Claife Viewing Station, Windermere ©John Hodgson ©John Windermere Station, Viewing Claife

Windermere

Reaching southwards from the central Evidence of the earliest human activity Bowness-on-Windermere quickly mountain core of the Lake District down in the valley comes from Mesolithic flints expanded to cater for the increasing to the sea, the Windermere valley is found under the Ambleside Roman fort numbers of visitors. a vast and varied landscape, featuring, to the north. There are also probable as its glorious centrepiece, England’s Bronze Age burial cairns on the Tongue In the 20th century, Windermere was longest and largest natural lake. at Troutbeck and on Cunswick and the focus of a number of writers. Arthur Scout Scars near Kendal. There is Ransome wrote his classic ‘Swallows and Formed in a glacial trough, running likely to have been Norse settlement Amazons’ at Low Ludderburn. In 1930, north-south after the ice retreated in the area and by the medieval period a 23 year-old Alfred Wainwright did his around 12,000 years ago, the famous Bowness was an important fishing village, first Lakeland walk at Orrest Head above lake measures 18 kilometres in length, centred on catching Windermere char. Windermere and started his lifelong derives its name from a blend of the love affair with the region, writing and Old Norse place-name ‘Vinandr’ and an In the 16th and 17th centuries, farming illustrating his best-selling guides. John Old English word ‘mere’ meaning lake. It was reorganised and expanded with Cunliffe, a Kendal schoolteacher, created contains 18 islands in total, many of them many new walled fields being created his ‘Postman Pat’ books around a fictional heavily wooded, and its outflow, the whilst, at the same time, a new Lakeland valley, based on Longsleddale. River Leven, eventually winds its way out prosperity led to a period of rebuilding. into Morecambe Bay. Although simply There are many examples of fine Conservation is a vital part of named Windermere, many people refer statesmen farm buildings from that time Windermere’s history, with the first to it as Lake Windermere, so as to not that remain today - including Townend, environmental protest targeted against get it confused with the village of the The Crag, Longmire Year, High Green the building of the railway from Kendal. same name. and Town Head. The conservation movement also prevented the construction of reservoirs All around the lake is a rich and diverse In 1847, the arrival of the railway enabled and an airplane factory in the valley and landscape, from the more rugged volcanic a new level of tourism to Windermere. halted the railway line extension further northern basin to the softer shales and Along with its general accessibility by into the Lake District. gentle fells of the southern basin. The coach, the valley became an incredibly eastern shore is more accessible and popular attraction – not just for the Windermere is still one of the Lake therefore more populated than the more wealthy but for working-class visitors District’s most popular valleys for densely wooded west side. too. The villages of Windermere and visitors and a thriving community of farming and industry.

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