Arnside is rich in literary connections. Amongst the writers who visited and included descriptions in their novels and poetry are Angela Brazil, Arthur Ransome, Canon Hardwick Rawnsley, Lucy M Boston, Edwin Waugh and J A Steers.
Silverdale and Arnside became
Silversands in Angela Brazil's early novel Bosom Friends. Angela Brazil
was born in Preston and spent many of her early holidays in the
Silverdale and Arnside area, enjoying the sea and sands. Brazil writes " the little town of
Silversands was built on the cliffs by the sea, so close over the
greeny-brown water that the dash of the waves was always in your ears
and the taste of the salt spray always on your lips." In her novel The Third Class at Miss Kaye's Brazil writes less positively about Arnside "Gwennie was nearly drowned at Arnside when she was five, and it's made Mother so nervous ever since". Not the best tourist advertisement for Arnside and the estuary, but very true nonetheless about the treachorous sands and tides.
Lucy M Boston, who wrote the wonderful Green Knowe books, spent a year near her mother's family home at Arnside, Westmorland. This move to the countryside gave the children a more free and easy life-style than had been possible in Southport. Lucy describes the "wide and inexhaustible joys of Arnside", on the estuary of the river Kent. The children were free to wander woods and fields, explore the cliffs and coves of the river. Boston's family home is thought to have been Arnside Tower.
Edwin Waugh, the Lancashire born poet and writer, wrote in Rambles in the Lakes of his visit to Arnside and Silverdale "skirting the eastern slope of the hill, a good road brought us into the vale at the head of which "Arnside Tower," a massive old square building of limestone, stands, a lonesome, gloomy-looking ruin. It is finely situated on an isthmus which connects the two peninsulas of Arnside and Silverdale. Seaward, it commands a view of Warton Sands, and looks right over the bay, out to Peel Castle, off the far western point of Low Furness. Eastward, it overlooks the lone green vale of Arnside, with its little tarn shining in the hollow; and beyond there is a view of Farleton Knot, and of the sands formed by the river Keer....Soon after the train leaves Arnside station, the great bay begins to shew itself as we rumble over the fine viaduct that crosses the river Kent, and the yellow sands of its estuary spread out on each hand."
Arthur Ransome's connections with Arnside and Crossfield's Boat Yard are well known. I always find it fascinating to imaging Ransome visiting the Boat Yard to negotiate the building of the Swallow and Coch-y-Bonddu (Red and Black). In a letter to Reginald Kaye of Silverdale (the nursery owner) Ransome
mentions his old friends, the Crossfields in Arnside: “….. the shed
at Arnside where they have built so many good little vessels. I was
sailing yesterday on the Thames in a first rate little 13 footer that
they built at Arnside in, I think 1934, the kindliest little boat of
that size ever known.”
Finally, J A Steers wrote in The Coast Line of England and Wales in 1846 "as in all places where there are extensive sands exposed at low water, the tides in their changing cycles add enormously to the beauty of landscape, and this is especially true in these mountain-enclosed estuaries". He writes that "all .. estuaries, are beautiful, but the finest coastal scenery is undoubtedly near Silverdale and Arnside".
Interestingly, in researching the work of J A Steers I have come across a couple of other writers who write about Arnside and the surrounding area. So, more interesting reading about this most beautiful area.