Furness Abbey and things to do in the Lake District

Furness Abbey in particular was quick to exploit the resources placed at its disposal, establishing primitive open hearths (bloomeries), fed with charcoal produced from the abundant woodlands in its High Furness estates, to smelt iron ore at, for instance, Cinder Hill above Newby Bridge. The evocatively named Smithymire Island at the confluence of the Langstrath Beck and Greenup Gill was another early bloomery site. The monks were also assiduous in cultivating the fellsides, populating them thickly with sheep.

A surviving thirteenth century charter explains the significance of a strange ditch and bank which traverses Great Moss in upper Eskdale: this was the boundary bank of the monks' estate, carefully constructed to keep the sheep in whilst allowing the deer to get out. Even more tangible evidence of the monks' presence is provided by some of the surviving packhorse bridges, a specially attractive landscape element in which the Lake District is peculiarly rich.

The sheep pasturing in Great Moss, for example, were driven there over a splendid singlearched packhorse bridge spanning the Lingcove Beck just above its confluence with the River Esk.Though the present bridge is a classic example it is, in fact, a recent replacement, its predecessor having been seriously damaged by floods. Just below the bridge is the Throstle Garth sheepfold, in continuous use since it was first constructed in medieval times by the Furness monks.

The Calder Valley western Lake District

Matty Benn's Bridge, deep in the Calder valley in the western Lake District, is another fine example of a packhorse bridge this time authentically ancient which owes its origin to a monastic foundation. The monks of Calder Abbey are credited with its construction; indeed its alternative name is Monks' Bridge. Not all the district's packhorse bridges are explained in this way, however. In Wasdale, Row Head Bridge (highly photogenic with the Mosedale Beck rippling beneath and Kirk Fell rising steeply in the background) was originally an integral part of the main route down the dale from Wasdale Head; the present road avoiding the bridge is a modem realignment.

Still other bridges served only very local requirements: Folly Bridge in Ennerdale and Willy Goodwaller Bridge in Easedale were used only in driving sheep between adjacent pastures, whilst others which are picturesque but unrelated to packhorse or even sheep movement include the delightful Slater Bridge in Little Langdale, a slate slab bridge allowing quarrymen from the Langdales to get to work in the Wetherlam quarries. Just as picturesque but even less associated with ancient trading routes are the various sets of stepping stones, for instance Stythwaite Steps in Far Easedale and those across the Esk near Boot and the Duddon near Seathwaite.

Castlerigg and stone circles in the Lake District

Finally, in this whirlwind tour of the area's manifold attractions we turn to the mystical, and in many cases the unexplained. The most celebrated of these phenomena is the stone circle, often massive in scale and therefore awesome in execution, but of deeply uncertain purpose. Castlerigg, to the east of Keswick, is the most accessible and best known of the district's stone circles, though there are others such as The Cockpit on Moor Divock above Ullswater, and the best is probably the Swinside stone circle in the far southwest, a particularly impressive sight in the otherwise empty vastness of the grassy Black Combe fells.

Burial mounds are a different kettle of fish: in some areas they are thick on the ground 1,200 have been identified in the immediate vicinity of Devoke Water, south of Eskdale, for example ¬yet in others they are strangely absent. Most are round barrows, characteristic of the Bronze Age, though there are exceptions such as the Neolithic cairn of Sampson's Bratful,a long barrow on Stockdale Moor, in the remote and almost unvisited upland between Ennerdale and Wasdale.

The Norse settlement of the dales, though more recent, is scarcely any easier to comprehend. The surviving artefacts are too few and too disparate to enable us to build a complete picture, though some of them represent immensely powerful images. The Viking cross in the church¬yard at Gosforth, on the coastal plain in west Cumberland, is the most striking of all these monuments and is an essential element in the antiquarian's itinerary, as are the hogback tombstones here and at Lowther.

The nearby churchyard cross at Irton, though it is Anglian rather than Scandinavian in origin, is also well worth seeing in its lonely churchyard away from any settlement but with a marvellous backdrop of the western fells. Much nearer the present, and somewhat less mystical, the monastic foundations of Shap and Calder Abbeys (and Furness, just outside the National Park) also deserve attention; Calder Abbey, beautifully sited in the valley pastures of the Calder, is especially attractive.

Bridge House Ambleside

By any standards the foregoing is a remarkable catalogue of pros-pective interest and delight, yet it is still by no means comprehensive. The seeker after the quaint and the unusual will have noted the absence of the quirky, much photographed Bridge House in Ambleside, for instance; the serious walker will have a special affection for scores of fells so far unmentioned; the literary tourist will have registered the omission of reference to Dove Cottage and other such magnets (though this will be remedied in a moment).

The variety and the range of experience available to those prepared to use their eyes and uncover just a little of the meaning of the landscape is stupendous. Every dale has its own intrinsic attractions and its own subtly different character. With this astonishing diversity of experience ready to be savoured, it is scarcely surprising that early tourists flocked to the area, even though in the beginning they came prepared to be assailed by feelings of fear and horror rather than wonder and excitement.

Defoe saw Westmor¬land as 'the wildest, most barren and frightful' of English counties, but later in the eighteenth century the adherents of the Picturesque movement saw the Lake District in a new light.

At first they came to write and paint, and then, with the aid of Father West's pioneering guidebook, published in 1778, they came to gaze. The guidebook sought out 'the soft, the rude, the romantic and the sublime' and directed the new tourists to 21 'stations', including Castle Head and Latrigg near Keswick and Red Brow on the western shore of Windermere. At these viewpoints the intrepid tourist would stand with his back to the scene and view it through a concave mirror a 'Claude Glass' which framed, reduced and perhaps slightly tamed the savage landscape.

Famous Lake District visitors

The Lake District had already received some attention by the time West's guidebook was published, however. Not only Defoe but also Celia Fiennes had commented on the region, while the poet Thomas Gray visited the Lake District in October 1769. His journal in the Lakes attracted the curious with its careful descriptions of selected spots, including Castlerigg, a 'Druid circle of large stones, one hundred and eight feet in diameter, the biggest not eight feet high, but most of them still erect'. Gray ventured no further into Borrowdale than Grange, and it was left to hardier souls altogether to explore the wild central mountains.

The first of the Lake poets to conquer Scafell was Coleridge in 1802, in a celebrated expedition which involved a scrambling descent via the minor rock climb known as Broad Stand still out of bounds to mere walkers today, and hence no mean achievement in the days before rock climbers had begun their exploration of the crags.