the langdales...
The jagged outlines of Crinkle Crags, Bow Fell and the Langdale Pikes at the head of Great Langdale are an awe-inspiring sight when seen against the dramatic U-shaped trough of the valley. This is a dramatic landscape built by volcanic activity, forged by ice and adapted for human use over centuries.
On the other side of Lingmoor Fell is the much gentler terrain of Little Langdale - a verdant, pastoral valley containing the softened scars of 18th-century slate workings.
About the area
History & heritage
The hard rocks of the Langdales were formed by volcanic activity 450 million years ago and the Langdale valleys have a rich industrial heritage too.
langdale history
langdale heritage
Art & culture
From Stone Age axe factory to Victorian gunpowder works, the Langdale valleys also has art galleries to explore.
Natural enviroment
Glaciation created many of the natural features of Great and Little Langdale, but deciduous woodlands and wild flower meadows now soften its effects.
Oddities
Little Heading
Elterwater means ‘swan lake' in Old Norse.Lanty Slee, a quarryman at Tilberthwaite, was notorious for running several illicit whisky distilleries - the best-known being at Betsy Crag Quarry above Little Langdale Tarn. He was caught on several occasions, but continued to supply his customers with high quality whisky until his death at Greenbank in Little Langdale in 1878.
At Raw Head Farm in Great Langdale, the unusual stone recess in the wall is a bee bole that once contained beehives made of straw (skeps).
The counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire once converged at the summit of Wrynose Pass, each county identified by stones marked with a C, W and L. In the centre of the three stones is a vertical monolith to William Field of Cartmel, a staunch Lancastrian, who inscribed one side with ‘Lancashire' and inserted his initials and the date of 1816 on the other.
In 1960, a dynamite explosion dislodged 250,000 tons of rock at Spout Crag Quarry - at the time a record for a single blast on a quarry face.
