Tag Archives: Haweswater

Haweswater and the Lost Kingdom of Mardale

When the Manchester Corporation built Haweswater Dam in 1936, they consigned two centuries-old villages to the bottom of a reservoir. Before the flood, the valley had boasted a celebrated inn, a tiny church, and a hall strong enough to resist the explosives of the Royal Engineers. It even had its own monarch.  I pull on my boots and go in search of the lost kingdom of Mardale.

The Drowned Valley

Sun gleams off the bonnet of an open top car, a Lanchester perhaps, as a smiling woman steers between the stone parapets of Chapel Bridge. In the distance, where Selside and Branstree meet, the twin ravines of Rowantreethwaite and Hopegill beck form deep folds in the fellside, and the Old Corpse Road climbs steeply out of the valley.

Chapel Bridge - the lost kingdom of Mardale
Chapel Bridge, Mardale Green

A bell is ringing from the tiny church, encircled by old yews taller than its tower, and the jubilant shouts of children travel up the dale from Measand school. A peal of raucous laughter erupts from the courtyard of the Dun Bull Inn, and the sounds of whistles and dog-barks waft down from Riggindale where shepherds drive a flock toward the washfold.

The Dun Bull Inn - the lost kingdom of Mardale
The Dunn Bull Inn, Mardale Green

I open my eyes, and the vision dissolves. Now, all is water. I’m standing at the end of the Rigg, the wooded promontory that juts out into Haweswater, a reservoir constructed by the Manchester Corporation between 1936 and 1941. At its far end stands the dam that raised the level of the natural lake. Pewter waters now cover the valley—the centuries old villages of Measand and Mardale Green have been submerged, a rural civilisation lost less than a hundred years ago.

Haweswater

The Manchester Corporation & Haweswater

My vision was a flight of the fancy, a montage of the imagination, conjured from old photographs and contemporary accounts of life before the flood. One photograph persists in my mind’s eye—that of the woman in the car.  On first glance, it appears idyllic, but look closer, and the seeds of doom have already sprouted. A series of small white marker posts line a long pale scar, recognisable to anyone today as the road. But the old road ran on the opposite side of the valley. This is the new one, still under construction. The old road carried villagers to and from their homes, but five or six years on, those homes and the road alike would be lost below the rising waters. The new road would carry walkers, bird-watchers, sightseers, and reservoir workers to the head of an extended lake, in a waterlogged valley, unpopulated but for the new Haweswater hotel. The road opened in 1937, the same year the church tower was pulled down and the Dun Bull demolished. The main body of the church had gone a year earlier, its stones and windows repurposed to build a water take-off tower, which stands roughly in line with the natural head of the lake.

Holy Trinity Church - the lost kingdom of Mardale
Holy Trinity Church, Mardale Green
The Water Take-Off Tower, built with the stones and windows from the church,
The Dun Bull Inn half-demolished

“No-one else protested, we were the only ones,” Helena Bailey told journalist and writer, Karen Barden, in 1995. Helena was the daughter of the Vicar of Burneside. Her family had holidayed in Mardale year upon year from 1914 to 1929; she felt like a local. Helena would have been four on her first visit, nineteen on her last. She recounted how she and brothers and sister stealthily followed the surveyors and pulled out every one of those marker posts. But the teenagers were no match for the Manchester Corporation, and few others could muster the fight.

“There had been a world war,” she explained. “The country was exhausted. People just wanted to get on quietly with their lives.”

“And this proposal also meant jobs, for hundreds of men.”

I look north to Wood Howe, once a wooded knott, now a tree-crowned island. Today, a stretch of silver water maroons it from the Rigg. Beneath the surface, lie the remains of Holy Trinity church. The church was built in the late 1600’s, on the site of a much older oratory, supposedly constructed by the monks of Shap Abbey. In 1729, its churchyard was consecrated for burials: until then, the dead had to be wrapped in cloth and carried on pack ponies over the Corpse Road to Shap.

Wood Howe from The Rigg
Wood Howe from the Rigg. Holy Trinity Church is below the water.

In October 1935, the bodies of those interred here were exhumed. With ironic precedent, they were nearly all reburied at Shap. That August, the last service was held at Holy Trinity. It drew a congregation many times too large for the nave and chancel, which could accommodate just 75. Everyone else stood outside and listened to the sermon over loudspeakers. It was preached by the Bishop of Carlisle. All joined in a rousing chorus of I Shall Lift Up Mine Eyes to the Hills. Among those present was former Vicar of Mardale, Revd. H. F. J. Barham. This had been his parish for twenty five years. He couldn’t bring himself to enter the church. Helena couldn’t bring herself to attend.

Holy Trinity Church - the lost kingdom of Mardale
Holy Trinity Church, Mardale Green, showing the children’s gallery

Before the flood, the natural lake had been divided almost in two by a natural promontory formed by Measand Beck. The larger southern lake was known as High Water, and the smaller northern one as Low Water. The narrow funnel connecting them was called The Straits. On Measand Promontory stood Measand Hall, and Measand Beck Farm.

The Last Days of Measand

On Monday 12th October 1936, the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail reported:

“The Haweswater valley, one of the most secluded and peaceful places in the Lake District, echoed yesterday with the sound of explosions when Territorial offices of the Royal Engineers (East Lancashire Division) blew up three buildings on land which will be inundated. These buildings have been homesteads for five or six hundred years. Measand Hall, tenanted by the squires of Mardale for generations, stoutly resisted a new plastic explosive which was being tested for the War Office. At first only ounce charges were used. These made a great noise and raised clouds of smoke and dust, but the walls withstood them. The charges were increased, and these showed the quality of the new explosive, the walls crumbling to pieces instead of flying into the air. Mr. Leonard Kitchen and his family, who lived 40 yards from the hall at Measand Beck Farm, had retreated to safety so many times when the charges proved ineffective that he decided to go on with dinner. When the hall did collapse Mr. Kitchen’s windows were shattered and plaster fell on his Sunday joint.”

My friend, Richard Jennings, has been researching the valley, and he assures me Leonard’s last name is a misprint. He was a Kitching. I have no credible claim to kinship, but it makes me smile to know that my namesakes farmed in Mardale before the flood.

Measand Hall - the lost kingdom of Mardale
Measand Hall
Measand Beck Hall - the lost kingdom of Mardale
The Kitching brothers outside Measand Beck Farm

Richard is here now, with his handsome Border collie, Frankie. We’re going in search of a much older story concerning another venerable Mardale family.

The Lost Kingdom of Mardale

The reign of King John was turbulent. The King fell out with the Church and then the barons. He was excommunicated by the Pope and forced by the rebel barons to sign Magna Carta, the closest thing we have ever had to a constitution. Seven years earlier in 1208, John had a foiled a smaller plot, known as the Canterbury Conspiracy. One of the perpetrators was Hugh Holme, whose ancestor came over with William the Conqueror. Hugh became a fugitive from royal retribution. He fled for Scotland but never reached the border, choosing to hide out instead in a cave in the remotest part of Riggindale, the small valley that forks off Mardale between Riggindale Edge and Kidsty Pike. When King John died, Hugh didn’t return to reclaim his lands. He settled in the valley. The residents prized him for his wisdom and worldly knowledge, and they gave him an honorary title. From then on, the head of the Holme family would always be known as the King of Mardale.

The Holme family were pillars of the community. They built the vicarage and did much to support the church. Some sources have also credited the Holme family with the building of a tower on Wood Howe, but in his 1904 book, Shappe in Bygone Days, Joseph Whiteside claims the tower was the work of an eccentric proprietor of the Dun Bull, named Thomas Lamley. Lamley’s aim was to build a structure tall enough to see over into neighbouring Swindale and Patterdale. Such an ambition would have required a tower nearly 2000 ft in height. Lamley gave up when it reached 20 ft, conceding that perhaps it wasn’t going to work. The tower doesn’t seem to have stood for long, but it does appear in a Thomas Allom print.

In 1885, Hugh Parker Holme, the last King of Mardale, was laid to rest. His death ended a family line much loved and revered in the dale. But what of their arrival here? Is the story of Hugh’s flight from King John true? Even today, the OS map names a spot on the lower slopes of Rough Crag as Hugh’s Cave but is this really where the fugitive baron hid from the King? Richard, Frankie, and I are going to investigate.

Mardale Green and Wood Howe by Thomas Allom -the lost kingdom of Mardale
Mardale Green and Wood Howe (showing the tower) by Thomas Allom

Remote Riggindale

We step around the toppled trunks of larches, victims of the violence wrought by Storm Arwen in November. Deciduous conifers, sparse with winter. Those still standing are feathered with delicate fans of twig, black against the steely grey of the lake, as if sketched in ink. A twilight world in monochrome. Yet as we emerge from the dense canopy of the Rigg, the early morning sky is lightening, turning Haweswater China blue. The silhouettes of broad leaf trees twist into spindly traceries, like woodcuts. Ahead, Swine Crag is a drab olive pyramid, rising from a bed of ginger bracken. Across Riggindale, the graphite slopes of Kidsty Pike dissolve into wispy mist. Overhead, the clouds are duck-egg blue, but above the snow-flecked Straits of Riggindale, the early sun ignites an amber glow—a warm band of ethereal light bathing the valley in primordial mystery.

Haweswater from the start of the Rigg
Entering Riggindale
Frankie in Riggindale

We pass an old stone barn and handrail a dry stone wall, black as granite in the creeping shadow; we meet Riggindale Beck and fall in step; its hissing waters whisper intangible truths. Rough Crag rears above on our left, untouched by the celestial glow. It is dark and severe, a forbidding wall of tumbling scree and precipitous outcrops, peppered with wiry, twiggy tangles of mountain ash. A place of shadows and secrets, and perhaps a legendary cave.

Rough Crag
Riggindale in early morning light

Hugh’s Cave – Hideout of the First King

Ahead the stream curves into a tiny oxbow. The ground is becoming increasingly soggy, but I resist Richard’s suggestion that we head for the slopes as I have taken a compass bearing from the bend in the beck to where the OS map places the H of Hugh’s Cave. Richard is sceptical of its value, names on maps are often put where they obscure the fewest features and should only be read as approximations. Besides, he is convinced he has spied the cave from Kidsty Pike, a few years back, and thinks we should spot it easily from this distance. As we reach the oxbow, he does. I follow the line of his outstretched finger and pick out the chiselled boulder perched as a lintel above a black hollow. A skeletal rowan stands like a sentinel. I fish out my compass. It lies right on the bearing.

Richard and Frankie set off for Rough Crag

We start to climb, calves twinging in protest at the steepness of the scree. Soon we are scrambling over boulders. Rocky outcrops well up in waves, obscuring our target. I become disoriented, but Richard spots the rowan, and we lock back on course. The cave entrance is hidden but the rowan and lintel remain in view, yet despite our exertions, they seem forever the same distance away.

Traversing Rough Crag
Frankie and the imagined cave

Eventually we reach a small grassy rake which leads up over a boulder to the rowan and the cave entrance. Only now we’re here, we uncover the deception: there is no cave. The lintel sits atop another boulder that slopes inward, creating a small alcove, which contrives in shadow to resemble an entrance.

Flummoxed but undeterred, we soldier on towards the jutting wall of Riggindale Crag, below Caspel Gate and Long Stile, that rugged stairway to the summit of High Street. Our efforts are unfocused, casting searching glances at rocks in the hope of finding an opening. Eventually, we spot one. Straight ahead, where the crags form into an almost vertical wall, a leaning boulder forms a crude arch over a dark recess, which might—just might—run deeper into the cliff. But alas, we are foiled again. As we draw near, the deceptive shadow dissipates, and reveals nothing but solid rock.

Is this Hugh’s Cave?

Back at the valley bottom, both boulders resume their illusory forms, and as we track back along the far shore of the beck, past the old wash fold, another deception is unmasked. Richard spots the cave he spied from Kidsty Pike. It is nothing more than a square slab of black rock.

Rewilding

Over the shoulder of Kidsty Pike, we settle on a grassy outcrop overlooking the lake, above the submerged course of the old road. In 1921, Councillor Isaac Hinchliffe of Manchester wrote an article for the Journal of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club in which he painted a fragrant picture:

Hawewater from the Coast to Coast path, above where the old road used to run.

“I hope the new road will be innocent of stone walls and iron railings, with wide margins some three or four yards where possible, with unobtrusive fences hidden by kindly growths which now for the most part fringe the road from Burn Banks to Mardale. Heather and gorse and ivy, blackthorn, holly and mountain ash, wild raspberries and blackberries, honeysuckle, wild roses, the Guelder rose, convolvulous and the meadow-sweet, which now scents the air even to one passing in a motor-car, the primrose, foxglove, and that beautiful and prolific plant, the wild geranium or meadow crane’s bill, to say nothing of the humble daisy and buttercup, or the tiny ranunculus which brightens the mossy wayside pools, the March violet, wild thyme, and a hundred other beautiful plants which now grow wild alongside or near to the present road. Patches of lady’s bed-straw and parsley fern will always relieve the grey monotony of the screes.”

Sadly, the Manchester Corporation did build a wall, and they replaced much of the indigenous flora with commercial forestry. Happily, much of the incongruous conifer has now been cleared—the dense larches on the Rigg are one of few the remaining outposts. The slopes of Selside and Branstree have been sensitively replanted with native broad leaves. In the years to come, the valley may once again resemble the councillor’s idyll.

Rowantreethwaite Beck and the Old Corpse Road (to the left of the ravine)

Richard is disappointed we didn’t find the cave, but part of me is secretly pleased. The romantic in me wants to imagine it is still there somewhere, its mouth hidden under tumbled boulders and filled with scree—a secret guarded by the mountain. I stare south-east across the water to where Holy Trinity lies submerged, then north to where Measand once stood. Perhaps it is better that Mardale keeps its mysteries hidden.

Wood Howe and the Rigg, and the waters covering Mardale Green

Mardale Uncovered

In the summer of 1976, after months of drought, the level of the reservoir dropped so low that the ruins of Mardale Green emerged. It happened again in 1984, and the Westmorland Gazette published a book, Mardale Revisited, by journalist and photographer, Geoffrey Berry. Berry contrasted photographs of the muddy remains with old pictures and accounts of Mardale as it once had been.

The village emerged for the third time in 1995, and the paper published a second edition of Berry’s book with an addendum by Karen Barden, who interviewed Helena Bailey and Joyce Bell. Joyce was four-and-a-half when she attended the final service at Holy Trinity Church with her mother, Lucy.  Her parents, like theirs before them, had run the Dun Bull Inn. She remembered her mother’s reaction to visiting the ruins in 1976:

“She was very upset, but not bitter and could pick everything out. It was in a better state then.

“She played war with a couple at Chapel Hill going through the ash heap with a riddle. She said it was sacrilege and they had done more damage than the water.”

“The village had lain forgotten until then. A beautiful valley which had been totally ruined. It would never be allowed now and shouldn’t have happened then.”

Karen’s addendum is short but poignant, sympathetic to such emotional ties, and indignant, angry even, at the unfolding circus:

“They have arrived in their thousands along with ice cream sellers and others keen to make a fast buck from Mardale’s misery.

“An empty packet of 20 Regal lies where once there would have been a tomb. Wrappings from cheese and onion crisps and a Wall’s Cornetto carelessly tossed to a ground, normally over 50 feet under water.”

Mardale appeared again last summer (2021).  I didn’t visit. I had done so three years earlier, in 2018, when the village was partially revealed. I chose a weekday evening. There were few people around, and it felt tranquil. Chapel Bridge was still submerged, but I could walk along the old walled track to the remains of the Dun Bull Inn and the farms of Grove Brae and Goosemire. It was fascinating if disquieting to enter the lost village, yet part of me felt I was intruding.

A Sting in the Tail

Looking out over the waters now, I try to imagine how Lucy must have felt; how she must have longed for people to leave this sunken chest of treasured memories to rest in peace. The residents sacrificed their homes and their heritage for the sake of progress. Yet there was a sting in the tail. On 8th May 1933, Mr. Alan Chorlton, MP for Bolton, addressed Parliament with the following words:

“Looking at the existing condition of supplies in industrial areas, we have the extraordinary position that Manchester years ago before the decline in trade, went in for a scheme of supply of additional water to cost £10,000,000. Since that scheme was started there has been a change in the condition of world affairs which has so reduced the trade demand, that, with the movement of new industries elsewhere, this great scheme is not now called for. In fact there is more than sufficient water from existing supplies in that area.”

The reservoir went ahead regardless. I hope that Chorlton was wrong. I hope the water really was needed. But more than anything, I hope his words never reached Lucy’s ears. It would have been devastating to think that it was all for nothing.

Credits/Further Reading

A big thank you to Richard Jennings for sharing much of his research and furnishing me with some of the stories retold here. Richard’s own website is rich source of local history (as well as a host of great walking routes). It is well worth checking out:

https://www.lakelandroutes.uk/local-history/

Councillor Hinchliffe’s account of Mardale before the flood appeared in the Volume 5, No. 3 of the Journal of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club. It makes fascinating reading. You can find it on-line here:

https://www.frcc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Vol5-3.pdf

Geoffrey Berry’s book, Mardale Revisited was published by the Westmorland Gazette in 1984, but it is worth seeking out the second edition from 1996 with the addendum by Karen Barden. ISBN: 1 901081 00 1

For more from me on Mardale, Riggindale and ascending High Street by Rough Crag, see:


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    Summer’s Almost Gone

    The Kentmere Round

    The Kentmere valley is a slice of heaven. It was gifted to Richard De Gilpin in 1206 as a reward for slaying the Wild Boar of Westmorland, and it remains one of Lakeland’s most remote and most beautiful spots.  The river Kent begins life high in the fells that ring the valley head.  A circuit of these peaks is a long and exhilarating hill walk, known as the Kentmere Round.  As I follow the route on a glorious late summer day, I discover the valley is home to a vanishing lake, and also, it seems, a vanishing mountain.

    The Wild Boar of Westmorland

    Drive along the Crook Road from Plumgarths to Bowness and you’ll pass high-end hotels with names like The Wild Boar Inn and the Gilpin Lodge. Their billboards tempt the well-heeled traveller with warm hospitality and fine cuisine, but their names recall a time when this journey risked much more than a waxing waistline and damage to your wallet.

    At the start of the 13th Century, a holy cross stood at Plumgarths and a chantry chapel on St Mary’s Isle, Windermere. Both sites were stops on the pilgrim trail, but it took a righteous faith to make the journey between them for the woods around Crook were inhabited by a ferocious boar with a fearsome reputation for attacking unfortunates who happened across its path.

    Mercifully, deliverance was at hand. Richard De Gilpin, known as “Richard the Rider”, had accompanied the Baron of Kendal to Runnymede for the signing of the Magna Carta. His assistance was invaluable as the baron could neither read nor write. However, for De Gilpin, the sword would prove mightier than the pen. On his return to Westmorland, he tracked the boar through the forest to its lair near Scout Scar and engaged it in a fierce battle, eventually slaying the beast and emerging as a hero. The Baron of Kendal was so grateful, he rewarded Richard with the lordship of the manor of Kentmere.

    Kentmere Tarn

    De Gilpin had been gifted a slice of heaven. Kentmere is one of Lakeland’s most beautiful and remote valleys. Both the valley and the town of Kendal take their names from the river Kent, which has its source high in the fells at the valley head.

    Say the words “Lake Windermere” to any good pedant and they’ll tell you that the prefix is redundant as “mere” means “lake”. A hundred years ago, you’d have been forgiven for thinking Kentmere was a misnomer – its mere had vanished. Curiously, industrial interests have been responsible for its reappearance.

    Kentmere Valley from Shipman Knotts
    Kentmere Valley from Shipman Knotts

    Kentmere Tarn lies on private land near the foot of the valley. Its shallow waters provide an ideal habitat for algae known as diatoms. When diatoms die, their organic matter decomposes leaving their hard silica skeletons, called frustules to sink to the bottom and form a layer known as diatomite. Over the centuries, the tarn silted up with diatomite, turning it into a boggy marsh. In the 1840’s, it was drained to improve the surrounding farmland, but the exercise was largely unsuccessful, and the land reverted to marsh.

    Diatomite has significant heat-insulating properties and in the 1930’s, commercial operations began to extract the substance for use in insulating boards. Extraction ceased in the 1970’s, when it became cheaper to import, but forty years of dredging had restored the mere. Well stocked with trout, it is now the preserve of angling clubs.

    The Kentmere Fells

    A fine mountain ridge runs from the Garburn Pass, which links Kentmere and Troutbeck, to the Nan Bield Pass, which once linked Kentmere and the lost village of Mardale Green. Defined by the conical peak of Ill Bell and its smaller mirror-image in Froswick, the skyline is iconic; equally recognisable from the West Coast Mainline or the beach at Bardsea.

    Beyond the Nan Bield Pass, the ridge swings around over Harter Fell and Kentmere Pike to Shipman Knotts to form a horseshoe. The full circuit is a long but exhilarating hill walk, known as the Kentmere Round; and it’s my mission for the day.

    The Kentmere Fells
    The Kentmere Fells

    A single-track road runs out of Staveley, crossing over the River Kent and roughly tracking its bank for about four miles until it reaches the picturesque village of Kentmere. Parking is limited, but it’s only 06:30 am and there are a couple of free spaces by the village hall. Twenty years ago, I might have considered it a “result” to be crawling into bed at the time I crawled out of it this morning. These days, I can imagine no finer time to be out.

    It’s August – high summer – a time of dusty tracks and straw-coloured grass, wilting and yellowing as long warm days edge lazily toward autumn…

    Only that doesn’t really happen anymore. Such notions are wistful nostalgia for halcyon summers, long-since lost to the vagaries of climate change. In recent years, August has become the rainy season. But today is a rare exception. The sky is a clear expanse of cobalt, streaked with slender strands of cirrus, and thanks to all the rain, the meadows are green and vibrant, retaining something of their spring vitality.

    From a paddock, a huddle of herdwicks eye me with idle curiosity; birdsong fills my ears and the day feels pregnant with possibility. Faint wisps of mist cling to the valley’s pockets as I start up the Garburn track, passing the monumental Badger Rock: a prodigious rhyolite boulder and a popular challenge for rock climbers. I pass old gnarled trees, with twisted roots protruding, and craggy outcrops, dressed in purple heather. The stony track climbs steadily at first, then more steeply after Crabtree Brow. After about a mile and a quarter, it reaches the crest and I turn right on to the grassy path that climbs to the summit of Yoke.

    The Badger Rock
    The Badger Rock

    Beyond the walled green meadows and dark woods of the Troutbeck valley, the long blue ribbon of Windermere snakes south toward Morecambe Bay; the sea, a silver haze, dissolving into the horizon. Across the valley, Red Screes rise above the Kirkstone Pass. Yoke’s eastern face is the formidable cliff of Rainsborough Crag, but on top it is a grassy hill, remarkable mostly for its views. From the summit on though, the ridge assumes a mountain countenance. The path makes a small dip then ascends to the imperious peak of Ill Bell.

    Windermere from Ill Bell
    Windermere from Ill Bell

    A trinity of well-built cairns stands guard; little stone towers that bookend the vista over Windermere. This is a majestic grandstand. Ahead, the ridge sweeps on over Froswick to the wide grassy plateau of Thornthwaite Crag, then curves east over High Street’s shoulder to Mardale Ill Bell – Ill Bell’s namesake – which thrusts out a grassy spur in greeting.

    The spur is Lingmell End and it splits the valley head in two. Beyond, lies the Nan Bield Pass, but on this side, Gavel Crag and Bleathwaite Crag enclose the deep bowl of Hall Cove, where the river Kent springs into life. You can trace the nascent stream as it cascades down the fell side to feed the Kentmere Reservoir.

    Ill Bell Summit
    Ill Bell Summit

    Imagine for a moment, that you’re standing near an old stone bridge in Kendal watching the river gently lap its arches. Games of bowls play out before the Georgian opulence of the Abbott Hall Art Gallery. The scene is one of civic order and serenity; the river a benign presence, whispering an ambient lullaby. Out here though, you realise the Kent is born a wilder beast. When engorged and enraged by a storm like Desmond, it’s not hard to imagine how it could burst its banks and wreak violence on a trusting community that had mistakenly considered it tame… And how it would take a lot more than De Gilpin’s sword to stop it.

    Thornthwaite Crag and Hall Cove
    Froswick, Thornthwaite Crag, Hall Cove & Lingmell End

    Beyond the summit, the stony path drops steeply to the saddle. A fell-runner stops to say hello, breaking her arduous jog up the slope. She’s the first person I’ve seen.

    Froswick’s summit stands ever so slightly west of Ill Bell and gives an even grander view down Windermere. Ill Bell itself presents a steep green flank and the Kentmere Reservoir nestles at its foot. The reservoir is not a natural lake but was built in 1848 to provide a controlled water supply to a gunpowder mill, a wood mill, a snuff mill and the James Cropper paper mill, now the sole owner.

    It looks half-drained. Perhaps the paper mill is conducting repairs. The water supply is no longer required for paper making, but James Cropper dutifully maintains it with an environmental focus.

    Windermere & Ill Bell from Froswick
    Windermere & Ill Bell from Froswick

    Ill Bell & the Kentmere Reservoir
    Ill Bell & the Kentmere Reservoir

    Beyond Froswick, the path splits. The right fork leads on to High Street. I take the left and climb to the summit of Thornthwaite Crag, its fourteen foot cairn, known as The Beacon, a stately slate tower commanding attention. A drystone wall runs out to meet it then crumbles into a straight line of stones, stretching out into the distance like a Richard Long artwork.

    Thornthwaite Beacon
    Thornthwaite Beacon

    Tumble down wall, Thornthwaite Crag
    Tumble down wall, Thornthwaite Crag

    Perception is easily tricked. You would swear Ill Bell is the highest of these fells – steep sides tapering to a point suggest elevation – but the flatter top of Thornthwaite Crag is higher. Higher still is High Street, the parent peak, rising in a whale-back between Hayeswater and Haweswater. Thornthwaite Crag is part of the High Street ridge, but it has its own ridge too, running out over Grey Crag to encircle the head of Hayeswater.

    Gazing back, I spot the second person of the day. He’s carrying a mountain bike up the long slope from Froswick. He must have hauled it all the way from the Garburn Pass. He waves when he reaches the top, then mounts and heads off towards Mardale Ill Bell to ride the Nan Bield Pass. Providing he doesn’t catch a pedal and catapult himself into the reservoir, it’ll be an exhilarating experience. I hope so – it’s a long way to hike with a bike on your back for a thrill that will be over in minutes. Wraparound shades and a helmet can’t hide the look on his face, however. I know it instantly. It’s freedom.

    The Missing Peak

    After a while, I set off along the ridge towards High Street. I was up there a fortnight ago, so I’ll skip the summit and make straight for Mardale Ill Bell. Before I do, my attention is distracted by the vision to the west. Hayeswater is an azure reflection of the sky, glistening at the foot of sun-gilded slopes. Beyond, wispy clouds part to unveil the brutal bulk of Fairfield and its northern turret, Cofa Pike, dropping to Deepdale Hause to rub shoulders with St Sunday Crag. Behind them, stands the entire rank of the Helvellyn range. Blencathra commandeers the northern sky, while further west, Great Gable rises, an almighty, rough-hewn rotunda, like a prodigious, primeval St Paul’s.

    Hayeswater
    Hayeswater

    Fairfield from Thornthwaite Crag
    Fairfield from Thornthwaite Crag

    I’m transfixed. With the changing light, the scene is transforming, coming into ever sharper focus. I stop every few yards to take photos in the vain hope I might capture something of its splendour. I’m aware I need to bear right soon, but the sun catches Striding Edge and I’m fumbling for my camera again. I just can’t tear my gaze away.

    Helvellyn & Catstye Cam
    Helvellyn & Catstye Cam

    When I do, I have a disorienting realisation – High Street has disappeared. It should be straight ahead. I wonder if I’ve missed a turn and come too far west. The summit must be further over, but I can’t work out why I can’t see it.

    I cross a wall to the east side of the ridge, expecting to see the Kentmere Reservoir. And there, indeed, is water. Only it’s significantly bigger; and it’s gained an island.

    There is a fell where Mardale Ill Bell should be, but it’s an entirely different shape. Everything is somehow familiar and yet completely wrong. It’s as if I’m drinking tea but expecting coffee and can’t make sense of it.

    I look behind – I can see Thornthwaite Crag, but Froswick and Ill Bell are obscured by a large summit that wasn’t there before. On the left, a long ridge leads up to it, at once alien and familiar, like someone you know, but bump into out of context and can’t place. I reach for the map.

    “Are you heading for High Raise?”, a cheery voice asks from behind.

    I turn to see a white-haired man with a big smile and bags of enthusiasm. He sees the map and can’t help himself, he’s straight over to compare routes. “We’re missing out High Raise this time and heading straight for Kidsty Pike”, he says and nods at the shape-shifting Mardale Ill Bell.

    With those words, I know exactly where I am, I’m  just at a loss as to how I got here. I look back at the large fell behind me. The wall runs up over the top with a scraggy path in tow, but a better path traverses the western side, a little below the summit. This is the route I followed, so entranced by the view, that I managed to walk all the way over the top of High Street without noticing.

    My new companion is scratching his head. “I can’t make out where we are on here”, he says, puzzling over the contours.

    “You won’t”, I reply. “It’s the wrong map”. High Street spans the divide between two. I dig out the one that covers the northern region and fess up about my half-wittery. He chuckles and I bid him farewell as he heads for Kidsty Pike. I look down at the lake where I thought the Kentmere Reservoir should be. It’s a reservoir right enough. It serves Manchester; the remains of Mardale Green lie below its surface. It’s Haweswater.

    Across the valley, the ridge has every right to look familiar. It’s Riggindale Edge – the finest way up High Street and a route I’ve taken many times – most recently, just two weeks ago. And yet then, as on every previous occasion, I turned left at the summit and returned over Mardale Ill Bell and Harter Fell. Why have I never come this way to visit Rampsgill Head, High Raise and Kidsty Pike? They look magnificent and I resolve to return.

    Riggindale Edge
    Riggindale Edge

    It’s a promise I’ll keep twice in the weeks to come. The first time, I’ll meet a man from Lincolnshire in the gloom as the cloud descends. Together we’ll seek out these summits in fog. A month later, I’ll retrace our steps in the golden light of autumn. This time, the fells will echo with the bark of rutting stags…

    I follow the wall back to the top of High Street.

    Last Rays

    It starts to cloud over as I reach the summit of Mardale Ill Bell, adding drama to the vistas over Haweswater and Small Water.

    Haweswater
    Haweswater

    Small Water & Haweswater
    Small Water & Haweswater

    The rocky path to the top of Harter Fell looks tough as I descend to the Nan Bield Pass but its bark turns out to be worse than its bite. The path zig zags up through the crags and doesn’t test tired legs as much as I feared. Before long, I’m standing by its strange summit cairn, wrought from old iron fence posts.

    From here, I follow the fence south over increasingly boggy ground. The sun retreats behind the building cloud. It’s an unwelcome reminder that summer’s almost gone. As if to reinforce the darkening mood, the top of Kentmere Pike is drab and featureless. The perfect pyramid of Ill Bell rises opposite across a plain of russet grass, but it feels autumnal now – the late summer sunshine I enjoyed on its summit seems an age ago. The wind whips up and starts to nip. I plod on through black mud, trying not to sink.

    Ill Bell from Kentmere Pike
    Ill Bell from Kentmere Pike

    But like a feisty boar, summer’s not so easily defeated. Ahead, shafts of light pierce the gloom and hit the Kentmere valley, conjuring a vivid green oasis beyond the sombre brown of the fell. As I reach a ladder stile and start the climb to Shipman Knotts, the clouds roll back, and summer’s reign is gloriously reinstated.

    Where Kentmere Pike lacked interest, Shipman Knotts is a beguiling maze of tumble-down walls and rocky outcrops. Heather sprouts from the crags and bracken-clad slopes roll away to Longsleddale. All is lit with the warm ember glow of afternoon sun and a sense of deep contentment kicks in.

    Shipman Knotts
    Shipman Knotts

    Wray Crag
    Wray Crag

    At Wray Crag, a steep descent down rocky steps brings me to the Sadgill to Kentmere track. I follow the track towards Kentmere, relishing the soft afternoon light. Shortly after joining the road, I climb a stile into the first of two bracken-filled enclosures. They lead gently down to a small wooden footbridge over the Kent. It’s pretty beyond compare – a leafy parade of dappled sunlight, sparkling waters and foliage in every shade of green. I’m still smiling as I walk through Kentmere churchyard and back to the car.

    Footbridge over the Kent
    Footbridge over the Kent

    Some days are simply perfect. This has been one of them. A tremendous ridge walk and a late rallying of summer. With the coming autumn, the days will shorten, the green will fade, the leaves will wither, and a damp chill will invade. But today will stay with me and its memory will bring warmth.

    Many of our finest poets have extolled the restorative powers of the countryside, but it’s the Foo Fighters who are playing in my head, “Times like these, you learn to live again. Times like these – time and time again”.

    River Kent
    River Kent

    To find a map and directions for this route, visit WalkLakes.co.uk


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      Manchester, So Much to Answer For

      High Street and Harter Fell from Mardale Head, Haweswater

      High Street is the highest English mountain east of Kirkstone. The Romans built a road over it and farmers raced horses up there. Wainwright called its ascent from Mardale “the connoisseur’s route”. On this classic Lakeland hill walk, I encounter a drowned village and the last of the English golden eagles.

      The Drowned Village

      It was last orders for the Dun Bull Inn in 1935. When the bell rang  time, it didn’t just mark the end of drinking hours but the end of days for the small farming village of Mardale Green.  The Manchester Corporation had bought the land and was busy constructing a dam on the lake to flood the valley and provide a reservoir for its burgeoning municipal population.

      A rural community, hundreds of years old, was to be broken up and consigned to a watery grave; its residents dispersed; their homes razed by the explosives of the Royal Engineers; their ancestors exhumed from their graves and reburied ten miles away in Shap; their church dismantled stone by stone and used to build a water take off tower for the reservoir. There would be no compensation beyond a sum paid to the Diocese of Carlisle for the church.

      Mardale Head
      Mardale Head, Haweswater

      The dam itself was considered a feat of modern engineering but it’s hard to imagine the locals saw it that way. They must have wondered why they should give up their homes and their history for the sake of a distant city they had little connection with. Morrissey wrote Suffer Little Children about the Moors Murders but Mardale residents might have identified with the sentiment, “oh Manchester, so much to answer for”.

      Today Mardale Green sleeps beneath the tranquil surface of Haweswater, the most easterly and secluded of the Cumbrian lakes; a place of spectacular natural beauty despite the artifice in its construction. It’s hardly an unbroken slumber, however. Every now and again, during a dry spell when the rainfall is scarce and the waters recede, the spectre of the sunken village emerges to remind the world what happened here.

      Mardale Green
      The sunken village

      The Last of the Golden Eagles

      When we visited in 2001, the rocky crags above the western bank were home to England’s only pair of nesting golden eagles.  We made our way over marshy ground to the RSPB hide in Riggindale,  where an excited steward steered us to a telescope in time to see the male perched majestically on the cliff as the female circled. In Scotland they call buzzards “telegraph eagles” in memory of every tourist who’s seen a buzzard on a telegraph pole and sworn they’ve seen an eagle; but when you witness the magnificent six foot wingspan of the real thing, you’ve no doubt you’re in the presence of a king among birds.

      A little less fortunate was an American couple who visited just an hour before. Neither bird was in sight, so undeterred, they resolved to return, and asked the steward, “what time do you feed them?”  When, he explained the birds are wild, they shrugged huffily, as if this were a poor excuse, and sauntered off in search of a cafe and gift shop.

      The female died in 2004 (the eagle, not the pushy American) leaving the male, known locally as Eddy, to lead a solitary (and celibate) existence. Sadly, he has failed to appear since November 2015 so, with each passing month, hopes fade and the fear grows that our last surviving English eagle has finally cocked his talons.

      Swine Crag
      Swine Crag and Eagle Crag

      Haweswater teems with wildlife however. It’s a nature reserve where red deer, red squirrels, peregrines, buzzards and mountain birds such as the ring ouzel can be spotted. For all that, the Dutch exchange students who visit for their studies invariably stare awestruck at the hills; and it’s the hills that draw me back here too.

      The Connoisseur’s Route Up High Street

      At 2,718 ft, the wide whale-backed ridge of High Street is the highest point east of Kirkstone; so named for the road the Romans built along its long flat top to connect Ambleside and Brougham. The hill is a grassy ridge to the north and south but to the east, above Mardale Head, it is a precipitous cliff descending dramatically to surround the volcanic crater of Blea Water, creating a natural amphitheatre not unlike Helvellyn and Red Tarn. Wainwright described the ascent from Mardale as “the connoisseur’s route”. This was my first fell walk, seventeen years ago, and one I love to repeat.

      Blea Water
      Blea Water and High Street

      From the car park at the end of the shore road, I follow the path round the head of the lake and up to the Rigg, a wooded promontory jutting out above the drowned village. I turn left before the tumble-down wall and begin the steep ascent of a long ridge over the beautifully named Swine Crag, Heron Crag and Eagle Crag (which appropriately is exactly where we saw the eagle perched).  The views over Haweswater, Riggindale and Kidsty Pike are superb and only improve as you gain height along the spine of Rough Crag, with the blue expanse of Blea Water an impressive vista to your left. After the marshy depression of Caspel Gate, with its own tiny tarn and bad-weather escape route to Blea Water, I begin the final scramble to the top, climbing the aptly named Long Stile.

      Blea Water
      Blea Water from Long Stile

      In contrast to the rugged, rocky drama of the ascent, the summit is a flat grassy plain traversed by a dry stone wall.  Close your eyes and imagine the fairs held here in the 18th and 19th centuries where Cumberland and Westmorland wrestlers locked arms and farmers raced their horses – the top is still known as Racecourse Hill. Go back further and picture the cohorts of Roman Legionaries marching between forts. Most Lakeland peaks were remote, secluded spaces but High Street was a hive of activity.  Today if you hear the sound of heavy boots coming towards you, it’s trekking poles not spears they carry and Goretex rather than armour plate they don for protection. If you hear a neigh or whinny, cast an eye out for the wild fell ponies that sometimes graze here.

      Look north-west then slowly track around to the south to see a procession of celebrated Lakeland summits: Skiddaw and Blencathra, St Sunday Crag, Fairfield and the Helvellyn range, Great Gable, the Scafells, Bow Fell, Crinkle Crags and the Coniston Fells.  To the south springs the distinctive skyline of the Kentmere peaks and the next section of the walk is shared with the popular “Kentmere Round” which circuits the neighbouring valley.

      Fairfield
      Fairfield from High Street

      From the trig point, I follow the wall then veer off left on the path to Mardale Ill Bell. From its summit I descend to the Nan Bield Pass. This was the old packhorse route linking Mardale and Kentmere but is now the preserve of ramblers and mountain bikers.  The views on both sides are unforgettable and the pass itself sports a large stone shelter which offers a good windbreak for a rest and revitalising snack before the final pull up to the summit of Harter Fell with its strange cairn made from old iron fence posts. I descend via the Gatescarth pass back to the car park.

      Mardale Head
      Mardale Head from Harter Fell

      As I drive away along the shore of Haweswater, I spare a thought for the submerged village of Mardale Green and the golden eagles that once soared here.  Shot, trapped and poisoned to edge of extinction by farmers and gamekeepers fearing for their lambs and game birds, conservation efforts now abound to encourage them back. But as Natural England issues new licenses to shoot buzzards, I wonder what lessons we’ve really learned; as Otis Redding sang: “You don’t miss your water till your well runs dry” – a lyric with an ironic twist in Mardale.


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