Cowran Group
Cumbria, England
Rooted in
this place.
Cowran Estate is the land, the memories held here and the origin of the Cowran name.
Discover the placeMorning over the fells · Cowran Estate public archive
I · The place
Pennington · near Ulverston
A landscape
held in memory.
Cowran is a real Cumbrian place: fields meeting dry-stone walls, animals in the weather and a horizon that is never quite the same twice. It is lived in, remembered and allowed to change.
II · The origin
In Simon's recollection
The place
came first.
Simon Diss remembers childhood at Cowran with his grandparents, George and Vera Rigg. The farm, its animals and his grandfather's life on the land shaped an affection that never left him.
That early love of farming and animals led to agricultural college. He returned to Cowran around 2007, and the place became the root of the name and the work that followed.
“I am Cowran.”
Simon Diss · personal recollection
III · The identity
Marker · Windermere · 2008
A letter grown
from the land.
Simon commissioned Marker in Windermere to create something natural and of the earth. The result was the botanical C: fine stems, leaves and flowers held in one open form.
The surviving original artwork carries an October 2008 creation date. Marker's agency credit is established; the individual designer is not recorded in the evidence held here.
Original botanical C and Cowran Estate lettering shown without redrawing.
IV · Life at Cowran
A selective public archive
Small lives.
Long memories.
Photographs and writing preserve fragments of life around Cowran. They are memories of the place, not promises about what is here now.
Country life caught between one moment and the next.
One small resident, remembered in the public archive.
Animals have always been part of Simon's memory of Cowran.
An evening from the historic Magic Orchard chapter at Cowran.
Preparation remembered in the archive; not a current Estate programme.
Magic Orchard, 2015 — one chapter in Cowran's history.
From the old journal
“I couldn't sleep properly for nearly 3 months because it was too quiet.”
Nicole's City Girl in the Country writing caught the comedy, disorientation and affection of meeting rural life on its own terms.
Nicole, “City Girl in the Country; Welcome to the Jungle…” — Cowran Estate journal, 18 August 2015.V · Now & next
The record remains open