Truthfully.. Great and Little Broughton.... two rather grey hamlets actually, of winding ways set pleasantly on the slopes of a hill above the scurrying Derwent, here being crossed by a fine old stone bridge. From the road above the valley are some wonderful views over the Solway to Criffell.
Just one mile away a stone marks the site of the ancient church which has vanished like the mill which at one time stood beside it. In the fields between the two parts of the village is a 19th century church with little to show of its own, but it does have a splendid view of the Cumbrian mountains.
Over two hundred years ago the almshouses here were founded for four poor women, and over three hundred years ago the Baptists built a chapel here, along with the Quakers who built a meeting house.
It is Little Broughton which can boast its greatest son, for it was here that Abraham Fletcher was born in 1714. Of his early education it is said that this cost just nine-pence...and certainly the only thing that he did not have to pick up for himself was his father's trade of tobacco pipemaking. Reading, writing and arithmetic he taught himself, and it was the lure of arithmetic which drew him up a rope to the cottage loft at the end of the day in his father's workshop, where he would study until he could no longer keep his eyes open.
By the age of 30 he was a schoolmaster with a gift for mathematics, and a wife who discouraged learning as an unprofitable thing. However he was able to turn learning to profit by studying the medicinal properties of plants and selling herbal mixtures till all the people spoke of him as 'Doctor' Fletcher.
His proudest moment was when he held in his hands the first of his two mathematical books, called the Universal Measurer, a survey of every theory of measurement. He died at 78, having many years before accurately predicted his length of life to within 16 days.
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