After the very successful but rather experimental ‘dialect coffee morning,’ held here in the Public Room at Threlkeld last May, it became clear that there is still a lot of interest in our dialect in this area. Eddie Wren has now been invited by Threlkeld Events to give a very different presentation, mixing dialect with local history and anecdotes, focusing on the village, the quarries over the valley, and the surrounding North Lakeland area.
Eddie, who in his police years gained the Cumberland dialect nickname of ‘Chitty’ – the local name for a wren – has a surname line which extends back at least as far as the 1520s to the Wrens of Briggus (Bridge House) in St Johns’-in-the-Vale, and several other ancestral lines in old Cumberland, dating back as far as 1180 AD/CE, although he will admit to having one other line that spent several generations in the wilds of Westmorland. (Don’t tell anyone from Langdale that he wrote that!)
He was raised over the valley at the Threlkeld Quarry houses and the photograph used for the poster for this talk shows him more recently, outside his childhood home on Blencathra View, or – to give it the local name – t’ Top Row’, a name now defunct due to the newer houses in what was then the ‘back field’.
Having recently retired, he is planning to use every available opportunity to talk about dialect all round Cumbria and during this May he will be doing four other presentations about our unique heritage, in the west, north, and hopefully east of the county. Entry £3, pay on the door.