Two Herdwicks in ©Andrew Locking ©Andrew Borrowdale in Two Herdwicks

Borrowdale and Bassenthwaite

The largest of the 13 Lakeland valleys, Borrowdale was a key area for the is today owned by the National Trust. the Borrowdale and Bassenthwaite valley Company of Mines Royal, set up by the Also under the National Trust’s protection extends from the high of Rossett English Crown in 1568. The remains of is the photogenic Ashness Bridge, offering Pike and Esk Hause in the south to the Mines Royal copper and lead mines can spectacular views over Bassenthwaite northern edge of the Caldbeck Fells and be seen at Goldscope in the Newlands Lake and the River Derwent. the wide, coastal plain of the Solway valley, along with the copper mines of Firth. It includes the major glacial lakes of Long Work, St Thomas’ Work and Poets Southey and Coleridge both took up Derwent Water and Bassenthwaite as well Dalehead. What’s left of a unique mining residence at various times at Greta Hall in as the busy tourist centre of Keswick. operation can be found on the slopes Keswick, while the poet Shelley also lived above Seathwaite in Borrowdale where briefly in Keswick. The Wordsworths The valley is also home to rare upland hay ‘wad,’ or pure graphite, was mined from were frequent visitors to the region and meadows and its steep fellsides carry one the 16th century. In the 1800s, Keswick Borrowdale features in many of William of the largest oak woodlands in , became the world centre of pencil Wordsworth’s poems. containing many rare native species. manufacturing and the Keswick Pencil The Borrowdale and Bassenthwaite Borrowdale and Bassenthwaite have been Museum, on the site of a 1920s factory, Valley is also highly important for the settled from at least the Neolithic period tells the story. Slate and wool are also early conservation movement. John and there is evidence there was a stone vital industries to the region. Marshall, and others keen to preserve the axe production site on Carrock . Other In 1778, Thomas West’s guidebook beauty of the area, bought key parts of early monuments from this period include identified a series of key viewing Borrowdale in order to prevent damaging the large stone circle at Elva Plain, east of stations around Derwent Water and development. Canon Rawnsley, vicar for Bassenthwaite Lake. The small hillforts Bassenthwaite and by the late 18th many years of the Parish of Crosthwaite, at Castle Crag in Borrowdale and Castle century, Keswick began to develop led the battle against a proposed railway How by Bassenthwaite Lake may date to as a tourist centre for the wealthier on the west side of Derwent Water to the either the later prehistoric or early medieval visitors. The Bowder Stone became, Honister slate quarries, and the National periods. There is a Roman fort at Caermote, and still is, one of the quirkiest tourist Trust, of which Rawnsley was a founder, north of Bassenthwaite Lake, and a well- attractions. Located in the ‘Jaws of made its first purchases of land in the preserved group of Roman period native Borrowdale’, the enormous stone English here at Brandlehow. settlements survive at Aughertree Fell. balances improbably on one edge and

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