Great Salkeld, 1848

SALKELD, GREAT (St. Cuthbert), a parish, in the union of Penrith, Leath ward, E. division of Cumberland, 3 miles (S. by W.) from Kirk-Oswald; containing 441 inhabitants. It comprises by measurement 3,600 acres, of which about 1,000 are rough pasture, 250 woodland, and the remainder chiefly arable. The river Eden is crossed here by a bridge of singular construction, with elliptical, semicircular, and pointed arches, partly built with the materials of an old bridge taken down about seventy years since: the remains ot a pier belonging to a still more ancient structure, demolished by a great flood in 1360, are yet visible in the stream. The living is a rectory, valued in the king's books at £22. 10. 10.; net income, £345; patron, the Bishop of Carlisle. The church tower, which appears to have contained four rooms one above another, was formerly resorted to as a place of security, and under it is a dungeon. There are places of worship for Presbyterians and Primitive Methodists. In the neighbourhood are vestiges of an ancient encampment, the ramparts of which are twelve feet high; on the common is a chalybeate spring. Among eminent natives of the parish have been, Dr. George Benson, a nonconformist divine and biblical critic, born in 1699; Rowland Wetheral, the mathematician and astronomer, born in the middle of the last century; and the late Lord Ellenborough, chief justice of the king's bench.