By Steve Matthews

Last updated 05:36, Friday, 03 October 2008

The first time he saw Betty she was clipping a hogg on a stool in the old fashioned way and he thowt ‘she’s the girl for me’ and she’s bin wid him ivver sen. So spoke Jonny Birkett of High Yewdale talking about his pal George Birkett and his courting.

Ivver Sen: Lake District: The life and times of the men and women who work the land by Keith Richardson. River Greta Writer. £25

The words sum up a way of life long gone. The girl is clipping the young sheep in the old fashioned way, the way that has been practised on the Lakeland fells since the days of the Norsemen. The man knows what he wants in a woman, a good, sound honest lass who isn’t afraid of hard work and who will be a lifetime’s friend, companion and workmate.

Their values are plain and simple. Just as they’ve stayed together, through thick and thin, ‘ivver sen’, you would imagine that their values and their way of life would be as permanent as the hills themselves. But they are not.

Keith Richardson’s wonderful book is a celebration of the life and work of the people who made Cumberland what it once was, and it is a lament because their day has passed and something very special has been lost.

They have been replaced by a new tribe, “all outdoor walking gear, fleeces, T-shirts and trainers, shades and cameras”.

The people who really know the fells, like ‘Gravity’ Graves and his pal, Ike, will have dressed up, not down, for the Eskdale Show. You’ll see them there in their checked caps and shirts and old fashioned sports jackets.

Out on the fells they would have been different men, wearing “his old fell boots, all segs and laces and hard, dark brown leather, saturated with dubbin and with that wonderful curving arc to the sole of the boot.”

They were once the men that set the scent for the hound trail, now they take their regular strolls around Grasmere and muse on days long past: “They’ve been my downfall,” says Ike. “Slow dogs, and fast women.”

They remember the hiring fairs where a young lad, just 14 years old, would get taken on and get 10 shillings a week and his keep. They’d plough with horses and clip sheep by hand and they’d think nothing of cycling 20 or more miles to the dance of a Friday night. They enjoyed their beer and their darts, their dancing and their hunting.

You can appreciate the kind of men Tommy and Ike are from Keith Bowen’s pastel drawings. They have been scratched and rubbed and smudged with crayon until the man himself seems to emerge from the paper. These are old men, faces worn and shaped by the weather on the fells, their backs straight and strong, unbowed by a lifetime of hard work, and their hands proudly resting on their shepherd’s crooks.

Ronnie Cape, one-time whipper-in for the Blencathra hounds, has one of those grizzled beards that a man grows into. Dennis Monkhouse, after a lifetime stitching tatties and tending for sheep, has a face like supple leather. The eyes are deep, thoughtful, weighing you up.

They are all here, men, and women, moulded by the landscape, formed by the life they were born into, belonging to a place and knowing its ways.

So many books on the Lake District see the scenery. Very few understand that the character of a country lies in its people as well. Val Corbett’s photographs dwell on the character of the landscape. Keith Bowen’s pastels reveal the character of the people and Keith Richardson allows the men who made the Lake District to speak for themselves.

Ivver Sen is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle and 66 Main Street, Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com