrival in Kendal, nor any clues to their origin.

Since they are on the farmland of Tolson Hall I consulted the resident Cropper family, owners of the paper mill at Burneside. They were unsure, but thought the whale bones were a gift from a Norwegian wood-pulp supplier in the early 1900s. This may well be true but, alas, there are no letters or other documents to support this.

A competing story places responsibility for the bones with the Bateman family, earlier occupants of Tolson Hall, whose maritime connections are said to have included a whaling captain. This would place the bones' arrival in the early part of the 19th century, which is consistent with a 1905 photograph showing the bones already tattered and weather-beaten. So maybe it was James Bateman himself (he of the Elba Memorial) who brought them to Kendal? Curiously, the whalebone arch is reflected in the design of an old gateway to Tolson Hall nearby. Clue or coincidence? We don't know.

Whatever their provenance, it is agreeable to think of two huge bones being loaded onto a railway truck or canal boat from a port possibly somewhere in Lancashire transferred to a horse and cart on arrival in Kendal, then laboriously hauled up the hill and carefully set up over a gateway at the side of the road.

And for no practical purpose whatsoever.

Why the fuss over a couple of old bones? But they were much more than this. To many in the 1950s, and to one young apprentice in particular, they marked a frontier between two countries two states of mind almost.

To the south was the noise, gloom and dirt of a chemical factory, the paralysing tedium of engineering studies at night-school, a Monday-to-Friday clocking-on world where the spirit was all but crushed by obedience to habit and convention.

To the north was freedom, light, space, and the simple pleasure of putting one foot in front of the other to reach the summit of a hill. And if those hills were shrouded in mist, mantled with snow and ice, or blasted by gales, so much the better - so much the more different.

That frontier, like the bones themselves, has become blurred and decayed with time. So be it. This is as it should be things change, we move on.

But I'm glad that something of the old whale bones remains, if only as a gentle reminder of that other country that we sometimes call the past'.

Do you know anything about the origin and history of the whale's bones? If so, contact the News Desk, Westmorland Gazette, 22 Stricklandgate, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 4NE, or telephone 01539-710159 or email wgnewsdesk@kendal.newsquest.co.uk

April 24, 2003 14:00