ACROSS LAKELAND - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 10

1 ACROSS LAKELAND
ST BEES
As if to protect its splendid setting from prying eyes, St Bees lies huddled shyly away
in a valley near the sea, a grey village of antiquity and charm. The valley is that of Pow
Beck, a direct link with the busy industrialisation of Whitehaven to the north. Approach-
ing from the south, however, it is always with an element of surprise that the village
springs into view, from a distance possessing the quiet, unassuming air of a Scottish
crofting community in the way the buildings, resting on the backdrop of St Bees Head,
seem to lie at one, in harmony with the landscape. On closer inspection we find the
village to be larger than expected, and endowed with a history of considerable interest.
Its church is the oldest and finest in what was West Cumberland, its school quite an-
cient, as is its bridge, but of most interest is the story of St Bega, one of much charm
and with all the hallmarks of a fairy tale.
The earliest record of St Bega is to be found in the Life and Miracles of St Bega the
Virgin , now preserved in the British Museum, and dating from the 12th century. Mater-
ial for this work comes, the author claims, from the narrative of reliable men, a signi-
ficant comment in the light of latter-day claims that she never really existed.
Bega was the daughter of an Irish king, and determined to remain a lifelong virgin,
a decision reinforced by a dream in which she received from a stranger an arm-ring
bearing the sign of the holy cross. Bega's father, however, was equally determined
she should marry a Norwegian prince, a proposition so abhorrent to Bega that she
fled across the sea with a company of nuns seeking peace and solitude, and landed
in a wooded region, near present-day St Bees. Here there probably existed a primit-
ive Christian community, for the name Preston, 'priest town', was given by Anglians
to land between what is now St Bees and Whitehaven. Later, this land was granted to
the Priory of St Mary and the Virgin Bega at its foundation in 1120. The industrious ef-
fort of Bega and her nuns brought its rewards as slowly they established a nunnery on
the site of the present priory church. The nunnery survived two centuries before being
plundered by Danish raiders. Much later, after its foundation, the Priory Church of St
Mary suffered a similar fate at the hands of Scottish raiders, in due course ending its
days in much the same manner as numerous other monastic buildings, under the dis-
solution decree of Henry VIII.