Edenhall
Grid Ref : NY 565325
Edenhall is a very picturesque village, about a mile south of Langwathby, and 3 miles from Penrith, full of sandstone built houses and set back off the main Penrith to Langwathby road.
There is a public footpath along the bank of the River Eden, from Langwathby bridge to St Cuthbert’s Church in Edenhall.
Eden Hall was an elegant mansion in the Italian style of architecture, designed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1824, and situated in a beautiful park, with lawns sloping to the edge of the Eden.
It was built for Sir Philip Musgrave, and contained several handsome rooms, whose walls were decorated with family portraits and other paintings. The old hall has been described as a handsome stone structure, built in the style of architecture which prevailed about the time of Charles’s, and as having a private chapel.
The celebrated drinking glass, called the Luck of Eden Hall, on the preservation of which, according to a legendary tale, the prosperity of the Musgrave family depends, is still carefully preserved in a stamped leather case, ornamented with scrolls of vine leaves, and having on the top the letters I.H.S., and is said to be of the time of Henry IV or Edward IV.
The tradition respecting the Luck of Eden Hall is that the butler, going to fetch water from the well, called at St Cuthberts’s Church, which is near the hall, surprised a company of fairies who were dancing on the green, near the spring, where they had left this vessel, which the butler seized, and on his refusal to restore it, they uttered the ominous words :-
“Whene’er this cup shall break or fall,
Farewell the luck of Eden Hall.”
Eden Hall no longer exists, having been demolished in 1934, but you can still see the impressive entrance lodge to the old hall at the head of the village.
The Luck of Eden Hall is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London.
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