Anthony Sinclair. School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies, Hartley Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, U.K. emails to a.g.m.sinclair@liv.ac.uk
Keith J Matthews, Chester Archaeology, 27 Grosvenor Street, Chester, CH1 2DD, U.K. emails to k.j.matthews@liv.ac.uk
When referencing this article, please use the following convention:
Sinclair, A.G.M. & Matthews, K.J. 1999 The English Hermit. Capra
1 available at - http://capra.group.shef.ac.uk/1/hermit.html
"When the train of human events appear to deviate from their wonted course, and become productive of character altogether new and unexampled, they have a claim on the world to be perpetuated. An instance of this kind when nature has appeared surprisingly to wander from its wonted operations, is displayed in the character and manner of life of a certain Person in the vicinity of the Township of Tattenhall....Mr John Harris, the Hermit, is a man about 5 feet 10 inches high, of a ruddy complexion, strongly built, a strong voice and walks very straight and remarkably quick: he was a man possessed of a very large fortune, he had several estates;....which he sold after his parents decease, and took his abode in dens and caves in the mountains, in which he has resided ever since, which is the space of about 66 years....The first place he made his abode in, was a cave belonging to W. Leche Esq., at Carden in the county of Chester, in which place he resided for the space of 20 years and upwards...."
(Anonymous pamphlet, 1809)
The legend of John Harris, the English Hermit, is well known, if not well remembered, in Cheshire and North Wales. John Harris, the English Hermit, was discovered at the ripe age of 99 years old. Four young men gathering firewood for a Guy Fawkes Night bonfire spotted him on 5th November 1809. So shocking was the sight of Harris, that all four men ran back to nearby Harthill claiming that they had encountered a 'wild hairy man....the frightfulest figure they had ever seen', going into the Rock's mouth. Disbelief was put to rest when gentlemen from Harthill, lanterns in hand, returned to Allenscomb's Cave and found Harris sitting around a fire made of 'coakes'. Harris told them of how he had begun his cave life when his parents refused him permission to marry his sweetheart, Ann Egerton, from the parish of Handley. In return he vowed never to marry so long as he lived and to have as little conversation with mankind as possible. With the death of his parents, Harris sold his inherited estates in the parishes of Handley, Broxton and Tattenhall, and, though now a man of considerable fortune, settled into the life of a hermit in a cave at Carden, later moving to Allenscomb's Cave. Or, at least, this is the published story of Harris's life.
Seeking a 'hermit' at Carden Park
Cave dwelling was not a purely prehistoric or ascetic activity. Recent articles (Leitch & Smith 1997; Tolan-Smith 1999) note the presence of cave dwellers in Scotland throughout the nineteenth century at sites such as Keil Cave in Kintyre and Tinker's Cave at Wick. Indeed they mention that the practice of living in caves only officially came to an end in 1915, when cave dwelling was strictly prohibited under provisions contained within the Defence of the Realm Act although even this law did not deter people from continuing to live in caves as census returns in 1917 revealed (Tolan-Smith 1999: 10-11). The prospect of someone in the eighteenth century living in a cave, even in the midst of the rich pastureland of Cheshire, should not be dismissed out of hand. The anonymous account, however, whilst containing a number of quite specific details, also clearly describes what must have been thought to have been a (stereo-) typical hermit's life. This is especially the case with regard to the reasons given for John Harris turning away from the life of a landed heir to become a hermit. Is this account, therefore, anything more than a tale designed to amuse a gullible public, or even to bring renown upon a certain J. Tarleton, who is mentioned as having tended a sickening Harris until his death, which came coincidentally not so long after his discovery?
Since 1996, however, the University of Liverpool and Chester Archaeology have conducted a joint archaeological project on the Carden Park estate, in western Cheshire, that suggests that there may indeed have been a cave dweller there in the mid 18th century.
The Carden Park estate is now part of the St David's Hotel Group and home to two full-size golf courses, a golf academy, a large hotel and a conference complex. The estate, once the part of the estate lands of William Leche, can be found approximately 14 kilometres to the south of the city of Chester and 15 kilometres east of the city of Wrexham in North Wales. It lies on the south side of the A534 that runs from Wrexham to Nantwich (at NGR SJ 460535). The estate includes a western outlier of the Mid Cheshire Ridge, a series of sandstone deposits of Permo-Triassic age that lie within and near the base of the Keuper Marl (Goudie 1990: 124-5). The sandstone ridge produces marked escarpments with vertical cliffing, and although not high in altitude, the low-lying, undulating nature of the surrounding land makes these ridges much more prominent within their local setting than their height above sea level might otherwise suggest. From the ridge on the Carden Park estate, fine prospects of the Dee estuary to the northwest are revealed.
In addition to its modern developments, Carden Park has a complex historic and prehistoric past. The Cheshire Sites and Monuments Record records the presence of a scheduled Bronze Age barrow and a Mesolithic lithic assemblage found eroding from the talus of one of a number of sandstone rock shelters on the Park. Through the last 500 years, Carden Park has been witness to the rise and recent fall of a great landed estate. Starting in the 14th century, 17 successive generations of the Leche family built up their land holdings. By the time of the tithe map surveys in the mid nineteenth century, the Leche's estate encompassed more than 3000 acres of prime Cheshire land, as well as properties in the city of Chester itself. Material remains of the Leche ownership are to be found throughout the modern estate. They include among other things, stone lodges at the north and south entrances to the estate, a well-preserved ha-ha, an artificial lake and deer park, old farm buildings and the remains of a pleasure garden.
As with many great landed estates in Britain, the events of the twentieth century have not been kind. In 1912, Carden Hall, a half-timbered house probably built in the sixteenth century, burned down in a great fire and the Leche family moved away from the main hall site to live at Stretton Hall, 2 kilometres distant, though still on estate lands. Although planning permission was granted in the 1960s for the building of a new hall, none was built. The Carden estate dwindled in size and was eventually sold in 1991 and again in 1994 to its present owners.
A field evaluation carried out before the construction of the first golf course in 1991 identified a rock shelter on the Park that was reputed to have been the home of John Harris, and it is here that excavations have taken place.
Incidentally, this is the shelter from the talus of which lithic artefacts had been found eroding. There are currently no deposits within the shelter, which is clean to the bedrock floor, but a trench in front of the main cave has produced clear evidence not only of mid eighteenth century occupation but also of other earlier occupations on the site.
Below the topsoil, dark red sandy deposits contain a Post-medieval assemblage containing fragments of slightly green tinted glass, numerous pieces of clay pipe, and fragments from brown and dark green glazed slipware vessels. Other finds include a couple of pieces of shellfish, possibly scallop or oyster, although bone and shell do not survive well in the acidic sandy soils. The material is typically domestic, consisting largely of food storage vessels and tablewares.
Figure 1. A view of the main rock shelter in Cliff Bank at Carden Park
Although a small assemblage, it is larger than the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century assemblage of wares presumably broken and discarded by picnickers who seem to have used the site as a picturesque spot to sit and eat. The slipware vessels in particular are items that would have been used for the service of food. Although such slipware vessels were not the habitual crockery of the gentry, neither are they the assemblage of a pauper.
From a dating perspective, the fragments of clay pipe so far recovered prove to be uninformative: small fragments of stem rather than fragments of the date-sensitive bowl have alone been found. The ceramics are more useful. Similar finds from well-dated contexts show that these types fell out of use in Cheshire in the 1750s. Allowing for up to another 10 years of possible use-life, these fragments would suggest that the site was deserted by the end of the 1760s.
What was the life of a hermit and cave-dweller like at this time? The pamphlet quoted above notes that John Harris lived a typical hermit's life. "Of a religious turn of mind, he spent his time with the Bible, Prayer-book and other godly books for company". But Harris himself was not a poor man. "He kept himself clean, his clothing was very good and he possessed utensils fit for use". He apparently also kept a servant man, and both of them slept on feather beds. For Harris, the hermit's life was not of necessity a life of poverty. So what of the occupant of the Carden Park shelter?
To describe the 18th century occupant as a cave-dweller does not really do the site proper justice. Today, carved into the rock of the shelter walls, we can see the foundations and settings of something more substantial. The shelter has been enlarged by chiselling, to take the form of a rectilinear room with straight sides, a lightly arched roof and small wall niches, perhaps for storage.
Figure 2. The modified interior of the rock shelter at Carden Park. The straight sides and arched ceiling have been formed by chiselling away the naturally eroded surface.
Large slots cut into the sandstone at the sides indicate places where square beams that once supported a wooden frontage were placed. Small vertical slots cut into the floor of the shelter indicate some form of partition dividing the internal space. At the front of the shelter, extending across the talus, a firm platform was created from stone chips, most probably waste derived from the chiselling process that enlarged the cave. On this platform, there were the remains of at least three stout post placements (Figure 3): the frontage of this shelter was clearly substantial.
Figure 3. The stone platform at the front of the rock shelter made out of the waste from the modifications of the shelter interior.
Out on the talus, the foundations of a small free-standing structure have also
been found. Glazed slipware and particularly two bricks, used as post supports
in one corner, date this outbuilding also to the mid eighteenth century. The
overall appearance of this site may have been more like a house set into the
escarpment than a cave (Figure 4).
Figure 4. A reconstruction of how the shelter may have looked with its wooden frontage. (Reconstruction by John Gordon Swogger).
Finally, to the north of this house, chiselled out of the sandstone escarpment, are steps and seats, now well-worn, to provide places where the occupier may have sat, reading those godly books, and reflecting upon the Welsh mountains looming to the West (Figure 5).
Figure 5. The eroded bench seats in the cliff face to the north side of the main shelter
Although there is good evidence that the shelter was occupied in the middle of the eighteenth century, when the hermit is said to have lived there, we have still to confirm the occupant of the shelter as John Harris. It is here that problems arise. The anonymous pamphlet notes that John Harris was born on July 20th, 1710, in the parish of Handley, and that he inherited estates in Handley, Broxton and Tattenhall on the death of his father. The parish records for Handley, however, make no reference to the baptism of a John Harris at this date or for ten years on either side (Cheshire County Record Office Mf 332/7). There is also no record of the will by which he might have inherited his estates preserved in the County Records Office, although this itself is no proof that it never happened. Finally, as a wealthy man, one might have thought him capable of paying rent, yet there is also no record of a John Harris in the rent book for the Leche lands at this time (Cheshire County Record Office DLe 78), though there are Harrisons named as tenants for this period. But once again if the cave dweller was indeed a hermit, perhaps he came to a non-rental arrangement with the Leches for the use of the shelter. It is also possible, of course, that the cave-dweller was an employee of the estate, installed as a Romantic figure to entertain (and perhaps frighten) the Leches' guests. We will return to this later.
Whoever occupied the shelter, the material evidence indicates that it was abandoned in the 1760s.
".... but he not liking his situation, removed from thence to a Cavity or Cave in a Rock belonging to J. Tarleton Esq. of Bolesworth-Hall, in the County of Chester, in which he resided for the space of 46 years and upwards...."
(Anonymous, 1809)
According to the pamphlet, once again, it was the 1760s when John Harris moved from his cave at Carden to Allenscomb's Cave, where he was later 'discovered'. If the pamphlet is even nearly right about his age, Harris was certainly an old man, by the standards of his day, when he left Carden. So what was so disagreeable about his situation that Harris (or another occupier) decided to move? The cave was clearly comfortable enough. Historical documents in the Cheshire County Records Office suggest that an explanation might be found in the actions of the Leche family themselves.
When the shelter was occupied, the Carden estate was in the hands of John Leche (1704-1765), who was the twelfth generation of that family to have owned lands there (Ormerod 1882), and father to the William Leche mentioned in the pamphlet. John Leche died from 'the dropsy' in 1765, leaving all his lands to his son William (1734-1817). A terrier (Cheshire County Record Office: DLe 24) to a now lost estate map, the Leche estate rents book for 1729 to 1778 (Cheshire County Record Office: DLe 78) and later tithe maps show that William was an active man.
He set about rationalising his inheritance. Like a number of other landowners at this time (Bellamy & Williamson 1987: 125), William sold those lands farthest away from the main estate, buying lands either adjacent or closer to the main estate holdings. He terminated old tenancy agreements with families who had rented Leche lands for decades, and created new, larger tenant farm holdings. By the time William passed on the lands to his own son and heir, he had transformed the estate from one with an annual income that can be generously estimated at approximately £3000 to one estimated by his contemporaries at £10,000 per annum. Following Heather Clemenson (1982: 7-8), such a change in annual income would have seen Leche rise from being a minor gentleman to being a member of the greater gentry. Within his lifetime, William Leche had become a man who now dined with Earl Cholmondley, and hunted with and received coverts and hounds from Earl Grosvenor. He even had the Earl Grosvenor act as trustee of the Carden estates in his will (Cheshire County Record Office: WS 1817). Such was William's 'vigour' that contemporary letters refer to him as "the mighty Nimrod".
William Leche also transformed his own personal holdings around Carden Hall from a small estate of about 80 acres in the 1770s into a classic gentleman's landscape park, with plantations, a lake and a new avenue up to the house. The tithe maps of 1837 to 1845 record the size of this personal estate at more than 300 acres in extent. They also show that around the estate as a whole, William kept for himself coverts for foxes and pheasants and bought manorial hunting rights over neighbouring parishes, for the use of himself and his new friends. The estate terrier, however, reveals that for a brief period before creating the landscape park, William first created a picturesque 'Pleasure Garden' sometime between 1765 and 1778. It is the creation of this pleasure garden that might explain the disappearance of the cave dweller.
Figure 6. One of the stone garden features in William Leche's pleasure garden. This stone bench may have had a structure for some form of awning.
Stone fittings for William Leche's Pleasure Garden, including steps, benches, a classical niche-room cut into the rock, a possible grotto and even a small folly in the form of a stone circle or dolmen, can be found today, hidden by the modern undergrowth (Figure 6 above). Their arrangement and structure reveal the garden as a meandering walk by a low cliff escarpment that extends along the line of the sandstone ridge from a starting place directly above Carden Hall to the cave about 500 metres distant. Whilst this distance might be short for a walk, stone steps lead the walker up and down the cliff side, with regular 'switch backs' and 'blind corners' enhancing the sense of distance and mystery, noted to be important in other pleasure gardens (Appleton 1975). At regular intervals, places of interest to stop have been created. At each, stone-cut benches afford walkers the opportunity for 'rest' and perhaps conversation. Similar garden elements can be seen in other local Cheshire and Shropshire gardens. For example, a grotto was built in the grounds of Broxton Old Hall approximately 2 kilometres distant from Carden (North West Landscape Group, 1985: 15). Picturesque gardens with walks along sandstone cliffs can also be seen today at Hawkstone, Quarry Bank and Peckforton. At Hawkstone, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire, Sir Roland Hill and his son Richard created kilometres of walks and follies along the cliff escarpments and around the grounds of Hawkstone Hall (Hudson 1999: 224). At Quarry Bank at Styal, near Wilmslow in East Cheshire, the gardens laid out along the River Bollin contain a number of cliff escarpments (Laurie 1987a). Closer still is the picturesque cliff garden at Peckforton Castle (Appleton 1986: 283).
One of the most intriguing features of William's garden is that the natural height of the low cliff escarpment has been artificially raised in places by the addition of one, two or three courses of sandstone blocks cut from a quarry on the estate.
Figure 7. Stone blocks added to the sandstone escarpment in the pleasure garden.
Where fissures occur in the cliff, they have been filled with carefully cut blocks, creating a smooth, almost seamless face.
Figure 8. Stone blocks filling a crack in the sandstone escarpment in William Leche's pleasure garden.
These blocks, however, never add more than half a metre in height to the cliff, and the extra height is barely noticeable when viewed from further away, such as the Hall. So why were they cut and placed there?
The answer lies in being in the right position. If you stand beside the cliff, as you would do when walking along the Pleasure Garden trail, the blocks add significantly to the height of the cliff. With the additional blocks in place, the cliff face now stands always above head height, and the natural erosion of earth forming fans centred on the cracks in the rock face is stopped. Most importantly, the additional blocks prevent people from looking towards Carden village, Broxton parish and the east. Instead visitors to the Pleasure Garden were presented with a smooth path along which to walk, and as they did, they were effectively encouraged to look west over William Leche's estate. Along this garden path, a series of stopping places and benches afford carefully constructed views of Carden Hall or other aspects of Leche lands held in Carden, Stretton and neighbouring parishes. The additional sandstone blocks, therefore, instead of being a minor feature of this garden, in fact reveal the true purpose behind the creation of William's Pleasure Garden. It is not just a picturesque woodland landscape but also a narrative of carefully ordered perspectives gained over the Leche estates. The Pleasure Garden at Carden may not be as grand as the carefully controlled vistas created by the nobility or the very wealthy in the major landscape parks of England, such as those designed by the renowned landscape gardener William Kent some twenty years previously at Rousham (Moggridge 1986), but it still embodies the same taste in the sense of the creation of place through the control of perspective, albeit on a smaller scale.
We might, however, still reasonably ask whether a cave-dweller, or hermit, would have been incompatible with this new garden design? Hermits are known to have been present in other gardens of the period. Nikolaus Pevsner, in his discussion of the grounds at Hawkstone, notes that when the grounds were laid out they included walks along the cliffs with numerous visual entertainments. These included rocks like those at Palmyra, the wax effigy of a neighbour's ancestor in a grotto and, most importantly, a hermitage complete with a hermit with an hourglass, a skull, a book and a pair of spectacles on his table (Pevsner 1958: 145; quoted in Appleton 1986: 283). During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the grounds at Hawkstone received more than 10,000 visitors a year. Indeed it is even possible that William Leche himself went to see the cliff gardens at Hawkstone. Closer to hand, a hermitage (now sadly missing) within a wilderness and woodland garden has been recorded in the survey of Adlington Hall, near Macclesfield in Cheshire (Laurie, 1987a: 192, 1987b: 1), whilst a Preacher's Cave is recorded within the sandstone escarpments closest to the house at Quarry Bank in the survey of that garden (Laurie 1987a: 117).
So is it possible that William Leche, like his contemporaries, also installed a hermit in the cave? It would certainly fit in with the concept of the garden and show that William was a man of fashion and taste. Harris's later 'adoption' by John Tarleton, with whom William had a long-standing dispute over hunting rights, might then fit into the pattern of rivalry between these two men. We might envisage Tarleton 'poaching' John Harris as an act of revenge. However, the archaeology of the site is quite clear: whoever was living at Carden Park left in the 1760s, round about the time William inherited the estate and created the pleasure garden. Our cave-dweller, hermit or not, cannot have been part of William Leche's pleasure garden.
The reason for the departure of the cave-dweller seems reasonably clear. At Carden Park, the perfect perspective of the Leche lands occurs when you reach the end of the walk. As the cliff escarpment drops away, the landscape opens out, and a final magnificent panorama is revealed. To the south, garden walkers would have been able to see Tilston church, where the Leches were baptised, wed and buried. To the west lie the Leche estates and the estates of William's brother, John, surrounding Stretton Hall. To the north, the view encompasses Carden Hall and the Leche estates, and beyond these rise the architectural landmarks of the nearby Eaton estate, home to the Earl Grosvenor, and further beyond, the skyline of city of Chester with its Cathedral and Castle, and where the Leches like other great families sought and won the office of Sheriff. The City and its great families in the Country are here brought together within the same vista. Unfortunately for our cave-dweller, this final panorama is best viewed from a rock platform next to what would have been the outbuilding. Even a hermit, wild and hairy, would clearly have had to go.
Ironically, the site chosen by the cave-dweller for his home and by William Leche for the climax to his pleasure garden, had been occupied many millennia before. Bronze Age pottery of Beaker tradition and large numbers of narrow-blade microliths of Late Mesolithic type have been excavated at the site. The microliths belong to the fifth or sixth millennium BC and suggest that the site was occupied periodically by a small hunting party. Evidence for earlier, Late Upper Palaeolithic occupation has also been found. The prehistoric activity will form the focus of a forthcoming publication (Matthews and Sinclair, forthcoming)
John Harris's second cave dwelling, at Allenscomb's Cave, is often thought to be a cave called Mad Allen's Hole. It is located on National Trust land on the north side of Bickerton Hill, no more than 4 kilometres from Carden Park (at NGR SJ 503536). The topographic setting of this shelter is very similar to that at Carden: the cave is in a low cliff face that runs along a natural sandstone ridge.
Mad Allen's Hole is a natural, two-storey cave (Figure 9 below). A circular hole at the back of the cave provides easy access to both levels with the use of a small ladder. The great boulders that block the entrance to the cave would have formed a gigantic natural overhang, under which a timber front could have been built. No material evidence is easily visible in this site dating to the 18th century. A recent rock fall has buried the front talus.
Figure 9. A view of Mad Allen's Hole, showing the collapsed roof overhanging now standing almost vertically in front of the cave and blocking a view of the entrance from below.
The pamphlet, however, claims that Allenscomb's Cave was in the hills overlooking Harthill, and is therefore, more likely to have been several kilometres further away. It is likely that the story of John Harris has become attached to Mad Allen's Hole because of the similarity of the name to Allenscomb's Cave. But, we know that the site at Bickerton takes its name from a late nineteenth-century eccentric, Mad Allen, who lived there. To suggest that Mad Allen happened to set up home in a cave formerly known as Allenscomb's is stretching the bounds of coincidence rather thin.
By the date that the John Harris of the pamphlet was finally discovered in his second cave dwelling, William Leche's demesne lands (those lands within the estate held by the landowner for his own use) had been enlarged in acreage and transformed into a landscaped hunting park. The Pleasure Garden had lost out as a form of entertainment to the gentleman's life of hunting and shooting in a parkland that also generated its own income from its carefully scattered plantations (Williams 1987). It is likely that the original hermit's cave was now hidden within a parcel of plantation land and the walks and views for which the cave dweller was perhaps evicted were already overgrown. Indeed, it is perhaps the forgetting of these features within the plantation land that resulted in their survival to the present day, rather than their redevelopment at some time in the past.
The 'English Hermit': myth or reality?
There are many ways in which the account of the English Hermit fits the pattern of a typical hermit tale. His renouncing of married life, his religious turn of mind, his long hair and nails and not least his discovery at 99 years of age would all seem to be elements of a 'proper' hermit story. A mixture, however, of archaeological excavation, field survey and documentary research has shown that behind the literary elements there may be a more interesting account of a clash of cultures in the eighteenth century. The hermit and Leche saw the same land through two very different perspectives, reflecting their different cultural backgrounds and personal aspirations. Both manipulated their landscape according to their means, and their perceptions of the beautiful in nature. But it is the improvements made by William Leche to his estates and his pleasures, and the exclusivity of his vision, which led directly to the hermit's departure.
As an interesting corollary to the suggestion made (and discounted) above, that John Tarlton 'stole' William Leche's hermit, we might ask whether it is possible that the hermit at Allenscomb's Cave was in fact a fraud, installed by Tarleton as a way of taunting Leche? The original hermit - whatever his name - may have long been dead, but a common memory of William's eviction of this unfortunate individual could have prompted Tarleton to 'rediscover' the hermit at an advanced age and shower him with the kindnesses that William Leche had so patently failed to do forty-four years earlier. In this way, legend and fact became intertwined: a real hermit occupied the cave before c 1765, at which point he was evicted by William Leche and moved away, to die in obscurity. The story was sufficiently well known forty-four years later, though, for John Tarleton to use it in his feud with Leche, by claiming to have 'rediscovered' the hermit, living out the remainder of his years on his land. This venerable man was presented to the public as being in every way admirable, fitting the model of the Old Testament patriarch, with his simple faith and prodigious age. The difference between William Leche's abominable treatment of this figure and John Tarleton's kindness to him would be proof of the latter's moral superiority in a public war of words between neighbouring landowners.
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