• Alston
• Allonby And Aspatria
• Ambleside And Troutbeck
• Appleby In Westmoreland
• Askam In Furness
• Barrow In Furness
• Bassenthwaite
• Borrowdale
• Bowness On Windermere
• Brough
• Buttermere
• Brampton
• Broughton In Furness
• Carlisle
• Cartmel
• Cleator Moor
• Cockermouth
• Coniston
• Dalston
• Dalton In Furness
• Dent
• Grange Over Sands
• Grasmere
• Greenodd
• Grizedale
• Hawkshead
• Kendal
• Keswick
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• Wasdale And Gosforth
• Kirkby Stephen
• Longtown
• Loweswater
• Maryport
• Melmerby
• Milnthorpe
• Nenthead
• Newby Bridge
• Orton
• Penrith
• Pooley Bridge
• Ravenglass And Eskdale
• Sedbergh
• Seascale
• Shap
• Silloth And Solway
• St Bees
• Skiddaw
• Staveley
• Tebay
• The Duddon Valley
• Threlkeld
• Ulverston
• Vale Of Lorton
• Wasdale
• Wetheral
• Whitehaven
• Wigton
• Windermere
• Workington
• Spa Hotels In Windermere The Lake District
• Hotels With Hot Tubs In Windermere
• Hot Tub Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Romantic Breaks In Windermere And The Lake District
• Themed Hotels In Windermere And The Lake District
• Weekend Breaks In Windermere
• Windermere Attractions And Boat Trips
• Boutique Hotels And Accommodation In Windermere And The Lake District
• Windermere In The Rain
• One Way Ticket To Windermere Por Favor
• Horse Riding In The Lake District
• Walks In The Lake District
• Windermere Boutique Hotel Bedrooms
• Holiday Accommodation Wanted In The Lake District

Mining and industry in the Lake District

Overgrown spoil heaps at Brandelhow, on the western shore of Derwentwater , relate to the mining of lead. The veins were associated with an igneous dyke extending from here onto Cat Bells. As elsewhere, the miners had problems caused by water flooding the lower workings. At first an enormous water wheel provided the power for abstracting water. When this proved inadequate, it was succeeded by a steam engine. Problems over disposing of water led to the closure of the mine in the 1860s. In the sixteenth century, mountains that were the resort of shepherds were beginning to attract the attention of off comers. Camden (cI580) heard a Lakeland proverb to the effect that:

formed a backdrop for Keswick, and to Evelyn and Catstycam. In the seventeenth century, Bishop Nicolson climbed Skiddaw for the view and John Adams ascended it as part of his project to provide an accurate map of England and Wales. He housed his 'telescopes and optic glasses' in a hut he had built near the summit. In 1673 the old chapel that stood at Keswick, on a flank of Sale Fell , was rebuilt. Like most old Lakeland chapels, it was plain primitive, indeed. A narrow board supported by a movable bracket inside the reading desk was the altar table. The vessels used for a celebration of holy communion were a cheese plate and a pewter pot.

Sarah You dale, commonly known as Old Sally, and spoken of as 'Q!.1een of Borrowdale', lived in the valley between 1768 and 1869. Her recollections were to help us understand the vast changes that would occur when, in the eighteenth century, men (and a few women) of taste and leisure were exploring the mountainous northwest regions of England and Scotland. Overland progress was made easier from the year 1761, when the first turnpike road reached Keswick.

Old Sally mentioned that in her young days there was no wheeled traffic in Borrowdale; 'we used to carry 0' nag back'. Fuel was 'peat and sticks but no coal'. The local people wore 'homespun cloth and clogs'. They ate 'chimney hams, bacon and mutton'. With such stories, the Lake District was considered a strange, backward place by the early visitors. They were both overawed and terrified by the high fells. John Brown found in the Keswick area (1767) beauty, horror and immensity; the smooth and gentle, the rugged and rough, the high and majestic. Thomas Gray (1769) went as far as Grange, hastening in silence, fearful that, as in the Alps, the 'agitation of the air' would dislodge rocks from the crags.

Horror was succeeded by Romance, and during what became known as the Romantic period (CI76o1820), viewpoints were recommended at which a well equipped visitor used a Claude glass, turning his back on the view and, when it was reflected in the glass, framing it so the proportions fitted a stilted notion. William Gilpin, who had been born in Cumbria, was another who wrote about his Lakeland experiences, and thus encouraged others to emulate him. William Hutchinson left us a historical account of Cumberland, and James Clarke exercised his skills as a land surveyor. James Bud worth, a retired (one-armed) soldier, is remembered partly because he wrote an account of Mary, the Buttermere beauty, who in 1802 was seduced by a fraudster named John Hatfield.

Peter Crosthwaite, who owned a museum at Keswick, published simple maps of the lakes, noting the 'stations' or viewpoints, decorated with engravings of features of local interest. In the 1780s, he and the eccentric Joseph Pocklington, a banker who settled in Northern Lakeland, buying Daren't Isle, organized special regattas on Derwentwater. He became known as King Pock and the island on Derwentwater was renamed 'Paradise Island'. In the farming world, a Mr. Atkinson, denizen of 'the fruitful and beautiful vale of Bassenthwaite', was sowing turnips to augment the winter food of his sheep.

When the Industrial Revolution was transforming large areas of the North into a series of smoky workshops, the fells and valleys of the Lake District afforded an attractive refuge to those who became known, disparagingly at first, as the Lake Poets. The best-known was William Wordsworth, who was a Cum brain by birth. He had industrialization in mind when he commented on the introduction by Lakeland landowners of plantations of larch. These were, according to Wordsworth, 'vegetable manufactory'. The romantic streak in Wordsworth had Henry Lord Clifford, in disguise as a shepherd boy because of the iniquities of his father, at large among:

which had prosper ous mines in the seventeenth century had, by the following century, a diversity of industrial projects, with mills devoted to the making of paper, to grinding corn, processing wool and manufacturing bobbins for the textile industry all made possible by harnessing the power of the River Caldew. By the close of the eighteenth century, Keswick was predominantly a tourist town, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a friend of the Wordsworths, realized when in 1800 he pondered on his new home:

In the year that these words were penned, William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy walked from Kendal to Keswick to stay with their friends, the Culverts, at their farmhouse near Keswick. The Wordsworths had intended to stay for a few days and, instead, lodged there for six weeks. It was to be a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert, who died in 1795 at the tender age of twenty-one, that gave Wordsworth the leisure time to become a poet.

Home >> About the Lakes