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Somewhat of a scattered village, close to Wigton. Just south of the Roman Fort which stood beside the A595 (the Romans didn't call it A595, of course) known appropriately as Roman Road.
It stands where the land begins to rise from the Solway Plain to the high fells of Lakeland, its farms are scattered on the hills or hiding in trees with the church and the school in a deep valley of the Wiza beck. From the road above the village we have the majestic mass of criffell towering beyond Solway Firth, and a sight of Carlisle and Dumfries.
At Church Hill stands the church of St Hilda...which is the mother church of the parishes of Westward, Rosley and Welton. Visitors should look for the 1648 brass memorial tablet to one Gentleman Richard Barwise...late of Islekirk though thought to be a corruption of Hilda's Kirk).
Nicknamed Giant Barwise, early records show that he was a man of great strength...and it is said that he could walk around his courtyard carrying at arms length his wife on the one hand, and an enormous stone of great weight on the other (Barwise is a common local surname here).
St Hilda's it is recorded was preceded by a chapel near the River Waver thought to have been near Islekirk Hall, and which had been built by the monks from Holm Cultram Abbey nearby at Abbeytown. In the ravine just below St Hilda's church is a rebuilt house once a farmhouse and Inn still known today as Church Hill Farm, and dating back to the early 19th centnury. During these days of the Resurrectionists the churchyard readily lent itself to these ghoulish marauders (or grave robbers to give them another name).
The Innkeeper, together with local residents were forced to form a guard around a recent burial site and keep watch nightly for at least 9-10 nights after a funeral. At one time when many believed in ghosts and the supernatural, it wouldn't have been the most pleasant of tasks.
Most famous residents of the village were undoubtedly Sir William Henry Bragg (1862-1942) who was born at Stoneraise Place, and his son Sir Lawrence Bragg, who jointly shared the Nobel Prize for physics.
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