BORROWDALE VALLEY

 

'It was anciently called Boredale, and the mountain and its southern extremity is still called Stye Head, and is supposed to be the place where wild boars “were wont to feed in summer, and fall down in autumn into this dale, where they fed upon nuts and acorns”. (Parson & White, History, Directory & Gazetteer of Cumberland & Westmorland with Furness and Cartmel (1829), p.328

Borrowdale records the highest rainfall in England; an annual average of 185 inches falls on a small patch of land near Sprinkling Tarn. Coming down the valley, the rainfall decreases: Seathwaite:131 inches;Rosthwaite: just over 100 inches; Grange: 90 inches;Keswick: 57 inches.

 

GEOLOGY

SlateBorrowdale is distinctive for its ‘Borrowdale Volcanics’ which poured (sometimes shot) out of volcanic vents above the Skiddaw Slates in Ordovician times, about 400 million years ago. Silurian slaty beds were then laid down on top of them, these harder Borrowdale rocks have weathered slowly and form crags and precipices above the softer soil-covered sediments to the south and east.

The traces of glaciation are very easy to see in Borrowdale; there is a distinctive U-shaped section of the upper dale between Thorneythwaite and Seathwaite. In Langstrath and Greenup Gill there is a great spread of the hummocky moraine of the most recent glaciation.

 

Pencil factoryIn the fells above Seathwaite, there were deposits of wad (also known as ‘black-cawke’, ‘black-lead’, ‘plumbago’), mentioned by Camden in 1555 and then exploited over the next two centuries until it became a thriving industry in the eighteenth century.

Despite security measures, smuggling of wad out of Borrowdale was a regular occurrence in the eighteenth century, as it commanded a high price; thirty shillings a pound in 1779.

By 1847, there were 14 pencil factories in Keswick.

 

 

FARMING HISTORY

The Fountains Abbey survey of 1418 records 41 farmsteads in Borrowdale. The reformation of 1537 began the transference of monastic lands to the crown and the change in systems of landownership which supported the emergence of  yeoman farmers. The extensive lands of Fountains Abbey were sold by Henry VIII to Richard Greames of Eske in Netherby, whose son forfeited them: by the ‘great deed of Borrowdale’; in 1615 they passed into the hands of tenants. (Bouch & Jones,  The Lake Counties  1500-1830 (1961)p.56)

‘Customary tenant right ensured the survival of a traditional society of small owner-occupiers’ (Angus Winchester, Harvest of the Hills 2000, p.16)

There was a major growth in farm building beginning during the 17th and 18th centuries. The agricultural land was gradually enclosed during the 18th and 19th centuries.

In 1829 the Borrowdale community included:
2 publicans; a joiner and cartwright; a schoolmaster; a blacksmith; a slate proprietor, the agent for the Black Lead works at Seathwaite and 21 farmers of whom 13 are classed as ‘yeomen’. (Parson & White, 1829, p.335)

Borrowdale has landscape patterns which have evolved slowly from medieval times up to the present day. These patterns reflect a continuity of farming practice which make this valley and others in the Lake District and Cumbria a unique cultural landscape of international importance.

StonethwaiteThe National Trust manages almost 12,000 hectares in the Borrowdale area. As well as farms (Seatoller, Seathwaite, Stonethwaite, Nook and Yew Tree at Rosthwaite, Hollows near Grange, Fold Head and Steps End at Watendlath)  the Trust own thirty cottages and buildings in the area.

Farmers in Borrowdale keep their sheep on some of the highest and roughest ground in England. Most of this is unenclosed land shared by the farmers and joining other valleys with similar circumstances.

They primarily keep Herdwick sheep which has the lowest wool price of all UK wools and these sheep, whilst hardy are of low productivity. They do not lamb, for instance, until they are three years old. Two years is the norm.

 

In 1418, there were 41 farmsteads in Borrowdale
In 1829 21 farmers
In 1925 19 farmers
In 1938 18 farmers including 2 over 150 acres

In 2006 there are 12 farmers listed for Borrowdale in the Shepherd’s Guide:
Fold Head Farm, Watendlath
Steps End Farm, Watendlath
Stonethwaite Farm, Stonethwaite
Seathwaite Farm, Seathwaite
Thorneythwaite Farm, Thorneythwaite
Seatoller Farm, Seatoller
Chapel House Farm, Stonethwaite
Yewtree Farm, Rosthwaite
Nook Farm, Rosthwaite
Hollows Farm, Grange
High Lodore Farm, Borrowdale
Ashness Farm, Borrowdale

A number of them have several flocks. All are sheep farms, and a number also have cattle; all of them use their fells. These are large tracts of shared  open and common land which often join areas grazed by farmers from other valleys.

Farming in Borrowdale, as in all these central Lake District valleys, depends upon a working collaboration between the farmers. Identification of sheep (for purposes of retrieval and traditional heafing) are essential to this pastoral system.

BilberryPurple Moor GrassWood SorrelFLORA & FAUNA

Borrowdale probably has a greater amount of semi-natural woodland of native trees than any other Lake District valley. Most of these woods are ‘hanging’ on steep, well-drained and often rocky slopes.

The oakwoods of Seatoller, for example,  includes a grassy community of sheep’s fescue, bents, wavy hair grass, vernal grass, soft fog, and Yorkshire fog. There is an abundance of herbs such as heath bedstraw, tormentil, earthnut, cow wheat, wood-sorrel, wood anemone, wood sage, greater stitchwort, foxglove and golden-rod. Locally are slender St John’s wort, bitter vetch, and climbing fumitory. There is an abundance of dwarfed shoots of bilberry. Smaller hollows receiving much water seepage have small marshes with common rush, jointed rush, purple moor grass, and bog moss. (For a full and detailed account of the flora of Borrowdale, see Pearsall and Pennington, The Lake District: a Landscape History (1973), pp136-46).

Castle CragARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORY

This account is indebted to the Historic Environment contribution to the National Trust’s whole valley plan for Borrowdale.

(Borrowdale takes its name from the Scandinavian borgardalr, meaning ‘the valley of the fort’. This refers to Castle Crag which guards the entrance to the valley.

Prehistoric occupation within Borrowdale is known to have begun during the Neolithic period. The most important evidence for early activity appears in the form of stone quarries and tool manufacturing sites located high in the central fells. There is also evidence of Bronze age cairnfield occupation and funerary sites on the Seathwaite fells.


Many of the place names are Scandinavian and testify to the arrival of norse speakers into the region after the eighth century. There is, as yet, no evidence of early medieval activity in the area.

The majority of the land of Borrowdale was owned by the monks of Furness Abbey from the 13th century onwards. Much of the dale was purchased from Alice II de Rumelli of Allerdale in 1209, who had, in the closing years of the 12th century, sold parts of Borrowdale – Watendlath, Langstrath, and Stonethwaite - to another great Cistercian monastery, Fountains Abbey of Yorkshire.

Granges were established and the area was used for agriculture and industrial activities such as mining, woodland management, and iron working. During the 14th century, many farms and villages were abandoned because of Scottish raids in 1315, 1322, and 1345.

There six scheduled monuments and 21 listed buildings in Borrowdale. Altogether there are 735 sites, monuments and buildings within the current tenancy of the National Trust’s  Borrowdale Farms (including fell land).