The Fort
Donald Rankin 1984
In 1984, Donald Rankin came to Grizedale and built 'The Fort' into the rocks overlooking Satterthwaite and Rusland School, a small primary school which lay nestled in the woods near Force Forge, just south of the village of Satterthwaite, down in the bottom of the forest.
'The Fort' was an impressive construction. The headmaster at the time, Gerald Pinder, told Peter Davies and Tony Knipe in their excellent book 'A Sense Of Place - Sculpture In Landscape':
"The materials blend in well with the outcrops and trees. The lines are massive and strong, and the craftsmanship (a miniature drystone walling technique) is superb and has received the admiration of hard-bitten local farmers. But above all, the subject has captured the imagination of the children and I have been delighted with the imaginative language, work and discussions that have been an outcome of the project."
Satterthwaite and Rusland School was opened in 1840, and owes its unusual location to a local dispute. Satterthwaite and its close neighbour, the village of Rusland (which can be found just south of Grizedale), both had their own schools, but thanks to increasing populations, neither was big enough, so it was decided a new school would be built to accommodate the children from both. However, it seems the two villages were not the best of friends, as Ruslanders refused to send their children to Satterthwaite, just as the good folk of Satterthwaite would not see their offspring educated in Rusland.
As a happy medium, the new school was built at a spot equidistant from the two existing establishments (helped apparently by a donation of one shilling to the building fund, from a certain William Wordsworth), resulting in Satterthwaite and Rusland Church of England Primary School opening its doors by Force Forge in 1840. The school had space for 100 pupils, although it never reached that number, and sadly in 2006, containing only nine pupils, it was shut down and turned into houses.
Photograph by Mark Prior
Also by this artist:
Island Earth 1985