Cowgill and particularly The Sportsmans Inn was a favourite watering hole for our family when the children were young. I was able to drink and the kids could dabble and fall in the Cowgill rivulet.
Nearby is St John the Evangelist church enroute to the railway station for Dent which serves all the villages around. The church has connections to Adam Sedgwick, the father of modern geology, who came from a local family of Vicars. Cambridge University still maintains a museum in his name the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Science but the monument most people will know is the vaguely pyramidal stone on the cobble streets of Dent engraved Adam Sedgwick 1785- 1873.
Returning to the tribulations of the Cowgill Chapel there is an account by Adam Sedgwick of Orthological skulduggery (scanned in by Google) entitled ‘A Memorial by the Trustees of Cowgill Chapel By Adam Sedgwick, Cowgill Chapel (Yorkshire) 1868. The curate of the new church attempted to change the name of the local hamlet from Kirthwaite to Kirkthwaite without informing the trustees of which Adam Sedgwick was one. Since the Sedgwick family were already bemoaning the change of name of Coegill to Cowgill they put up a robust fight resulting in an ecclesiastical court battle. From the foundation stone laying in 1837 until the final protest in 1866 the story hints at empire building and parochial politics that could still be relevant today. With added appendicies about Climate History and Dialects of Dent it makes a fascinating read to see what exercised the bright minds of the time.
‘The Dent Fault cuts across the valley close to the village of Gawthrop, marking a geological boundary between the carbonferous limestone of Deepdale and the Craven Dales to the south and the older Silurian and Ordovician rocks of the Howgill Fells to the north.’ Now the Dalesway passes along the valley towards Dent and onward to Sedbergh attracting many walkers. I am not sure Adam Sedgwick would approve of all the changes that have come to Dent Dale but he would be proud that his legacy and geological knowledge is still celebrated.
Book from Amazon quote from wikipedia milk churn Eamon Curry
