Richard Furness

Richard Furness (2 August 1791 – 13 December 1857) was a British poet.

Biography

Richard Furness was known as the "The Poet of Eyam" after the village in Derbyshire, England where he was born on 2 August 1791. His parents, Samuel and Margaret sent him to school, although he could already read fluently by the age of four. He initially got a job keeping accounts locally but then went to apprentice as a courier in Chesterfield at the age of fourteen. He was able to extend his linguistic skills by learning French from prisoners of war. He learnt maths and music and at age of seventeen he was a Wesleyan preacher.

Four years later he walked to London, and enlisted as a soldier. He did not, however, give up preaching. At the request of Dr. Adam Clarke, he spoke at the City Road Chapel. After a year he returned to Derbyshire. He separated from the Methodists about this time because he wrote a patriotic song which was sung in a public-house. In 1813 he started business at Eyam as a currier, but trade was neglected for music, poetry, and mathematics.

Furness

Furness /ˈfɜːrnᵻs/ is a peninsula and region in south Cumbria, England. While the name originally referred to the peninsula only, it can also refer more broadly to the whole of North Lonsdale, that part of the Lonsdale hundred that is an exclave of the historic county of Lancashire and also known as Detached Lancashire, lying to the north of Morecambe Bay. Since the boundary changes which removed the area from Lancashire, the use of the word Furness for the whole area has increased.

The area may be divided into Low Furness and High Furness. Low Furness is the peninsula itself; also an electoral ward which had a total population taken at the 2011 Census of 1,648. It juts out into the Irish Sea and delineates the western edge of Morecambe Bay. Another ward called Mid Furness exists. The population of this ward also taken at the 2011 Census was 3,981. The southern end of the peninsula is dominated by the bay's tidal mudflats. The long thin island of Walney lies off the peninsula's south-west coast. High Furness is the northern part of the area, that was part of North Lonsdale but is not on the peninsula itself. Much of it is within the Lake District National Park, and it includes the Furness Fells. It borders England's largest body of water, Windermere. Additionally, the Cartmel Peninsula, a separate peninsula between the estuaries of the rivers Leven and Kent, is often included in definitions of Furness.

Furness (disambiguation)

Furness is a peninsula in the southern part of Cumbria, in north-west England.

People with the surname Furness: