People of Lakeland
The priest
Thomas West
Guide to the Lakes, 1778 He was the Scottish priest who helped transform how people thought of the Cumbrian fells – no longer places of terror, but ‘rapture and reverence’, and worthy cousins to the Alps: ‘our northern mountains are not inferior in beauty of line, or variety of summit... not in colouring of rock, or softness of turf, but in height and extent only.’ He even turned their diminutive stature to advantage, pointing out ‘the mountains here are all accessible to the summit’. His book wasn’t really about climbing though, instead detailing the best ‘stations’ where the landscape lined up in the most picturesque way. The one at Claife* on the shore of Windermere grew so popular they built a viewing house with tinted windows – pale blue for winter, orange for autumn, light green for spring – so you could picture the vista through the seasons. Its ruin is still there, now owned by the National Trust.
The poet
William Wordsworth
Guide through the
District of the Lakes, 1810 One of Cumbria’s most famous sons, William was a leading light of the Lake Poets. (Martineau was a long-time fan: ‘in my youth, when I worshipped Wordsworth. I pinned up his likeness in my room; and I could repeat his poetry by the hour.’)
His Romantic take on the landscape drew legions of tourists to the Lake District – Loughrigg* was a favourite – although he complained they too often had their noses in books, and didn’t look about: ‘There are twenty-four letters, and those ye can read; But Nature’s ten thousand are Blanks in your sight.’ He published his own ‘description of the scenery of the Lakes’ in 1810, possibly driven by the need to earn funds to support his five children.
The protester
Henry Irwin Jenkinson Practical Guide to the
English Lakes, 1875 He called himself ‘a mountaineer, tourist and writer of guide books’ – and he was also a trespasser. He came to Keswick in 1845 as station master on the new railway, then turned his enthusiasm for fell-walking into guidebooks. When access to the top of Latrigg* was threatened in 1887, he organised a mass trespass where 2000 walkers sang Rule Britannia loudly enough the gamekeeper claimed they were disturbing the birds – and succeeded in keeping Spooney Green Lane open.
The painter
William Heaton Cooper
The Hills of Lakeland, 1938 His earliest memory was dipping his artist father’s paintbrush in the beck that ran past his home in Coniston; his watercolours of Lakeland now hang on walls around the world. ‘I find the medium of words a very difficult one by which to express infinite feelings,’ he wrote, ‘so I try to do it in paint.’ Light was a particular fascination and he would walk miles, and often camp out, to capture sunrise or -set on the fells in his works – 52 of them collected in this book, and more in a later volume about tarns, which he called ‘the eyes of the mountain’. He was a keen climber too and illustrated many guides for the Fell & Rock Climbing Club. You can find his gallery, and his grave, in Grasmere.*
The perfectionist
Alfred Wainwright
The Pictorial Guide to the
Lakeland Fells, 1955-66 This Blackburn lad became a Lake District legend, and it all began on Orrest Head* in 1930, when 23-year old Alf saw the fells for the first time: ‘It was a moment of magic’. After decades of exploring he began work on his seven-volume Pictorial Guide with Dove Crag on the Fairfield Horseshoe, eventually detailing every route on 214 fells, now known as the Wainwrights.
He set out determined everything ‘would be perfect’ but after ‘six months filling wastepaper baskets’ he accepted ‘nothing created by man is perfect, or can hope to be’. We think he got pretty close: each page of drawing and handwritten text is meticulously executed and despite his gruff reputation, often funny too.
The photographer
WA Poucher
The Lakeland Peaks, 1960 With a Leica camera around his neck, scarlet socks to ‘facilitate quick discovery’ in case of accident, and a whiff of fragrance from his job as perfumer for Yardley, Poucher was a regular visitor to the Lakes. His first book was the coffeetable volume, Lakeland Through the Lens
(1940), based on a walk from Mardale to Coniston, but The Lakeland Peaks took a more practical turn: a pocket-sized guide with a white line drawn on each photo to clearly show the route described. William Arthur, often called Walter, became known as ‘the photographic Wainwright’ and Alf was a fan, writing after his death: ‘a future without a new Poucher is a bleak prospect.’ Walter’s ashes were scattered on Low Fell.*