LIMESTONE LANDSCAPES For more information about the The Orton Fells area contact: LIMESTONE Great Asby Scar National Nature Reserve English Nature Location Juniper House LANDSCAPES Murley Moss The Orton Fells, to the east of the Lake District, have Oxenholme Road some of the most spectacular limestone pavements Kendal, in Europe. The fells are bounded by the small LA9 7RL The Orton Fells villages of Orton, Great Asby, , and Crosby Garret. The pavements run Little Asby Common Friends of the east west along the top of an escarpment and form Lake District the four distinct masses of (west to east) Crosby Murley Moss Ravensworth Fell, Orton Scar, Great Asby Scar and Oxenholme Road Little Asby Scar. This is the most extensive area of Kendal, Cumbria LA9 7RL pavements in the UK outside the Ingleborough area For more information about in Yorkshire. Most of the landscape is protected by limestone pavements and both Site of Special Scientific Interest and candidate nature conservation contact: Special Area of Conservation designations because of its international importance. The land is partly The Limestone Pavement privately owned, part is common land and English Action Group Nature manages part as a National Nature Reserve. Cumbria Wildlife Friends of the Lake District own the extensive area Trust of Little Asby Scar. Plumgarths Crook Road Kendal, Cumbria, LA8 8LX Access www.limestone-pavements.org.uk There are bus services from Kendal, Appleby and Penrith to many of the villages surrounding the Orton Fells. For bus times and information contact Cumbria Travel Line on 0870 6082608. Using public transport links you to a network of quiet bridleways and footpaths. The map on this leaflet shows these The RMC Environment Fund has been footpaths and suggests some areas for limited car established under the Landfill Tax parking. Most areas of common land and downland Credit Scheme and is managed by The Environment Council (limestone grassland) will formally become open access from summer 2005. More information on OS Map Explorer 19. Please look after this special area by doing the following: This leaflet was funded by the RMC Published 2004 Keep mountain bikes and horses to Environment Fund, the Countryside public bridleways Agency and Friends of the Lake District. Thanks to Cumbria County Use gates and stiles provided – don’t climb walls Council for providing the 01539 737913 Leave flowers and fossils for others to enjoy archaeological information for Take litter home this leaflet. Close gates Front cover pictures: Birds foot trefoil, Take care when walking in the area as wet bloody cranesbill, common spotted limestone pavements are slippery and dangerous. orchid. Main picture: male fern at Great Asby Scar. www.sinclair-design.co.uk

LIMESTONE LANDSCAPES The Orton Fells

Geology Geomorphology Wildlife The spectacular expanses of limestone During the last ice age 10 000 years ago, The birdlife found on the Orton Fells is pavement in the Orton Fells formed from the limestone was covered by an ice- typical of upland pastureland. Meadow pipits and wheatears breed on the limestone rock laid down underwater in a sheet many hundreds of metres thick. grassland surrounding the pavements geological period called the This scoured and sculpted the limestone with wrens actually nesting among the Carboniferous some 350 million years bedrock. When the ice melted, it left limestone outcrops. Buzzards, ravens ago. When walking across the limestone sediment on top of the rock. This was and kestrels are seen frequently, pavement you can find fossils of the colonised by trees and plants as the as are curlews, golden plover and ancient corals, shelly creatures and sea weather warmed. Water running lapwings. Skylarks can be heard singing during the spring and lilies from which the rock is made. The through the soil found weaknesses in the summer months. fossils show that the rock was deposited rocks that were then eroded becoming in a warm shallow sea. The pavements of deep fissures between hard upstanding There are few mammals found on Raven the pavement. Rabbits are the only the Orton Fells are of exceptional blocks of limestone. The fissures are animals you are likely to see during the geological importance as they are a known as grikes and the blocks as clints. day, but foxes, stoats and moles are all record of the changing nature of the The water also left channels and hollows known to use the area. earth’s surface. The folded and tilted in the rock, which were exposed as the The pavements are home to many pavements of this area are of particular soil was washed away over thousands of invertebrates, including spiders that use note, demonstrating huge forces in the years. These runnels and pits now make the grikes of the limestone pavement to crust that buckled and uplifted the up the beautiful and intricate patterns string their webs across to catch insects. limestones. There are also two rare species of snails; that can be seen on the Orton Fells it is possible to find their empty shells in pavements. many places on the pavement.

Eyebright Fossil Corals Heather Hart’ s-tongue fern Herb Paris LIMESTONE LANDSCAPES The Orton Fells

Human history on the Orton Fells

The many archaeological remains on the One of the most important There are 23 small quarries and 20 lime Lime has been used in building works Orton Fells show that this area has been Romano-British sites at Orton Fells is the kilns recorded in the local area. Most of since Roman times. Mortar for laying intensively settled and farmed for Castle Folds Settlement. This site, which these were used over the course of the masonry was made by mixing lime with thousands of years. Its current wild and was heavily fortified, can be found on last 500 years for processing lime for sand, and to make concrete the lime was empty character is in strange contrast to top of one of the limestone scars which agricultural and domestic use. mixed with materials such as crushed the busy Stone Age settlements, large would have made it all but inaccessible stone. Plasterwork also used lime. Lime In the eighteenth and nineteenth Roman earthworks and hive of lime to people trying to attack it. The walls white, a mixture of lime and water, was centuries lime was one of the most production activity. (which are still in existence) were up to used for painting walls, the traditional widespread non-food manufactured 3m high and there are the ruins of a "whitewash". The material from which products. Although used in many The earliest recorded archaeological sites number of stone huts inside it. There are lime is derived is calcium carbonate are dated as Mesolithic, which is between different manufacturing processes, the also the remains of a number of other (CaCO3) that occurs principal use was for agriculture. In 6000 to 8000 years ago. Flints and stone Roman settlements and earthworks on naturally as agriculture lime was used as a treatment axes have been found from this era. the Orton Fells. limestone. There is also a Bronze Age (6000 years for heavy soils to improve drainage and ago) stone circle on Crosby Ravensworth The many deserted settlements on the to make the land more easily worked. Fell that consists of 11 fallen granite Orton Fells pavements indicate that Lime is an essential plant food and its boulders in a circle and a number of people have been settled in the area for presence is crucial in fair quantities to outlying stones. This is an important thousands of years. There is evidence of produce good crops. indication that prehistoric people were copper mining along a mineral vein in using the Orton Fells pavements for both the Potts Valley and also on stone circle work and religious purposes. Winderwath Common, right in the centre of the parking Limestone Fern Th y m e pavement area. limekiln

Castle Fold settlement

Deserted settlement Crosby Ravensworth Great Asby public/permitted footpath (mountain bikes NOT permitted) B6260 to public bridleway Appleby-in- (mountain bikes permitted) & A66 Great Asby Scar National Nature Reserve

CROSBY GAYTHORNE RAVENSWORTH PLAIN FELL To Brough & Kirkby Stephen

GREAT ASBY SCAR ORTON . SCAR Little Crosby Asby Garrett

LITTLE ASBY

B6261 to Y

J39 on M6 E & Shap L L A V Orton T S P O T Sunbiggin Raisbeck Tarn B6260 to J38 on M6 B6261 M6 Angular Solomon’ s-seal Plants The grikes are home to a number of very they form twisted miniature bonsais. interesting plants. Considering that However, on Great Asby Scar National Damage to the pavements nowadays the Orton Fells are a mosaic of Nature Reserve, the grazing pressure on windswept grasslands and pavement with the pavement has been reduced or In the last 50 years, a large area of very little woodland, the plants found in removed. In these areas the trees have limestone pavement on Gaythorn Plain the grikes are unusual as many of them been able to grow above the top of the (part of Orton Scar) was removed for the are woodland species. This is the remains grikes and some of them are now two or rock garden, building and landscaping of the forest that covered the area until three metres in height. This increases the markets. This stripping has left a mass of humans colonised it in prehistoric times. biodiversity value of the pavement and rubble where previously there were clints allows plants and ferns to flower and Rigid-buckler fern Deep in the grikes, protected from and grikes. It is a sad example of the thrive. grazing animals and the drying effect of total devastation of limestone pavements the wind can be found plants such as Much of the pavement is surrounded by Current use caused by commercial extraction in the honeysuckle, hart’s-tongue fern, wood species rich limestone grassland. Most of the Orton Fells pavements are recent past. Only 3% of limestone anemone, herb Paris, lesser meadow rue Interesting species include blue moor now used for agriculture, with grazing pavements in the UK now remain and dog’s-mercury along with the grass, bird’s-foot trefoil, fairy flax, of sheep being the most common use. undamaged, and although this is an nationally scarce species rigid-buckler limestone bedstraw, thyme and Much of the area is common land extreme case of damage, it does fern, limestone fern and angular eyebright. The grassland also contains meaning that some local people have demonstrate that the protection of Solomon’s-seal. flowers such as horseshoe vetch, autumn ‘commoners’ rights’ to use the area for limestone pavements by law is necessary. gentian, common rockrose and a number a certain number of sheep or cattle. All of the Orton Fells pavement is now Also found in the grikes are small ash, of orchid species. There are also areas of There is still some small-scale limestone protected by Limestone Pavement Orders hawthorn and hazel trees. In the areas heathland on deeper soil with ling extraction but limestone pavement is not which make extraction or damage a of the Scar that are grazed, these trees heather, bell heather and bilberry. under threat from these operations. criminal offence. are kept in the protective grikes where