The conservation of the Lake District

Designation of sites where nature conservation is a priority can take a number of forms. The Nature Conservancy Council has the responsi-bility for designating Sites of Special Scientific Interest, and by 1986 had designated 68 such sites.

The NCC had by then also designated four areas as National Nature Reserves, though there are numerous other candidates which would merit similar status but which through lack of resources have not been designated. Partly in recognition of this, local bodies have been active in nature conservation, and 13 local nature reserves have been established, the majority of them by the Cumbria Trust for Nature Conservation, an extremely energetic voluntary body.

Amongst the most important of the National Nature Reserves is the site at Roudsea Wood, in the extreme south of the National Park near Haverthwaite, accessible on rights of way only except by permit but nevertheless quite fascinating.

A shallow valley divides ridges of Bannisdale slate and carboniferous limestone, giving acid woodland on the former with oak and birch much in evidence; limerick woodland on the latter, based on ash and hazel but also with sycamore, wild cherry, crab apple and yew, and with a profusion of plants such as columbine, bird’s nest orchid and lily of the valley; and, in between, a marshy valley colonised by sedges and containing a small tarn. The fauna includes roe deer, red squirrels and badgers.

Rusland Moss National Nature Reserve

Rusland Moss National Nature Reserve, in the highly attractive valley of the Rusland Pool between Coniston Water and Windermere, is a fine example of a raised bog formed over the site of a shallow lake which was gradually silted up and invaded by successive waves of vegetation, culminating in the present thick pine woodland cover on the drying peat.

The pine at Rusland Moss was the source of seed for many of the seventeenth and eighteenth century pine plantations of the Lake District, and is demonstrably a different species to the much more widespread Scots pine.

At Esthwaite North Fen (Priest Pot) a typical fen habitat has developed on alluvium deposited where the Black Beck enters what was, until it was separated from the lake by silting up, the head of Esthwaite Water. The fouracre site is in the slow process of transition from open water through fen to damp woodland, with the fen colonising the remaining waters of Priest Pot at a rate of about 20cm (8in) a year over the last century.

The vegetation includes water lilies rooted in the banks built up by the Black Beck, bulrushes on the recently colonised reed swamp and sedges on the slightly drier ground. Alder and willow are also present here and represent the first signs of woodland regeneration; oak and hazel are also now well established in places.

Blelham Tarn Windermere

Blelham Tarn, west of Windermere, has long been used as a field research station; in addition to the tarn the reserve consists of a sphagnum bog and wet willow woodland. The tarn is home to trout, perch and pike and the great crested grebe nests there.

The bog is sited over two small in filled glacial kettle holes (hollows formed by the delayed melting of ice blocks) and the site has developed from open water through peaty fen and then carr to its present status. In the nineteenth century turbary (peatcutting) rights were exercised; now there is a rich variety of habitats to be protected, with plant communities representative of wet woodland, fen and sphagnum bog.

Drigg Dunes Ravenglass

At Drigg Dunes, near Ravenglass, the gullery (a local nature reserve) has a breeding colony of black headed gulls together with a consider-able variety of other seabirds, including terns, oystercatchers and ringed plover, and wildfowl such as the now ubiquitous red breasted merganser and the she duck.

Snipe and lapwing populate the estuarine marshes, while adders are plentiful, and both toads and newts breed in the freshwater ponds. The flora, where it has colonised the dunes, includes sea spurge, sea bindweed, carline thistle and bloody cranes bill, and on the shingle includes the unusual Isle of Man cabbage.

Whilst these sites are of exceptional importance because of the flora and sometimes the fauna they support, access to them is inevitably and quite rightly restricted and sites of more localised importance may well be of greater significance to the amateur naturalist or the interested layman. The second category of visitor is especially well catered for nowadays, with a burgeoning number of nature trails designed to introduce the district's habitats to a wider crosssection of the public.

Windermere walks

A selection of these nature trails must include that at Claife Heights, where a circular walk has been laid out in broad leaved woodland to the west of Windermere by the National Trust; the pied flycatcher and a variety of waterside birds are among the attractions. The Trust is also responsible for the nature trails at Friar's Crag, a well-known beauty spot near Keswick, and Loughrigg Fell, where a particularly varied nature walk passes through woods, farmland and fells ide and also follows the course of a beck for some distance.

Amongst the Cumbria Trust for Nature Conservation's contributions is the Nether Wasdale nature trail, a 5km (3 mile) walk partly alongside Wastwater, where the rapidly increasing population of the red breasted merganser is likely to be seen, together with mallards and the common sandpiper, and partly through woodland and peat bog.

Grizedale Forest walks

More specialised interests are catered for by the Forestry Commis¬sion, which has established a number of observation towers and hides within its forests. The tower (access by prior arrangement) at Spruce Knott in Grizedale Forest, well placed to view the activity of the wildfowl on Wood Moss Tarn (where both red and roe deer are also frequent visitors), is a good example.

A different kind of experience is offered at Whitbarrow Scar, near Witherslack in the south-eastern Lake District, where there is access on public rights of way to a nature reserve which includes a substantial area of limestone pavement, abruptly terminated to the west by crags and screes.

The reserve is a haven for breeding birds and there are red and roe deer in the woodland areas, whilst the flora is characteristic of limestone country, based on juniper, ash and birch. As with all these sites, Whitbarrow gives yet another indication of the diversity of the natural habitats in the National Park and of the efforts being made to conserve them.

The old landscapes of the Lake District

The Lake District is fortunate in having a good many ancient monuments which, in these days of the leisure 'industry', have become outstanding tourist attractions. The stone circle at Castlerigg near Keswick, with its stupendous view of the mountains on all sides, has become the destination of coach parties touring the Lakes; the Roman fort of Hardknott is a popular port of call for tourists in upper Eskdale; and the medieval pele towers at Muncaster, Dacre and elsewhere are familiar sights.

But the context within which these well-known features are set is a great deal less familiar. Questions such as: why are they situated where they are? when were they constructed? and why? are sometimes not easily answered. Some idea of the answers is, however, invaluable in setting the scene for visits, highly entertaining as well as educational, to some of the many prehistoric, Roman and medieval survivals in the district.

The Lake District in Prehistoric Times

If the casual visitor to Ullswater, with half a day to spare at Pooley Bridge, takes the lane beside the church and walks south-eastwards towards Helton head for about a mile he will find himself on Moor Divock, superficially just an upland sheep pasture overrun with bracken, best known for the fine view of the Helvellyn range across the lake and, to the east, a distant prospect of the Pennines across the Eden valley. But there is a great deal more to this area, and it is readily available to those willing to scratch just a little below the surface.

The broad track crossing the Heltonhead path, for example, lies on the line of High Street, the spectacular Roman road from Brocavum, the fort outside Penrith, across the High Street range to Galava (Ambleside). Yet the Roman soldiers were by no means tramping virgin territory when they came this way.

Just to the right of the Helton head path is The Cockpit, a stone circle giving a clear indica¬tion of the importance of this area before the Romans came; and to the left is its smaller brother, an unusually attractive and very well preserved cairn circle, and the Cop Stone, sole survivor of another prehistoric monument. It soon becomes apparent that the whole area is thickly populated with such features, and with other unexplained bumps and hollows.

This is a severe setback for the theory that the Lake District was regarded as of such little value in ancient times that it was largely left alone until the Viking settlers peopled the dales from the ninth century onwards. Everyone knows, of course, of the stone axe factory on Pike 0' Stickle in Great Langdale, and of the Roman forts at Galava and, more spectacularly, Hardknott at the head of Eskdale, but it now seems that it is wrong to regard them as exceptional incursions into the heart of mountain country.

The rash of burial mounds on Stockdale Moor, on the lonely fells between Wasdale and Ennerdale,and the settlements, possibly of the Roman British era, on Threlkeld Knotts, Lanthwaite Green on the shores of Crummock Water and Millrigg (Kentmere) combine with the hillforts on Carrock Fell and in Borrowdale, Mardale and above Thirlmere to provide persuasive evidence of the peopling of the prehistoric Lake District.

Eskdale and Dunnerdale

Perhaps the best scientific evidence, however, is the unspectacular, painstaking but thorough research into forest clearance and agricultural cultivation by Neolithic man at sites such as Devoke Water, in its upland basin between Eskdale and Dunnerdale, and Ehenside Tarn, near Beckermet on the coastal plain south of Egremont. The Neolithic peoples, who had reached the Lake fringes by about 4000BC, were essentially farmers, with the ability to rear animals and grow cereals. They needed room to farm, however, and their major contribution to the landscape was large-scale clearance of the forests which had, since the end of the last Ice Age, colonised the uplands.

Analysis of pollen trapped in the silts deposited in tarn beds has established that the forest cover was unbroken in about 5000BC; but Neolithic man, spreading inland from early flint working sites near the west Cumbria coast, was soon felling the trees and establishing zones of agricultural cultivation. Mounds of cleared stones near Devoke Water offer telling visual corroboration of the pollen analysis in this respect.

The settlement at Ehenside Tarn, discovered accidentally during ploughing in the nineteenth century, revealed Neolithic pottery, a stone quern for grinding the corn which was cultivated in the surrounding fields, wooden objects such as a dugout canoe with its paddle, and several stone axes.

The axes, a light greyish green in colour, came from volcanic tuffs in the Borrowdale Volcanics series, and their source has been established as one of the several stone axe 'factories' in the central fells of the Lake District on Scafell and Scafell Pike, Great End, Glaramara and, the most dramatic site of all, on Pike 0' Stickle, towering above the flat valley floor of Great Langdale. The Pike 0' Stickle axe factory, situated in a scree gully just below the summit of the mountain, is clearly seen from the valley but rather more difficult to reach across rivers of steep and unstable scree.

The Lake District axes

Given that there are serious problems of erosion here, and that the roughly shaped flakes (which were polished and trimmed at lower altitudes) are difficult to identify amongst the scree, close inspection is in any case not recommended. But even the most distant view is inspiring, not only because of the exposed, high altitude nature of the site but also because of the organisational abilities which are implied, for these Langdale roughouts were transported to finishing and polishing sites and then exported to the rest of Britain Lake District axes having been found in the Isle of Man, the Yorkshire Dales and much further south, in Gloucestershire and on the coast of southern England.

The discovery of these stone axe factories, and of the settlements at lower levels, has confounded earlier ideas about the use made of the mountains in prehistoric times. No longer can it be assumed that the great monuments such as the Castlerigg stone circle were erected by a people who had no knowledge of the surrounding mountains; indeed, it is now clear that they had explored them thoroughly and exploited their wealth where possible.

As a result, many of the tracks which run into the remote dale heads or connect adjacent valleys over passes such as Sty Head and Esk Hause can now be considered as prehistoric trade routes in their own right.

Lake District stone circles

The stone circles, however, must still be counted amongst the most evocative survivals of the Neolithic age. The bestknown is Castlerigg, though the best is perhaps Swinside on the seldom visited slopes of Black Combe. The Castlerigg circle consists of 38 stones, with a further ten inside the circle.

Its purpose is unknown but in the northern arc of the circle there is an identifiable entrance, similar to that in the henge monument at Mayburgh, near Penrith. Worth seeing for its own sake, the circle also stands in one of the most attractive locations in the northern Lake District, with breathtaking views of the brooding mass of Skiddaw, the corrugated southern face of Blencathra, the craggy northern outliers of the Helvellyn range, and across the unseen Derwentwater the attractively grouped Grasmoor fells.

The Swinside Stone Circle

In the far southwest is a sight not to be missed, the Swinside stone circle, with some 55 surviving stones and a diameter of about 150 feet. Sited on a grassy moorland plateau on the lower slopes of Black Combe, it is an outstanding example of this class of monument, at its best on a clear day in spring, perhaps with the snowcapped blue line of the higher fells in the distance.

On the eastern fringes the scanty remains of a stone circle, much damaged by the building of the railway, still stand at Shap in conjunction with a series of standing stones which appear to represent the surviving remnants of a stone avenue extending to some two miles in length. Other circles exist at Moor Divock, as already mentioned, and possibly at Kinniside, south of Ennerdale Bridge, though the longevity of this particular example is open to doubt.

Things to do with children

Visitors to the Lake District can enjoy the natural beauty of the fells, visit Beatrix Potter´s former house, Hill Top, see the family home of William Wordsworth at Dove Cottage or take a boat trip on Windermere, along with hundreds of other attractions. Lake District accommodation offers visitors romantic hotels in Windermere, camp sites in Coniston, Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Buttermere and a range of hostels in Hawkshead and beyond.