Dufton is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

, England. Historically part of

Westmorland Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland''R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref>) is an area of North West England which was Historic counties of England, historically a county. People of the area ...

, it lies in the Eden Valley and below

Great Dun Fell At a height of , Great Dun Fell is the second-highest mountain in England's Pennines, lying south along the watershed from Cross Fell, its higher neighbour. Together with its smaller twin, Little Dun Fell, which reaches , it forms a stepping ...

. It is mostly around 180m above sea level. At the 2011 census the parish had a population of 201 , increasing to 204 at the 2011 Census The centre of the village is built around a green, on the north side of which is the Stag Inn. The

village green A village green is a commons, common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common pasture, grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for ...

is oblong in shape and is bisected by an avenue of lime trees that crosses it diagonally. Houses in the village were built from the 17th century onwards and the village has changed little over the last 100 years.

History

Dufton is an ancient settlement and some of the earliest written records of the village are from the 1320s. The place-name ''Dufton'' is first attested in 1289 and means 'dove town or farmstead'. The Rolls of Appointment report the "living" of the

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

of Dufton in 1323. St Cuthbert's Church just outside the village mainly dates from the 19th century. Dufton was a centre for lead mining in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Quaker-owned

London Lead Company The London Lead Company was an 18th and 19th century British lead mining company. It was incorporated by royal charter. Strictly, it was The Company for Smelting Down Lead with Pitcoal. Origins The company was chartered in 1692 to investors who ...

developed the village through the construction of housing, a school, a library and the installation of piped water. A fountain and circular water trough built by the Company forms a centrepiece on the green. The inscription on the fountain reads (translated from the Latin): ''There is a clear pool, whose waters gleam like silver. It is not tainted by shepherds, or by their she-goats grazing on the mountain. Nor is it muddied by cattle, or by birds or wild animals, or by a branch fallen from a tree.''

Dufton today

The main activities in the village nowadays are linked to tourism and farming. Dufton was badly affected by the

foot and mouth disease Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that primarily affects even-toed ungulates, including domestic and wild bovids. The virus causes a high fever lasting two to six d ...

outbreak of 2001. Local farms were in the area which became known as "the Penrith spur" where the disease proved very hard to eradicate and where the final cases of the outbreak occurred. The practice of grazing sheep on communal pastureland above the village may have contributed to this. Dufton lies on the

Pennine Way The Pennine Way is a National Trail in England, with a small section in Scotland. The trail stretches for from Edale, in the northern Derbyshire Peak District, north through the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Park and ends at Kir ...

and both the Stag Inn and Dufton

Youth Hostel A hostel is a form of low-cost, short-term shared sociable lodging where guests can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed in a dormitory sleeping 4–20 people, with shared use of a lounge and usually a kitchen. Rooms can be private or shared - mixe ...

YHA
Dufton Hostel
are favourite stopping-off points for walkers. The Hostel was opened in 1978 following the closure of nearby Knock YHA which was located in an old RAF station. There are several B&Bs and campsites in and around the village. ''Dufton Ghyll Wood'' is an area of semi-natural

ancient woodland In the United Kingdom, ancient woodland is that which has existed continuously since 1600 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (or 1750 in Scotland). The practice of planting woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 1600 i ...

that contains significant outcrops of St Bees

Sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

. Other local geographic features include Dufton Pike, Knock Pike,

Cross Fell Cross Fell is the highest mountain in the Pennines of Northern England and the highest point in England outside the Lake District. It is located in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It lies within the county of Cumbria and ...

and

High Cup Gill High Cup Gill (or High Cup Nick or just High Cup), almost a geometrically perfect U-shaped chasm, is a valley deeply incised into the Pennines, Pennine scarp to the northeast of Appleby-in-Westmorland in Cumbria and within the North Pennines AONB ...

. The locality is also known for the

Helm Wind The Helm Wind is a named wind in Cumbria, England, a strong north-easterly wind which blows down the south-west slope of the Cross Fell escarpment. It is the only named wind in the British Isles, although many other mountain regions in Britain ex ...

and Helm Bar. The latter are wind and cloud effects induced by the topography of the area.

References

External links

Cumbria County History Trust: Dufton
(nb: provisional research only – see Talk page)
Dufton Village website
{{authority control Villages in Cumbria Civil parishes in Cumbria Westmorland and Furness

History

Dufton today

See also

References

External links