Ennerdale valley ©Andrew Locking

Ennerdale

Tucked into the central far west of the had an effect on the tradition of farming important victory and the society went , Ennerdale runs from east Herdwick sheep. Up until then, Ennerdale on to become The Friends of the Lake to west from the high central fells to held a vital place in the Herdwick story, District. However, some infrastructure the rolling hills and moorland of West but 2,000 sheep had to be removed did arrive when Ennerdale Water was and the coastal plain. from Gillerthwaite and Ennerdale Dale developed as a water supply for West It is the only major Lake District valley to when the valley was forested. However, Cumbria from 1864. have no public road along it. there are still 16 farms with fell-grazing livestock in the wider Ennerdale valley. Today, the Wild Ennerdale Project Although sparsely populated even continues the legacy of looking after the today, there have been settlers in From a literary perspective, Ennerdale environment with a vision to “allow the Ennerdale since prehistoric times with inspired Wordsworth’s poem ‘The evolution of Ennerdale as a wild valley a concentration of evidence around Brothers’ in 1800 after he and Coleridge for the benefit of people, relying more Stockdale Moor and Town Bank, in visited the valley a year earlier, but on the natural processes to shape its the form of burial sites and farming perhaps the area’s largest cultural landscape and ecology”. settlements. Cairns and hut circles impact has been on the sport of can be found where the River Calder rock climbing. It was at Rock in Water extraction, farming and forestry and Whoap Beck meet. There are also Ennerdale that true rock climbing began. have all played their part in shaping the remains of Romano-British farmsteads Previously thought unclimbable, local landscape here, but it is really its striking at Low Gillerthwaite and at Tongue How. shepherd John Atkinson scaled Pillar in natural features that give Ennerdale its Norse immigrants would have settled 1824 and kick-started a passion for this overwhelming character of wildness and here in the 12th century. During medieval tricky piece of rock that climbers from all tranquillity. times, much land would have been over the world share to this day. under monastic influence and it was at this period that the mineral potential of Ennerdale has been an active place for the valley was realised with the mining the conservation movement. The fact and smelting of iron ore. that the valley has no railway today is down to strong opposition by Canon In the 1920s, the Forestry Commission Rawnsley and the Lake District Defence purchased Ennerdale and created a Society to a line for transporting iron blanket of commercial conifer forest. This ore from the valley head. This was an

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