Kendal: Castle Dairy (Dowery)

The 'Castle Dairy' in Wildman Street has nothing to do with cows. The name is probably a corruption of Dowry, a dower house. It is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited building in Kendal: the last resident moved out in 2003. At the centre is a 14th-century single-storey hall with cross wings. Around 1566 it was updated for local gentleman Anthony Garnett (his bed and other furniture is still in situ), and added to further in later centuries. Fox would have seen it, but the Garnetts were a staunchly Catholic family, and the current Anthony Garnett had fallen foul of the Committee for Compounding as a royalist delinquent.

It is a Grade One Listed Building. See the account in the RCHM's Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Westmorland (London: HMSO, 1936) 'Kendal' item 10.

Image © Meg Twycross 3 November 2010

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