By 1773 a new site was needed for the smithy, and it was moved to Bridge End, where the Post Office now stands, on land bought from William Pennington of Kendal, wool comber, by George Bownass, son of the original blacksmith who by this time had died at the age of 87. Here a large business was carried on in quarry and edge tools, employing a number of men and apprentices; and profitable enough to enable the owner to buy many plots of land round about, to which his son William, who inherited the business, added other purchases, and still managed to save £100 a year. William Bownass died in 1818, and was the first person buried after the rebuilding of the church; of his seven children, Isaac, of Queen's College, Cambridge, became a successful schoolmaster, but died at the age of 28, and Roger, for 45 years postmaster at Coniston, died in 1889. Old George Bownass, the second of the name, died a year later than his son William; one of his daughters married a Coniston man, William Gelderd, who became the first mayor of Kendal after the passing of the new Municipal Act. In the Christmas number, 1864, of the old Liverpool _Porcupine_ is a short story by Dr. Gibson which, if we read _Bownass_ for "Forness," _Spedding_ for "Pedder," and _Coniston_ for "Odinsmere," as the writer certainly intended, becomes a very vivid and interesting picture of Coniston folk and their surroundings at the beginning of the last century. It describes the smith "George Forness" as the well-to-do and industrious craftsman, in his busy workshop, surrounded by the village gossips at Candlemas. To him enters "old Matthew Pedder," bound next morning for Ulverston, to settle accounts. The smith entrusts him with money to pay his iron bill at Newlands, and save himself a journey. The next scene shows us a lane through the deerpark before dawn; Matthew on his half-broken mare attacked by a wastrel who has overheard the conversation, and now tries his unaccustomed hand at highway robbery. The mare throws him down, and Matthew gallops away believing his unknown assailant to be dead. Ten months later Matthew is called from his house in Tilberthwaite to the death-bed of Tom Bratton, and comes back subdued and silent. "What did he want wi' yee?" his family clamoured. "To ex me to forgive him." "Then it _was_ him 'at tried to rob ye?" "Niver ye mind wha tried to rob me--neahbody _did_ rob me!" "And what did ye say till him?" "I ext him to forgive me, and we yan forgev t'udder."