The Lake District
England's biggest national park has just one official 'lake'. The rest are meres, waters and tarns, and the fight to protect them helped create the National Trust.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Cumbria, North West England
- National park created
- 9 May 1951, one of the first in England and Wales
- Size
- About 912 square miles (2,362 sq km), the largest national park in England
- Highest point
- Scafell Pike, 978 m (3,209 ft), the highest mountain in England
- Longest lake
- Windermere, about 10.5 miles (16.9 km)
- Deepest lake
- Wastwater, about 79 m
- World Heritage status
- Inscribed by UNESCO in 2017 as a cultural landscape
- Famous for
- Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, Wainwright's fells and Herdwick sheep
The only lake in the Lake District
Ask a pub-quiz table how many lakes are in the Lake District and you'll get some confident wrong answers. Strictly, there is one: Bassenthwaite Lake. The rest are meres (Windermere, Buttermere), waters (Ullswater, Coniston Water, Wastwater) or tarns, the small mountain pools tucked into hollows. The names come from a mix of Old English and Old Norse, left by settlers who farmed these valleys a thousand years ago. Words like fell, beck, tarn and force (a waterfall) are Norse in origin, and you'll see them on every map. The scale is surprising too. England's highest mountain, longest lake and deepest lake all sit within a few miles of each other: Scafell Pike, Windermere and Wastwater.
The reservoir that sparked a rebellion
In the 1870s and 1880s Manchester needed clean water for its fast-growing population, and the Lake District looked ideal. The plan was to dam Thirlmere and send the water to the city by aqueduct. It was approved by Parliament in 1879, and the lake was raised and the valley changed for good. The row that followed helped shape modern conservation. Opponents formed the Lake District Defence Society in 1883. One of them, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, went on to help found the National Trust in 1895 with Octavia Hill and Sir Robert Hunter. Manchester was back in the 1930s, when Haweswater was dammed and the village of Mardale Green was flooded. In dry summers the old field walls can still emerge from the shoreline.
Poets, pencils and a rabbit in a blue jacket
William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in 1770 and moved with his sister Dorothy to Dove Cottage in Grasmere in 1799. His poems, and her journals, made ordinary hills and lakes seem worth travelling to see. The famous daffodils were spotted beside Ullswater in 1802. John Ruskin settled at Brantwood, above Coniston Water. Arthur Ransome drew on Windermere and Coniston for Swallows and Amazons. Then there is Beatrix Potter. She bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in 1905 with royalties from Peter Rabbit, and she became a serious sheep farmer who bred prize Herdwicks. When she died in 1943 she left around 4,000 acres and many farms to the National Trust, which kept huge areas of the central fells intact. The Lakes gave the world another everyday object: the pencil. Graphite found in Borrowdale was so pure that it was cut into sticks, and Keswick became a pencil town.
214 fells and one obsessive
Alfred Wainwright, a Blackburn-born local-government accountant, first came to the Lakes on holiday in 1930. He later wrote and hand-lettered the Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published in seven volumes between 1955 and 1966, covering 214 fells. No photographs, just meticulous pen drawings, maps and dry commentary. Walkers still tick off all 214 as 'Wainwrights', and some complete them in astonishing times. The tallest are in the Scafell range, but the best views often come from smaller tops. Catbells above Derwentwater and Haystacks, which Wainwright loved so much that his ashes were scattered there, are both good examples.
Rain, sheep and speed records
This is among the wettest parts of England. Seathwaite in Borrowdale is often named the wettest inhabited place in the country, so pack a waterproof whatever the forecast. The tough Herdwick sheep, grey as lambs and white-faced later, are the park's signature animal and are tied to the farming that earned the World Heritage listing. Look for dry-stone walls climbing impossibly steep slopes. The lakes have also been used for speed. Donald Campbell set water speed records on Coniston Water in the 1950s and was killed there on 4 January 1967 while attempting another in Bluebird K7. The boat was recovered in 2001, and the lake is now much quieter. For the best of the area, try a ferry on Ullswater, the path above Buttermere, or the slate-grey walk along Wastwater beneath Scafell Pike.
Notable people
- William Wordsworth
- Dorothy Wordsworth
- Beatrix Potter
- Alfred Wainwright
- Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley
- John Ruskin
- Arthur Ransome
- Donald Campbell
Test yourself
Play the UK quizMore to see nearby
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