Things to do near Levens Hall the Lake District

Opposite the Hall gates a walk leads NE alongside the River Kent for 1m. At the far end, where the A590 now crosses the river, was formerly the 'little bridge ... with some steps in the crag leading down to it', where Laura in Helbeck waits for her secret twilight meeting with Hubert Mason. Returning across the park she is mistaken for the ghost of 'the Bannisdale Lady' (modeled of course, on the Levens Lady).

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Immediately N of the bridge by the Hall gates, turn L (w) on A590 for 2m, then R (N) on to A5074. The road runs up the Lyth Valley under the slope of Whitbarrow Scar, an enormous limestone ridge wooded on its lower reaches. The valley is yet another setting for Helbeck of Bannisdale, which describes it well in springtime: The course of the bright twisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. For the damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys; marking the bounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larch clump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of the pastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward, through the grassy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and 'scars' against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill.


This little known region is celebrated also in Margot Adamson's poem 'Spring Under Whitbarrow Scar'. Visitors to this 'Wide silent valley/ Beneath whose scree faced hill the sea birds call' will still see the 'Good, greys tone, whitewashed farms with northern names' just as she catalogues them in her poem: Foulshaw, Rus Mickle, Grassgarth, Flodder Hall, Johnscales that's hidden in the shadowing trees, High Sampool where the restless lapwings call though not quite in that order. To appreciate the area's gentle delights properly, park where you can (not easy) and walk w up the lane that leaves A5074 1m N of the main junction with A590. This tiny road takes you past all the farms mentioned in the poem, and when you reach The Row, a hamlet at the N end of the valley, you can go past the houses and follow a path up on to the top of the Scar itself a strange gentle wasteland of grey limestone fragments, remnants of an ancient seabed, with marvelous views.


The naturalist William Pearson gives lively sketches of the area, its wildlife and human goings-on in his Notes on the Natural History of Crosthwaite and Lyth, and the Valley of the Winster (1839). Few details escaped him, and one is grateful to him for preserving the text of a notice he once found barring the main road up the valley