Three miles west of Kendal, at one time the village of Underbarrow was the largest village in what was originally known as Westmorland, and an important coaching stop on the woollen route from Kendal to Ulverston.
The turnpike road from Kendal climbs westward over the windswept limestone escarpment of Scout Scar, with its far reaching views of the Lakeland hills and the kent estuary, dropping steeply past Toll Bar Cottage to the green and fertile parish of Underbarrow.
In the second half of the 17th century the village was strongly in favour of the new Quaker religion (The Society of Friends) and in fact the locals talk of a Quaker burial ground in the vicinity, though to date this has never been found.
Though today little more than a hamlet, the village can boast of famous individuals associated with it. Their most famous visitor would undoubtedly have been Henry VIII who visited his (to become) sixth wife Katherine Parr at nearby Cunswick Hall in 1542.
Lesser but nevertheless a character in his own right was William Pearson who was one of the survivors of the "Charge of the Light brigade' in the Crimean War back in 1854. Though seriously injured he was nursed back to health by Florence Nightingale.
The ancient packhorse road from Kendal, preceding the turnpike and probably known to the Romans, came over haunted Cunswick Scar and past the oldest house in the parish.. Cunswick Hall, ...once a pele tower, now a farmhouse. Helpot, another farm was traditionally an Inn to serve travellers and packmen alike on their journeys to Ulverston or Kendal.
The area these days is more noted for its show of spectacular plants, not just the fields of daffodils and Lily of the Valley that grow wild, but the lesser known but no less spectacular crimson-purple of the Bloody Cranesbull, together with the brilliant yellow of the horseshoe vetch.
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