During the Norman Conquest, Hornby was in the hands of Alric, a Saxon chieftain. Later, it passed by marriage to Roger de Montbegon, who came over from France with William's conquering army. The foundations of Hornby Castle were probably laid by Montbegon on the site of the Roman villa; after Montbegon, the castle was owned by the De Burghs, followed by the De Nevilles, then the Harringtons.
Later, Hornby Castle was inherited by the Stanley family. Sir Edward Stanley fought at the Battle of Flodden (1513) supported by local yeomen, restoring the 13th-century keep (the oldest surviving part of the castle) and building the octagonal tower (1514) at the Parish Church of St Margaret as a thanksgiving for victory.
During the English Civil War the castle was owned by the Parkers and was a Royalist stronghold; after it was captured, Cromwell ordered it to be destroyed, but fortunately this was never done, and a succession of later owners have each extended and improved the castle (the present castle is mostly 19th-century).
The atmospheric setting of the castle, with its keep, turrets, battlements, and mullioned windows set high on a mound above the River Wenning, was appreciated by artists and poets. Three of Turner's best-known drawings are of Hornby Castle or the view from it, and Thomas Grey wrote about the Lune valley and the lands once part of the Hornby Castle estates.
Hornby's situation between two fordable rivers, the Wenning and the Lune, means a road has always passed through the village (the railway arrived later). At the end of the main street, you pass an unusual stone built into a wall above the fountain depicting a cat holding a rat in its mouth; the monogram 'PD' stands for Pudsey Dawson, one of the originators of the railway line that ran from Wennington to Morecambe (the Cat and Rat Keystone was resited here when a stone railway bridge was replaced with a wider iron bridge).
On the next part of the walk, a bridge crosses the old railway before lanes and tracks lead to the village of Wray, situated where the River Roeburn meets the River Hindburn. Wray is a Norse-settled village ("wray" meaning "an out-of-the-corner") featuring cobbled pavements on the main street and 17th-century farms, barns, and datestone-lintelled cottages set with pretty gardens and window boxes.
In Wray, farming and industry developed side by side: in years past, this quiet place was a hive of industry with a mill along the Roeburn banks employing 100 people to spin raw silk from China for silk hats, alongside woodturners, nail makers, bobbin makers, wheelwrights, and clog blockmakers.
Hedgerows of blackthorn, hawthorn, and cherry lining the lane back towards Hornby are interlaced with dog rose, downy rose, guelder rose, honeysuckle, and bindweed, while banks and verges support wood violets, primroses, dog's mercury, cuckoo pint, celandine, stitchwort, garlic mustard, cow parsley, meadow cranesbill, and greater bellflower.
On the verge is a well-preserved stone cross (a waymark on the old packhorse route carrying salt and vital goods south on fells above Wray, with the old route visible as a depression in the field behind). Nearing Hornby at Butt Yeats, you pass the massive base of another stone cross.
The next section follows the banks of the Wenning and Lune. Several kinds of willow found on river banks were used by basket makers of Arkholme to the north. Sand and shingle edges host dippers, wagtails, oystercatchers, common sandpipers, nesting sand martins, and wintering greylag geese.
Where the rivers meet, a priory existed 800 years ago (now gone, though St Margaret's Church in Hornby houses fragments of two crosses from the priory, including a unique 1,000-year-old cross depicting the Loaves and Fishes, alongside tomb lids and an Anglo-Saxon cross base).
You leave the riverbank at Loyn Bridge, a medieval stone bridge carrying the road across the Lune to Gressingham bearing mason's marks. Above Loyn Bridge is Castle Stede, a fine Norman motte and bailey covering three acres with moats, a pudding-shaped motte overgrown with trees, and raised earthen defences around the bailey, bringing you back past St Margaret's Church into Hornby.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
