Town in Cumbria, England
Keswick
A Lake District town where pencils were perfected, a 5,000-year-old stone circle watches the fells, and one marathon fell round begins at the town hall steps.
Key information
- County
- Cumbria
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 4,800 (2011 Census)
- Known for
- Pencils, Castlerigg Stone Circle, fell walking, the Bob Graham Round, literary festivals
- Famous people
- Robert Southey, Hugh Walpole, Hardwicke Rawnsley
About Keswick
The town that gave the world the pencil
Keswick's best-known export is something you probably have in a drawer. In the hills above Borrowdale, locals found a seam of graphite so pure that it could be sawn directly into sticks and used for writing. The story goes that a storm uprooted trees and exposed it. Whatever the truth, Borrowdale graphite was famed across Europe, and solid vein graphite of that quality was a rarity. Keswick's first pencil factory opened in 1832. Pencil making stayed in the town for generations, though production moved to Lillyhall, near Workington, in 2008. The Cumberland Pencil Museum still tells the story in Keswick, and it displays a colouring pencil almost eight metres long. The name Keswick is much older than the trade. It comes from Old English and means a cheese farm, which is a fairly modest start for a town that now draws walkers from all over the world.
A stone circle older than Stonehenge's big stones
A short walk from the town, Castlerigg Stone Circle sits in a natural bowl of fells. It has around 40 stones and dates to about 3000 BC, which makes it among the earliest stone circles in Britain. No one knows exactly what it was for. The setting is hard to beat: Skiddaw, Blencathra and Helvellyn all line up around it. Skiddaw itself, at 931 metres, is the fourth highest mountain in England. It rises directly behind the town and can be climbed without ropes by anyone with sturdy boots and a clear day.
Sixty-six miles that start at the Moot Hall
Keswick's Moot Hall, which stands in the market place, is the starting and finishing point of the Bob Graham Round. Bob Graham, a local businessman, set the challenge in 1932 when he climbed 42 Lake District fell tops in under 24 hours. The route covers roughly 66 miles and a huge amount of climbing. Fell runners now try to repeat it every summer, and finishers are listed in a club roll of honour. Many of them end up back on the Moot Hall steps, exhausted and delighted. The town has a long market tradition too. Edward I granted a market charter in 1276, and stalls still fill the streets.
Poets, a priest and the birth of the National Trust
Greta Hall, on the edge of town, was home to Robert Southey, who became Poet Laureate in 1813. Samuel Taylor Coleridge also lived there for a time. Southey is buried in the churchyard of Crosthwaite. That church's vicar, Hardwicke Rawnsley, was one of the three founders of the National Trust in 1895. He spent years campaigning to protect the places around him from development and railways. A memorial to John Ruskin stands at Friar's Crag, the viewpoint on Derwentwater's shore. Hugh Walpole, the novelist, settled just outside town at Brackenburn. Beatrix Potter holidayed beside the lake, and Derwentwater helped inspire Squirrel Nutkin.
A lake with a floating island
Derwentwater has one of the odder natural phenomena in England. In some summers a mass of weed and gas rises from the lake bed and floats on the surface, and the Derwentwater floating island has been recorded since the nineteenth century. There were once German miners here as well. Elizabethan mining companies brought skilled workers from Germany in the 1560s to dig copper in the nearby valleys, and Keswick became an industrial town centuries before it became a holiday one. The cost of that beautiful setting is water. Storm Desmond flooded parts of Keswick in December 2015, and the town has been rebuilding its defences since.
What to eat and when to turn up
Local food leans towards hearty. Cumberland sausage, a long coil seasoned with pepper, is the classic. Rum nicky is a dates-and-ginger tart with rum and brown sugar, and Herdwick lamb comes from the sheep that graze the high fells. The town fills up for the Keswick Convention, a Christian gathering held every summer since 1875. The Keswick Mountain Festival, the Keswick Jazz Festival and the Theatre by the Lake bring crowds in other seasons. Keswick's old railway to Penrith closed in 1972, so most visitors now arrive by road. A lot of them head straight to the lake.