Thursby - Cumbria

Approximate duration of walk

Upto an hour

Entire route suitable for wheelchairs?

No

Are dogs on leads permitted along entire route?

Yes

Terrain overview

Partly unsurfaced – some gradient

Walk courtesy of:

Joanna Dancer

Find places to stay in the area via:

LateRooms and Tripadvisor

There are also many historic places to stay in Cumbria listed at Nights In The Past

Begin the walk in the centre of the village at The Ship Inn, which was the birthplace of the famous railway engineering brothers, William and Sir Thomas Bouch. Their father William was a sea captain (hence the pub’s name) who made his money trading with Australia and America sailing out of nearby Maryport, while their mother Elizabeth ran The Ship Inn in Thursby from the 1830s to the 1880s. William Bouch was apprenticed to Robert Stevenson & Co and became a locomotive designer, while Sir Thomas Bouch became a railway engineer famed for his lattice-girder bridges and viaducts, as well as the ill-fated Tay Bridge.

Walk along Church Lane to the left of the pub, past the Glebe Field on the left and the Old Vicarage on the right, to St Andrew’s Church. This was rebuilt by Sir John Brisco of nearby Crofton Hall in 1846, on the site of a previous church thought to have been built by David I, King of Scotland. The church has been restored after a fire in 2009, and contains a number of marble monuments to the Brisco family, as well as a churchyard full of magnificent gravestones of local families – do go into the churchyard, which is managed to encourage wildlife, and take a look around.

Mrs Beeton of Cookery Book fame, born Isabella Mayson in 1836, was a famous grand-daughter of the village, her grandfather John Mayson being the curate of Thursby for many years until he was appointed as Vicar of the neighbouring village of Great Orton at the grand old age of 64 years! Her father Benjamin was born in Thursby but moved to London, and when he died at the age of 39 years, the young Isabella returned to live with her grandfather in Cumbria. The Mayson family gravestone is facing the churchyard east wall, about 20 yards south of the gate through to the old vicarage. From the north side of the church you can see across the Solway plain to the small windfarm at Watchtree Nature Reserve near Great Orton.

Opposite the main church gate and steps is a footpath to Crofton one mile away, where the Brisco family estate once covered 3000 acres, including a deer park and 12 acre fish pond. Crofton Hall was demolished in the 1960s, but many of the estate buildings still exist, including Crofton Arch with its gatehouses, the stables, and an icehouse. Much of the estate became a Land Settlement area after WW2 creating smallholdings for unemployed miners and agricultural workers.

Turn left up Matty Lonning crossing Matty Beck, and past the new lottery-funded Parish Hall on your right which opened in 2010. This replaced an old wooden hall which had been a recycled accommodation hut from the munitions works at Gretna, reconstructed in the village in 1920. At the top of the road, turn left to pass whitewashed 'West House' on your right, a sizable early 19th century sandstone farmhouse, with its west-facing back wall entirely clad in Lakeland slate, a local style of weatherproofing.

Turn right up the Curthwaite Road, and continue up the hill past the chequered brickwork of ‘Craigard’ on the right, built in 1853. Next is the cosy Evening Hill Farm House and its adjoining barns, which date back to the 17th century and are partly of A-framed clay-walled construction – known locally as clay dabbin. Over the brow of the hill through the trees on your right is ‘Evening Hill’, a large Tudor-style house with candlestick chimney stacks built for Lt-Colonel John Knubley Wilson in 1833. In its grounds are some showy rhodendrons, a stand of very mature oak trees and, in February, a mass of snowdrops. Ahead to the south are views of the north Lakeland fells at the Back ‘o Skiddaw, with Carrock Fell to the far left and Skiddaw itself on the far right of the view.

Continue on down the hill to the bridge over the River Wampool, the parish boundary. On the left side of the bridge is the confluence of the River Wampool on the left with the larger Chalk (or Shawk) Beck on the right, with a deep trout pool where they meet. Ahead of you is the old Curthwaite Station house, on the Maryport Railway line opened in 1838. Walk up onto the railway bridge to see the water tank (a listed monument) next to the railway line behind the station house on the left, cast at Hareshaw Iron works in Hexham in 1843. Turn around to retrace your steps back up Evening Hill towards Thursby, with the old Thursby mill and chimney on your left, by the seat. The hedgerows of laid hawthorn are full of dogroses, honeysuckle, foxgloves, and many birds. From the brow of the hill to the left you can see across the Solway Firth to Criffel, the hill beyond Dumfries across the border in Scotland.

Coming back into Thursby, turn right along School Road through 'The Parks', a 1950s development, past Thursby Post Office to Thursby Primary School, built in 1957 to replace the original school which was built on The Green in 1740. Out of school hours go ahead on the permissive path across the school playground and field to the Jubilee Sports Field, where you will find a football pitch, community garden, children’s play area, tennis court, and a ‘Breathing Places’ wetland nature area established in 2009. (In school hours you can access the Jubilee Field by turning left down Shawk Crescent before the school, and following Brook Close round to the right to the access road.)

Follow the path past the children’s play area to the far lefthand corner of the Jubilee Field to visit the Breathing Places wetland area established in 2009, which has a wildlife pond and is a blaze of wildflowers throughout the spring and summer. Across the fields to the south is a view again to the northern fells. At the end of the tennis court by the play area cross Matty Beck through an opening in the fence, and turn left to walk along the footpath by the beck – you may see little minnows swimming in some of the deeper water from the little bridge, with hedgerows of may blossom and a wild buttercup grassland area. Continue along the footpath by the beck until you curve right to join the road in Stonehouse Park, a housing development originally built for the Pirelli factory workers in Carlisle. Go up the road straight ahead of you, follow it around to the right, then turn left to come out on the old main road through the village – the ‘new’ bypass was opened in the 1980s.

Turn left back towards the village centre, with 'Stone House' and its monkey-puzzle tree on your left. Opposite is the back wall of 'Carras' (old-English for carriage house), originally a barn for the adjacent yeoman farm of 'Holly Lodge', a large mid-18th century sandstone farmhouse with yellow sandstone extensions at each end dated 1837 in the patterned cobbles of the yard. 'Orchard House' to its left was the original barn of the farm, converted to a house in the 1870s, and behind this is 'Orchard Cottage', a clay dabbin from the late 17th century with additions dated 1731 in the lintel over its entrance doorway.

Walk on towards The Green, where the whitewashed milestone on its north side recalls the days when Thursby was on the busy main road to the trans-Atlantic ports of Maryport and Whitehaven. In the Victorian era it would have been bustling with local trades and passing traffic, with blacksmiths, cordwainers (shoemakers) and cotton weaving all part of the local economy.

Across The Green, where the village school was situated until the 1950s, the whitewashed and partially clay-walled 17th century 'Greenwood Cottage' lies behind 'Greenwood House', an early 19th century merchant’s house. Walk to the far end of The Green and on past the village noticeboard and postbox to find yourself back at The Ship Inn, where you can buy “The Thursby Trail’ leaflet for 50p (also on sale at Thursby Post Office). This guides you along much of this walk with a map and additional historical detail, sold in aid of ‘Thursby in Bloom’, the village’s annual entry into the Cumbria in Bloom competition.

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