Buttermere from Hindscarth Edge ©Andrew Locking ©Andrew Edge Hindscarth from Buttermere

Buttermere

Nestling serenely in the north-west the hardy Herdwick breed. Other the Royal Academy. Broadcaster Melvyn corner of the Lake District, Buttermere’s industries here included some limited Bragg wrote an account of the true story classic U-shaped glacial valley contains mining, thanks to the discovery of of Mary Robinson in his popular novel not one but three lakes – Buttermere, haematite in the west side of the valley ‘The Maid of Buttermere’. Mary was the Crummock Water and Loweswater. and some iron production in medieval daughter of the landlord of the Fish Inn, a Buttermere runs out from the central times. The remains of 14 iron smelting hostelry that still welcomes visitors in the fells, through the meandering Derwent furnace sites, or bloomeries, can be valley today. Valley on towards the mouth of the lovely found around Crummock Water, Solway Firth, creating a scene that Alfred Loweswater and east of Buttermere. The story of conservation around Wainwright described in his ‘Pictorial But it is the results of the mining of Buttermere is a fascinating one. In Guides to the Lakeland Fells’ Lakeland slate that dominate the 1814, with the encouragement and as a place where “loneliness, solitude and landscape at the head of the valley at involvement of Wordsworth, John silence prevail that make the Honister Hause. Marshall, the Leeds industrialist, bought scene unforgettable”. extensive landholdings around the lakes In their 1799 walking tour, both of Buttermere, Crummock Water and Neolithic or Bronze Age settlement in the Wordsworth and Coleridge visited Loweswater, with the aim of maintaining valley can be traced through the rock art Buttermere. In his ‘Notebook’, the beauty of the area. Large parts of the at Mill Beck, Buttermere and Crummock Coleridge wrote lyrically of a striking valley have subsequently been purchased Water. There are also a number of yew tree. This was the same tree by the National Trust and the whole of prehistoric summit cairns, including those later celebrated by Wordsworth in his the valley head of Buttermere is covered at Carling Knott and Grasmoor, and it is poem ‘Yew Trees’. Although damaged by a restrictive covenant agreed with G. thought that an Iron Age hillfort stood at and reduced by a storm, the yew tree M. Trevelyan in 1937. Canon Rawnsley Loweswater. Early medieval and Norse still stands today on the bank of the also managed to lead a successful protest settlement is reflected in words such as Whit Beck, behind the village hall. to prevent the building of a railway from ‘thwaite’ (clearing), ‘scale’ (summer farm) JMW Turner’s visit to the valley was Keswick to Buttermere to serve the and ‘kirk’ (church) in local place names. transformative for him as an artist and Honister slate quarry. Together, these his spectacular ‘Buttermere Lake, with conservation activities have led to the Sheep farming, as it has been for centuries, Part of Cromackwater, Cumberland, a preservation of a strikingly beautiful and is the principal occupation in Buttermere Shower’ was shown in an exhibition at pastoral valley. and it is an important grazing place for

lakesworldheritage.co.uk #LakesWorldHeritage