Sneaky bit of Lakeland walking

Returned on 19 March from joining Ray in the Lakes for a few days – which now, as at the time of writing, feels like a lifetime ago. That week turned out to be the last week anyone was allowed to go on holiday for what could be a while - our planned family break in Snowdonia at Easter has had to be postponed, and Ruth's and my break in north Norfolk in mid-May looks distinctly unlikely to happen. Although it was (obviously) before the current lockdown, the week was overshadowed to some extent by the Coronavirus business and following the developments, but it was still a pretty good escape.

We stayed at The Old Laundry at Croft Courtyard in Clappersgate, just outside Ambleside. The imposing yellowish-coloured mansion The Croft occupies a prominent position on the A593 going out of Ambleside towards Coniston. The house was built in the nineteenth century and has now been converted into apartments after apparently lying derelict for a while.

The Croft, Clappersgate

Partly because of the long drive up there, we made the decision once we were there not to use our cars but just to walk each day from where we were staying. This obviously placed some restrictions on where we went, but we didn't feel particularly restricted as Clappersgate proved to be an excellent base for a variety of walks.

Before I arrived Ray had been to the tourist information place and picked up a pack of useful ‘Lakeland Leisure Walks’, giving a selection of walks easily accessible from Ambleside. We worked our way through most of these over the course of the time I was there.

Entrance to Croft Courtyard

Walk 1: Vale of Rydal, 5.8 miles

Our first walk, on the afternoon of the day I arrived. We walked into Ambleside and through Rothay Park, crossing over Stock Ghyll. Crossed the bridge over the Rothay and joined a lane (Under Loughrigg). Passed what looked like long-disused gates to a Fox How, apparently once the home of the poet Matthew Arnold. Further along we passed the stylish-looking Riverside Terrace holiday homes.

Stock Ghyll in Rothay Park

Old gates to Fox How

We were amused by the stepping stones across the River Rothay signposted to the A591: certainly not usable when we passed, though the first few were visible under the water. Here’s a photo of them not underwater. According to this, the current stones are new ones built to replace the previous set which were washed away in the floods of 2015.

Stepping stone river crossing

We turned left for a bit past Pelter Bridge car park towards Rydal Water, then down to the river again and across the A591. Crossed the road and up the lane leading to Rydal Mount. Turned right to pass round the back of Rydal Hall. Not sure what Rydal Hall is currently used for; the site has rather the look of a youth hostel about it. We saw the Rydal Beck waterfalls and the little building called The Grot. Continued back through Rydal Park towards Ambleside, rejoining the A591 for the last bit.

Rydal Beck waterfalls

Our route in red below showing start and end point in Clappersgate. Rydal Water top left:

Walk 2: Loughrigg Fell, 7.5 miles

We took a footpath leading off the A593 not far down the road from where we were staying. It climbed quite steeply giving some great views of Windermere and a glimpse of our old holiday place Huyton Hill, now Pullwood Bay, among the trees. Also looked down onto the Holy Trinity Church at Brathay.

We came out onto a plateau and did some faffing about a bit trying to find the right route, including doing a bit of a detour we didn’t need to do. Eventually came to the pretty little Lily Tarn by an unnecessarily long route. Followed a path westwards for some while. Had elevenses sitting on a bench with a great view of Loughrigg Tarn.

Lily Tarn

Loughrigg Tarn

Followed a lane for a while and then via Deer Bolts Wood out on to Loughrigg Terrace, a popular viewpoint over Grasmere. From here until Rydal Water there were a fair few people. We followed the path down to the shores of Rydal Water where we stopped to eat our sandwiches. After that we followed the route past Pelter Bridge car park again, and the hopeful ice cream van, and along the lane back into Ambleside, where we had tea and cake at The Rattle Ghyll.

Grasmere from Loughrigg Terrace

Lunch by Rydal Water

River Rothay from Pelter Bridge

The Rattle Ghyll, Ambleside

Our walk skirted around Loughrigg Fell without going up onto the top, but there were plenty of people heading for the top. This National Trust page refers to Loughrigg as a ‘sprawling hump’, and as one of Wainwright’s ‘midget mountains’.

Ray told me about Scarf’s equivalence between distance and climb, which seems to be a way of approximating what you’ve actually walked if the gradient is taken into account. Meant for those walks where you can appear to have covered a disappointing number of overall miles despite having been hauling yourself up and down hills for what feels like a couple of hours. This happened to us at the earlier part of today’s walk, where we seemed to have slogged what felt like a fair way up onto Loughrigg Fell, only to have the tracker dispassionately announce that we’d covered one poxy mile.

It's based on the older Naismith's rule, which was aimed at calculating how long it would take to hike an intended route as a way of allowing for the impact of gradient on total mileage. It seems to involve an 8 to 1 rule whereby 8 units of distance are equivalent to 1 unit of climb. Applying this formula to today's walk gave the following:

i.e. the distance in km plus the overall ascent (1139 feet according to MapMyWalk, converted to 0.347 km) times 8. This gives a result of 14.9 km, which converts to 9.3 miles, as compared with the 7.5 that MapMyWalk tracked it as.

Route below. Starting point at our accommodation in green; finish point in Ambleside in red (I stopped the tracker when we went into the Spar for some dishwasher tablets, but obviously we did then have to walk back to Clappersgate).

Walk 3: Windermere and Jenkin Crag, 6 miles

We started out walking along the A591 out of Ambleside towards Windermere, then through the Low Fold car park and turned right onto Old Lake Road and then soon after left onto the tiny and steep Skelghyll Lane. Passed a surprising number of houses, all of which must have great views but must be buggers to get to in a car. The lane eventually becomes a stony track and passes through some pleasant woodland (Skelghyll Wood) before you get to Jenkin Crag – today a somewhat slippery rocky outcrop, but we did duly stand on it and admired the views of Windermere. We continued up the track to pass through the farmyard of High Skelghyll Farm.

Stencher Beck

Ray on Jenkin Crag

Soon after leaving the farmyard we turned right downhill across fields, eventually coming down to the back of the Low Wood Hotel, where Ray and I once went swimming on a long-ago Lakes trip in around 1994. We were staying a couple of nights at the Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside – then a Best Western, now looks rather posher – which had some sort of partnership arrangement whereby guests could use the health and leisure facilities at Low Wood. Low Wood looks as though it’s been significantly enhanced and extended since then and is now calling itself the Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa.

We skirted round the back of the hotel and had to join the A591 for a bit, heading back towards Ambleside but after half a mile were able to turn off through Jenkin’s Field and walk along the lakeshore path. We sat on the bench at Holme Crag to eat our sandwiches (albeit it was only about 11am). Looking across at both Huyton Hill-as was and at Wray Castle. We continued along the lakeshore to rejoin the pavement by the A591 just before Waterhead Marine. We walked along the little promenade for a bit and then into Borrans Park. We skipped visiting the Roman fort and walked back into Ambleside.

Windermere from Holme Crag

Continuing the theme of old gates, we passed several other intriguing old gates during today’s walk – these, which presumably once led to a house called ‘Skelgarth’ (although internet snooping failed to reveal any house of that name currently) and these gateposts and gate which were set on quite a steep hill, and seemed rather curiously located. A long-ago pedestrian route to church, perhaps?

Old gates to 'Skelgarth'

Curious gate into a field

Route of today's walk in red below:

As it was still early, and as we knew rain was forecast for the afternoon, we decided to take a bus ride to Hawkshead (the Stagecoach 505 service). I had been convinced that Hawkshead is on the shores of Coniston Water, but it isn’t. The closest lake is Esthwaite Water, so we set out from the village to have a look at this. We set out along the road leading south along Esthwaite’s western shore, and turned left onto a path signposted to the lakeshore. This led us past a water treatment works and then diverted us onto a field shortly before the track reached the Water Side B&B. The path became increasingly boggy such that we abandoned the attempt to reach Esthwaite’s shores and retraced our steps back into Hawkshead. So a bit of a non-event. We did have tea and crumpets at the Minstrels Gallery Tea Rooms and then browsed around the Hawkshead outdoor shop while we waited for the bus back.

The Minstrels Gallery Tea Rooms, Hawkshead

Walk 4: via Skelwith Bridge, Elterwater, Grasmere and Rydal, 10.9 miles

We set out down the B5286 and crossed the bridge over the River Brathay, then turned right onto the charmingly-named Bog Lane. We followed little roads until we reached Skelwith Bridge. The slate gallery and adjoining café used to be a favourite family place to visit in longer-ago Lake District trips; I suppose the last time I went there must have been some time in the 1990s. We spent some time scouting around trying to find out what was still there that we remembered. The slate workings had clearly closed; Kirkstone Quarries, which had its headquarters at Skelwith Bridge, was placed in administration in 2012, according to this piece in The Westmorland Gazette.

River Brathay near Clappersgate

The building that used to house the shop and café has been taken over by a company called Chesters. There is still a café there, quite posh, with an open-air terrace beside the river, where Ray and I stopped for coffee and a pastry each.

After this we set out to follow the river north towards Elter Water. We passed Skelwith Force, which had a goodly amount of water in it; Ray walked down to the little viewing platform but I didn’t fancy getting that close to the raging torrent, so contented myself with taking photos from higher up. Above Skelwith Force, the Brathay meanders through a green valley. The Cumbria Way footpath also passes along here and we followed it from Skelwith Bridge along the northern side of Elter Water as far as Elterwater village.

Ray by Skelwith Force

The Brathay above Skelwith Force

From Elterwater village, we walked up a little hill road before turning off it onto a footpath heading uphill past Huntingstile Crag. This got a bit boggy on the top. We paused near Red Bank Wood to eat our sandwiches then carried on down a footpath towards Grasmere, coming out onto a little road. We walked down to the lakeshore and then turned right along the shore, passing along the foot of the lake below Loughrigg Terrace. Then along the River Rothay for a while, crossed the A591 (after making use of an extremely useful set of public toilets) and along a harder-going than expected path that runs parallel with the road looking down onto Rydal Water. At Rydal Mount we returned to the main road and made our way back to Clappersgate via Under Loughrigg.

Herdwicks by the road

Grasmere

I was more than usually struck on this week’s trip by how many thumping great houses the Victorians built themselves in the Lakes. On Grasmere’s western shore (the one without the A591 running up it) there are several large houses standing around prominently and louchely in their own grounds. Took this photo, attempting to squeeze two such into one picture. The one on the right with the veranda thing appears to be called The Lea; the one higher up on the left of the picture is Hunting Stile.

Route of walk in red below. Grasmere and Rydal Water at the top; the top bit of Windermere bottom right.

Early evening we managed to stir ourselves again and walked into Ambleside (after Ray tried and failed to organise a taxi) and had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Misto.


Verdict: it was a lovely few days and was lovely to be back in the Ambleside area again. Looking forward to going back in due course.

Human-robot interaction

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TM129 'Technologies in Practice'

Block 1 of TM129 includes a study week on human-robot interaction.

This looked at Carnegie-Mellon University’s 2001 Nursebot project. There’s a video clip of Nursebot ‘escorting’ two elderly patients to their physiotherapy appointments. One resident in the interview clip seems to think something like Nursebot would have practical use in that it would save nurses’ time escorting residents to their various appointments. Nursebot would need a fair few enhancements before she approximated human company though. The interviewer is heard assuring the resident that Nursebot isn’t intended to replace human interaction – in fairness, the woman being interviewed seems to realise that.

This week’s material also revisited ELIZA, developed in 1966 to interact in the style of Carl Rogers’ ‘client-centred’ therapy. This version of Eliza http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3 (Wallace, 2006) was linked to.

I had some interaction with Eliza while studying TU100 in 2015, and blogged about it then. The interaction this time wasn’t much more successful, though perhaps a little more abrasive. The > symbol is before Eliza’s input; the asterisk before mine.

Joseph Weizenbaum, Eliza’s creator, evidently expressed surprise at how emotionally involved people became during interactions with Eliza. I have to say I also find that rather surprising.

Skirrid

Ruth and I went down to stay with my Mum and Dad in Abergavenny last weekend, with the plan of climbing a hill on the Saturday. Speaking personally, I’m not too bothered about walks having to involve summit-conquering, but Ruth seems to find them a more exciting prospect if they do. Utterly appalling weather on the drive down on the Friday, so we weren’t too optimistic, but Saturday morning seemed a bit improved, so we set out nice and early.

We ended up choosing Skirrid, a pleasingly accessible hillock to the north-east of the town that's claimed to be the easternmost outcrop of the Black Mountains. I drove us to the National Trust car park on the B4521 (indeed, the whole hill itself is owned by the Trust) and started out well by completely flattening this wooden post when turning in to the car park. I should have contacted the Trust to tell them really. Thankfully, perhaps due to the recent rain, it wasn’t too firmly anchored into the ground so there was no damage to my car.

Poor posty

Mum kindly wrote us out some directions to the car park, though thankfully Google Maps did manage to locate it.

We set off up the well-signposted path from the car park that leads into woods (Pant Skirrid Wood), where there’s then a fairly steep ascent, partly up steps, until you emerge onto more open ground and the walk levels off. The sun came out on the way up, which pleased us both immensely, and there were some quite decent views. It’s a nice open path to the summit (part of the Beacons Way at this point). It was also quite windy, but thankfully there are no scary sheer drops off Skirrid so the odd bit of staggering about wasn’t too alarming.

Route up, looking back towards Blorenge

On the way up

We made the summit by just after 9:30am. It isn’t a long walk from the car park really.

While we were on the summit the weather started turning, and the initial part of the return walk involved quite large flakes of snow. We had intended to descend and come back via one half of the path that skirts the base of the hill. We did indeed descend from near the summit, but the path along the base proved so waterlogged that it was extremely hard-going. By the time both Ruth and I had fallen over, she decided she’d lost patience with it and insisted on us walking up the side of the ridge back onto the upper path, and then retracing steps. It was steepish but, thanks to plenty of bracken, not slippery and it was certainly a relief to be back on a decent path.

Snow on the return route

As we’d brought hot drinks and snacks with us, but hadn’t thus far found anywhere to sit and have them, I insisted on sitting down on a bench not really all that far from the car park to have a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. I was punished for this by my rucksack taking a nosedive off the bench into a muddy puddle. We finished up the rest of the food sitting in the car and poking fun at other walkers attempting to put waterproof overtrousers on in quite strong wind.

Skirrid has a notable landslip at the northern end. Mum and Dad tell me this is a good spot for a picnic. Legend apparently has it that it happened at the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, though Dad prosaically points out that it actually pre-dates that by many thousands of years.

The only previous time I’ve walked up Skirrid was on Boxing Day 2000, when from what I remember it was an extremely cold day. Here’s a photo I found of Dave, me and Mum on that occasion.

Our route last Saturday:

Robotics demonstration

Originally published on my OU study blog while studying module TM129 'Technologies in Practice'

Just watched this. Broadcast via Stadium Live from the OU's School of Computing and Communications.

'Baxter' is a collaborative robot, in the sense of being designed for human-robot interaction. He was made by Rethink Robotics.

In terms of the chat window, I said hello but that was it. There were quite a few questions being asked in the chat window, some sensible, some flippant, but I tried to focus on the demo and not be reading the chat. In fairness, people did seem interested. I guess robots do capture the imagination.

We were asked how humanoid we thought Baxter is. Well, it (he?) has arms. From the waist down though, not so much. I was amused that he seemed to have an OU ID card around his neck. 

Baxter

Baxter's arms contain seven motors - apparently they are referred to as '7 degree of freedom' arms. There are two at each of the three joints (one for the hinge, one for rotation) plus an extra rotation one.

Baxter has ultrasonic sensors on his 'head'. I think he also had other types of sensor but I didn't write these down.

Baxter's movements were being dictated by a program running on the presenter's laptop, on a nearby table. The program was written in Python though I assume other languages could be used. He doesn't have his own power supply - he's plugged in.

Sines and cosines are involved in working out where his grippers are in space. An applied use for maths :-)

Someone in the chat spotted what looked like a red push button on the table behind the presenter. Turned out this was indeed an emergency off switch, if Baxter went berserk and started killing people. Only kidding. We were assured that Baxter has been designed in a way that makes him safe around humans. And he can only lift around 1-1.5kg apparently. The lightweight.

The red button

The presenter asked whether we thought Baxter obeyed Asimov's Three Laws. Although Asimov was a sci-fi writer rather than a scientist, these 'laws' are still apparently considered useful in thinking about the safety of robot systems. They're difficult to apply literally though as they assume a robot can distinguish what a human being is (Asimov's fictional robots were very clever) - when in reality no robot actually built thus far could do this.

Ruth's birthday 2020

Friday 3 January

As per last year, we decided on an overnight stay in London and seeing something theatrical. We arrived in London early afternoon on the Friday and made our way over to the hotel to check in. We went out and sourced tea and cake at Cojean on Ludgate Hill. Then, as Ruth isn’t as keen as I am on just walking around in London with no clear aim in view, we had a look for somewhere specific to visit. Briefly considered St Paul’s, as it was nearby, but we’d left it too late by then as it only had half an hour to go before closing. We made our way to the Bank of England Museum, as Ruth thought it sounded moderately interesting and the internet had suggested it was free, but we arrived to find it closed (contra the internet, which had suggested that it was open). In a last-ditch attempt to go somewhere, we spotted the London Mithraeum on Google Maps, and my curiosity was piqued by the name so we went to have a look.

Turns out it’s the ruins of a Roman Temple of Mithras. The ruins are underneath Bloomberg’s European headquarters. We did a complete circuit of the Bloomberg building before locating the entrance. It’s clearly had money poured into it as it’s all beautifully done. At ground level there’s a contemporary art space, which when we visited was housing an exhibition of pieces by Daniel Silver called ‘Human Activity’ (one of the pieces above). There’s also a display of some Roman artefacts – apparently the excavations prior to the current Bloomberg building’s construction produced a large number of Roman finds. The exhibition also shows how the ground level in the City of London has changed (risen) quite dramatically over the centuries.

Going downstairs takes you to a darkened room with an audio narration talking about what’s known about Mithraism (not all that much) and the temple of Mithras on this site. On a lower level again are the reconstructed remains of the temple itself. These are enhanced by an audiovisual installation that’s pretty good. We were lucky and saw the ruins in the company of just one other couple, which made them more atmospheric.

The remains of the Temple of Mithras

Today’s exhibition is a recreation of the original structure discovered in the 1950s (a chance discovery on a WWII bomb site). After its discovery, the ruin was dismantled (for reasons I didn’t quite get) and ‘reconstructed’ about 100 metres away, but this 50-60s reconstruction seems to have been viewed as a bit of a hatchet job. The present-day reconstruction follows Bloomberg’s acquisition of the site in 2010, and was done in consultation with conservation specialists. The latest reconstruction is close to the original position and level of the temple.

We’d booked an early pre-theatre dinner at the Cork & Bottle wine bar, having been there before for lunch and liked it. Although we thought we’d allowed plenty of time for the walk there, finding the place proved a headache and led to a lot of swearing at Google Maps. We were also thrown as Maps took us to the official entrance on Cranbourn Street, while on both our previous visits we’d been in via the other entrance on Bear Street, resulting in us standing around for a while just outside the door without seeing it. By the time we got in we were about 15 minutes late and weren’t optimistic that they’d have held our booking – the young waitress did tell us she’d just given away a small table but seated us in some sort of wine cellar-esque alcove, bigger than we needed but quite cosy, and we were just happy to be seated. We had a lovely dinner: we both had the beef carpaccio followed by schnitzel with capers. We even had dessert; I had the Hokey Pokey ice cream; I forget what Ruth had.

Ruth at the Cork & Bottle

Ruth had taken a while to decide on a show to see in the evening, but had eventually decided to get tickets for The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. The Fortune is a fairly diddy theatre, with undoubtedly the smallest ladies’ toilets I’ve ever come across. It was apparently once described as “this most intimate of theatres”.

The Woman in Black has been running in the West End since 1989, and is apparently the second longest running non-musical play in West End history, after The Mousetrap. The play has only three actors, and one of them (the woman playing the Woman of the title) doesn’t speak. On the night we saw it, the play featured Stuart Fox and Matthew Spencer in the speaking parts. It’s based on a novel by Susan Hill, which I haven’t read but Mum says she has. In adapting Hill’s novel for the stage, the playwright (the late Stephen Mallatratt) opted to make it a play within a play (the play opens inside an empty theatre where the lead character Arthur Kipps, now an old man, is getting coaching from an actor in reading aloud his life story). I couldn’t quite decide if I liked that aspect of it.

In general the play was enjoyable, and they do quite a good job of making it scary though frankly that is a bit challenging. The second half wasn’t enhanced by the young couple to my right munching their way loudly through a bucket of popcorn – since when do theatres sell popcorn? We both vowed to complain to the theatre about it afterwards but I don’t think either of us has got around to it.

We got lost again walking the barely a mile back to our hotel, completing a day of useless navigation.

The following morning we checked out and walked back to Covent Garden where we had breakfast at the Carluccio’s on Garrick Street. After this, Ruth was keen to get home but I wanted to make a bit more of our time in London, so she went off and I took a meandering walk back to Paddington, via a visit to Innerspace, where I bought a book that probably won’t make me a better person, but it’s a nice thought, and via the Marble Arch M&S where I bought some sourdough bagels from the bakery counter.

Walk around Buckingham

11 January 2020

Walk with Ray, of just over four miles. We could have just driven to Buckingham, but instead took the train from Wolverton to Milton Keynes Central (only about a five minute journey) and then (after some cold standing around) took the Arriva X60 service from the station. On arrival we warmed up with tea at the Meadow Row Tea Rooms, and I had a piece of shortbread while Ray had a pasty.

One of the leaflets we picked up claims that Buckingham is located in the ‘Green Heart of England’ – I’m not sure if that’s a thing or just some romantic notion. As the name suggests, Buckingham was at one point the county town of Buckinghamshire, from the creation of the county in the 10th century to the early 18th century, when Buckingham’s fortunes slumped a bit - presumably not helped by the town centre burning down - and Aylesbury took over. See Dave’s recent piece on county towns.

Buckingham’s town centre is attractive in a cramped olde-worlde way (spending significant time in Milton Keynes tends to make other towns feel cramped). The High Street is dominated by the Old Gaol, built in the mid-eighteenth century and, as the name suggests, originally a prison but now housing, among other things, a tiny visitor information office, where we popped in and picked up a few leaflets.

The Old Gaol

We set out to do the Circular Walk, from an excellent little leaflet with some charming artwork:

Much of the walk follows the River Great Ouse, which was extremely full on the day of our walk though was at least running within its banks – the state of some of the paths and the grass suggested recent flooding. The route goes down Ford Street, which ends in a footbridge over the river. We assumed from the name that there was also a ford here at one point.

Possible former ford

The walk turns left just before the footbridge and passes through Chandos Park. The leaflet advised us that the Marquess of Chandos was one of the titles of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos¹.

We crossed the river by Tanlaw Mill and followed the path down past The Flosh, a weir, and then up onto Station Road. Apparently The Flosh is supposed to look like this - there was far more water going over it on the day we saw it.

We turned left up Station Road to join the Railway Walk – this is only about 1.5km in length and runs between Tingewick Road and the A421, which bypasses Buckingham to the south. There’s no evidence now of the station buildings, as these were all demolished, but Ray did spot some evidence of a platform. There are some old pictures here including one of the station forecourt. Buckingham evidently used to be a stop on the Banbury to Verney Junction branch line. The line joined the (also former) Varsity Line at Verney Junction.

The railway walk

The Circular Walk turns left along the perimeter of some school playing fields before coming out onto London Road. We crossed and chose to follow the alternative route, via Badgers Way, to avoid getting too muddy.

After crossing the river at Bourton Park we decided to take a detour onto the Ouse Valley Way to try to locate the restored bit of the Buckingham Canal. The Buckingham Canal was in fact the Buckingham Arm of the Grand Union Canal, joining the latter at Cosgrove. The story of its fortunes is the usual canal story: it lost trade to the railway, then became silted up so boats stopped using it. There’s a Buckingham Canal Society working on rewatering as many bits of it as they can.

By the rewatered canal section at Bourton Meadow

We did successfully locate the rewatered Bourton Meadow section and walked along it as far as the watered section goes. The restored section ends at a house – possibly a former lock cottage – that’s at some point been extended over the course of the old canal. You can continue to follow the path of the old canal as the Ouse Valley Way follows it as far as Thornton, but rather than make a long detour we retraced our steps back and followed the path along the river back into the town centre, where we had lunch at the King's Head.

Our route shown in red below. The straggly bit in the upper right of the map is our detour to locate the canal:

¹  Sidebar: this family were possessors of a quintuple-barrelled surname (Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville). Phew. The dukedom became extinct when the 3rd Duke died in 1889 sans male issue (though he did have three daughters, the eldest of whom was able to inherit one of her father’s subsidiary titles, the lordship of Kinloss, which could apparently be held by females. Who knows how these things work.).