In the footsteps of Nella Last.

-
Spark Bridge
Terrace at BrantwoodOver Coniston Lake
Walney Island near Barrow

From Brantwood across Coniston
Teatime with a view at Brantwood.
cheeky robin who liked our cakes!
Nella Last's home in Barrow from where  she wrote her wartime diaries.






How time flies, can it really be a week since we returned from a short break up in the Lake District. The weather could not have been better and we made the most of the glorious sunshine and clear blue skies and explored the area around Ulverston and Barrow.
I have been reading and throughly enjoying the wartime diaries of Nella Last,a lady who wrote for the Mass Observation project set up in WW2. She was real character and her diaries are so entertaining to pick up and immerse yourself into.
We found her house in Ilkley Road, Barrow and then went on some favourite car journeys that she liked to take during the 1940s and 50s, one being the coast road route from Barrow to Coniston, via Spark Bridge a place she visited often as her Aunt lived there.
I got to see all the places she so vividly described in her diaries as we found villages that we have never explored before.
When we arrived at Coniston, I took Peter for the best tea and cakes to be found in the Lakes, at the tearoom at Brantwood, John Ruskin's home on the Lakeside.
The local bird population share my love of the wonderful baking on offer and were soon coming close for all the crumbs.
See also my post Nella Last's last wish. Oct]

Comments

  1. Flora18 July 2011 at 17:30

    Lovely - I was entranced by the Victoria Wood dramatisation of the diaries, and I'd love to see where Nella lived. Thanks for posting!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown31 January 2021 at 07:46

    Thanks so much for these photos of Nella Last's world at Barrow-in-Furness..we are too far away for a visit..

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Storrs Hall and Windermere

-
Image
Thank you so much to everyone for some lovely birthday gifts, I was a very lucky lady indeed. Sonia and Nigel surprised me with a voucher to be used this summer for Afternoon tea at a lovely  hotel in Haworth and even better Sonia will be coming with me!  My Tea voucher!  The hotel at Haworth Here I am standing in the grounds of Storrs Hall hotel at Windermere at the start of our 2 days away last weekend. I had wondered if we would actually even get there as Peter was coughing like mad with this virus that we both got , but we did and the cough came with us! Still we had a really lovely stay at the hotel which was very nice and and warm and cosy with beautiful meals and breakfast taken in a dining room looking out over the lake. A view from Fell Foot park Little snowdrops near Beatrix Potters Hilltop Mountains with snow on the way to Hawkshead Inside Storrs Hall Snow and lots of it!
Read more

Nella Last's last wish!

-
Image
I often wonder when I am reading the wonderful  diaries of this extraordinary woman whether she got her last wish , which was that she could have her ashes sprinkled over her beloved Coniston lake. She didn't seem to think this would happen if she died before her husband as he  would not like it, she says in her war time diary. I hope that she was granted that wish but she actually did die a year or so before him and they were no longer  in their home either as they had become unable to manage through ill health and had moved by then to a Darby and Joan home [ a care home of sorts]. Without Coniston  to soothe her in the terrible years of the war and after when there were constant shortages and the demands and ill health of her husband , she may have gone under. It was only a short car ride away  and often they would stop at her old Aunts in Spark bridge to have tea and a chat. Coniston remains a favourite place for me as it was here that we came on our first camping trip in 19
Read more