Bampton (St Patrick) Parish, 1848

BAMPTON (St. Patrick), a parish, in West ward and union, county of Westmorland, 9 miles (S.) from Penrith; containing, with part of Mardale chapelry, 579 inhabitants. This parish comprises by measurement 3,720 acres, and is intersected by the river Lowther. Here is a beautiful lake, called Hawsewater, about three miles long, and half a mile broad, its head being environed by an assemblage of lofty mountains, its eastern side sheltered by well-planted rocky eminences, and its western bordered by cultivated fields. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £7. 5., and in the patronage of the Crown; net income, £101. The impropriate tithes belong to the Earl of Lonsdale and the trustees of the free grammar school, of whom the former has £164, and the latter £54. 8.; the vicarial tithes have been commuted for £19. 16. The church was rebuilt on the site of the former, in 1726: the vicarage-house was rebuilt also, about the same period, by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London. The free school was founded in 1627, by Thomas Sutton, D.D., who vested in trustees the sum of £500, collected in the parish of St. Saviour, Southwark, and other places, with which a portion of the rectorial tithes of Bampton was purchased. A school at Roughill was established by Edmund Noble, and endowed with £9. 15. 10. per annum; and in 1723 Richard Wright founded a school at Measand, which is endowed with property producing £50 per annum. Here are also three parochial libraries, established respectively in 1710, 1750, and 1757, and comprising in the aggregate upwards of 800 volumes. Thomas Gibson, M.D., (who married the daughter of Richard Cromwell, son of the Protector,) physician-general to the army, and author of a System of Anatomy, was a native of High Knipe, in the parish; where also was born, in 1669, his nephew, Edmund Gibson, D.D., Bishop of London, and editor of two improved editions of Camden's Britannia, and other learned works.