England's Lakes

The Lake District, in the northwestern corner of England is one of the most visited areas of the country after the capital, London. In addition to its outstanding natural beauty it is closely associated with English literature, especially that of the nineteenth century when writers and poets such as De Quincey, Coleridge, Southey and, most famously, the region's own son Wordsworth relished the environment of rivers, lakes and mountains.

The Lake District is small by international standards, around 800 square miles and less than fifty miles across in any direction, but within it is a striking variety of scenery. Most of it lies within the boundaries of the Lake District National Park, and although until 1974 it included areas of three historic counties (Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire) a major administrative boundary reform project led to the creation of a new county, Cumbria, which covers the entire Lakes area and more.

Charcoal Burners, Coniston Lake
by A. Heaton Cooper, 1908

Cumbrian weather can be unpredictable. If it were not for the rain, of course, there would not be the scenery that people come to admire. What is more, when the weather changes the lighting in the mountains, the reflections from the lakes, the colours of the fellsides, all change with it, generating a kaleidoscopic beauty.

All told there are fifteen major lakes - Windermere, Ullswater and Coniston Water being the three largest - and also many smaller meres and tarns. The Lake District is an outdoor person's paradise with an enormous range of options for walking, climbing, sailing, windsurfing, fishing and much more. Furthermore in recent decades the variety of indoor attractions has grown enormously, so that anyone who does not wish to don waterproof clothing on the damper days still has plenty to do and to see. There are museums, art galleries, visitor centres (including an excellent national park centre), literary attractions (relating to Wordsworth, Ruskin and Potter), as well as historic castles, stately homes and other ancient properties to tour around.

A Mountain Path,
Sandwick, Ullswater
by A. Heaton Cooper

Three of the lakes (Windermere, Coniston and Ullswater) have pleasure steamer services, and on a hot summer's afternoon it can be delightful to observe the passing scenery from the deck of a boat.

Access to the Lake District is easy. The north-south M6 motorway passes its eastern edge, train services are available from many parts of the country, including from London. Kendal, just inside the southern border of Cumbria is only about one and a half hours' drive from Manchester International Airport which has a wide variety of flights from most major countries of the world, including many daily arrivals from North America.

Some years ago the regional tourist board used the slogan, "The most beautiful corner of England." Almost two hundred years ago William Wordsworth described the Lake District as, "The loveliest spot that man has ever known." I'm not going to disagree with him. It lives up to its reputation.

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For more on the Lakes go to my new web site "England's Lakes".

It's nice to have a collection of photographs when you come back home from an holiday. Nowadays it's easier than ever with digital cameras having reached such a high degree of quality. What you can't do, however, is take photos of the past. Travel from one place to another gets ever easier, but time travel has so far eluded us.

That's where an archive of old photographs comes in. Here's a shot of Bowness-on-Windermere more than fifty years ago. May be you, or your mother, or maybe your grandfather, will remember this as it was in those days.

Bowness-On-Windermere, the Pier c1955
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

This next one, however, will definitely be outside the memory range of anyone still alive today.

Keswick, Bridge and Greta Hall 1889
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.

The Francis Frith archive contains more than 350,000 photographs of towns and villages throughout the British Isles, dating back to 1860. Click on the photos above. You'll also be able to search for places in other parts of country.

(Note, March 2009: Since writing the above a few months ago I have created a new web site to give easy access to vintage photographs of the Lake District).

Wishing you good photo-hunting,

- David Murray -
England's Lakes

When thinking about the Lake District and its people I guess certain individuals spring immediately to most minds.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas de Quincey and Robert Southey are famous literary figures of the nineteenth century. The twentieth century brought us Beatrix Potter, Hugh Walpole and Norman Nicholson. Others may think of Hunter Davies or Melvyn Bragg.

Maybe not all of these are in the same league, but they've all in their own ways made their contributions to Lake District literary history. However, it's noticeable that literary figures have come to the top of the pile. What about scientists?

While researching for a page about Cockermouth on my England's Lakes web site I discovered something which to me was quite surprising.

On the West Cumbrian coast there is the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility, and for many years there was also the Calder Hall atomic power station. Now whether you love these or hate them there can be no doubt that this brought to Cumbria many leading nuclear scientists, but how many people know that the man who first proposed the atomic theory of matter was, more than 230 years ago, born a Cumbrian?

Yes, John Dalton, the world-famous Manchester scientist (with one of the main streets of central Manchester named after him, as well as "Dalton's Law" familiar to us from school science lessons) was not a Manchester man after all, but a son of Cockermouth - born in the same area and the same six year period as that town's two other famous sons: William Wordsworth and Fletcher Christian.

As well as the northern lakes Dalton also had connections with Kendal in South Lakeland. It was while teaching in a private school there that he began to give the public lectures on scientific subjects which ultimately led to his academic career in Manchester.

Take a look at my England's Lakes site for some more about John Dalton.

I can't remember a time when I didn't have books about the Lake District, and over the decades have accumulated quite a lot, although many years ago when I was very hard up I sold some of the most valuable to a dealer in Kendal - and have regretted it ever since (but to be fair to him he was honest, and gave me reasonable prices).

I've picked out from the shelves two that I really recommend. They're both out of print, but can be found on book dealers' catalogues. I've created links here to an international network of on-line book dealers, and when I checked today (30 Apr 2008) there were copies available from dealers in several countries including Australia, the UK and the USA.

The Illustrated Lake Poets by Molly Lefebure, 1992

Molly Lefebure's book on the lake poets is a delight to read. It is lavishly illustrated with colour and black and white photographs, old prints, and the work of many artists. The text traces the relationships between the poets and the landscape from Wordsworth's childhood days, through his first walking tour with Coleridge in 1799, and on through the succeeding decades.

The Wordsworths at Dove Cottage, Allan Bank, and later the old rectory in Grasmere, the Coleridge family and Southey at Greta Hall in Keswick, are described in picture, prose and poetry. Considerable attention is given to Coleridge, as might be expected from a biographer of his wife.

Toward the end of the book Ruskin gets a mention, and the relationship between Tennyson and the Lakes is briefly touched upon. I ended up wishing that the author had managed to stretch the book out to another fifty pages to give greater weight to the artists and poets of the twentieth century, but that's not really a complaint. I was given my copy as a Christmas present in 1992 by a young lady who several years later was to become my daughter-in-law. (Last week she gave me a new grandson!) It is among my Lake District treasures.

Click on the book image to see what copies are currently available on the Biblio network.

The Lake Counties by W G Collingwood (1902) revised by William Rollinson, 1988

W. G. Collingwood was a brilliant student of John Ruskin at Oxford, and for many years was Ruskin's secretary at Brantwood, overlooking Coniston Water, before building his own career as writer, artist, historian and antiquarian. His masterly study of the Lake Counties was first published in 1902, and more than eighty years later it was updated by another great student of the Lake District, William Rollinson who for many years lectured at Liverpool University and was the author of several outstanding publications on the region's history and traditions.

Rollinson updated the information without destroying the essential character of Collingwood's original. Especially valuable is the 82-page gazeteer at the end of the book and, of course, in a modern production there is the additional benefit of colour photography to supplement the black and white drawings.

If you can find a good copy at an affordable price, this is a book to grab while it's there. Click on the book image to see what is available on the Biblio network.

The National Trust is a voluntary, membership organization which works to preserve the historic landscape and built environment of England and Wales. (There is a separate National Trust for Scotland).

Its 20th century history is closely entwined with that of the Lake District as it has steadily built its land holdings through a combination of purchase and gift, and also has in its care several major historic buildings in the region. The Trust even owns some of the lakes.

Alongside official bodies such as Cumbria County Council, the district councils and the Lake District National Park Authority, the National Trust makes a major contribution to the preservation of this beautiful part of the country.

If you stroll around a Lake District village such as Grasmere today you'll hear many languages. People arrive from all over the world attracted by the scenery, and of course by the literary heritage.

This is not a new thing. Yesterday, while researching an article on the industrial archeology of the region and hunting through the boxes and piles of books for which I have no shelf-room, I came across a small book that I hadn't seen for several years. It's a 116-page paperback by Andrew Wilson entitled, A President's Love Affair with the Lake District.

Woodrow Wilson, who was President of the United States during the 1st World War, had a Cumbrian heritage. His mother was born in Carlisle before her family emigrated across the Atlantic and he often visited the Lake District.

This book by Andrew Wilson (no relation to the President as far as I know) gives a fascinating account of many visits, including walking and cycling tours in his years as an academic at Princeton long before becoming President.

A second book, which this one brought back to my mind, was by a visitor from the opposite side of the globe.

Chiang Yee was a Chinese official in London between the wars and in The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland tells the story of a walking tour of the Lake District in 1936 - taking in Wastwater, Derwentwater, Buttermere, Crummockwater, Windermere, Rydal Water and Grasmere.

I read this again just a few weeks ago and found it most interesting to get a glimpse into the mind of an artistically sensitive man of an entirely different culture as he saw sights with which I had been familiar since childhood - but with different eyes.

Copies of both books can be found in bookdealers' catalogues. When I looked today on the following online services there were copies available in several different countries.

Chiang Yee: AbeBooks - Biblio.com

Wilson: AbeBooks - Biblio.com

Happy reading,

- David Murray -
England's Lakes