Lakes of the Lake District

The lakes of the Lake District are creations of nature; beautiful and inspiring. The National Park is home to the deepest lake. It is also home to the four largest lakes in England and Wales. Set against a backdrop of Lakeland mountains, known locally as fells, one can easily conjure up thoughts of bygone authors and poets who so loved their craft; forever sealing a picturesque impression of a romanticised setting in one of the wettest parts of the UK.

Water is abundant here; reason alone for its green hues in summer and long, grey winters. There are hundreds of bodies of water in the Lake District, ranging in size from the largest lakes to the smallest pools, many more than most people would ever care to visit. The popular destinations are what brings the masses here to break away from everyday routine. From hardcore hikers and cyclists to the casual, fair-weather day trippers, visitors to the area who explore this great outdoors, do so because its appeal draws them in, time and time again. The lakes are just one, albeit predominantly so, reason for this influx of people every year.

By name alone, the Lake district has only one lake out of the 17 main lakes in the National Park. That lake is Bassenthwaite Lake in the north-west region. There is a general misconception that Windermere, the largest of the lakes, is prefixed with the word Lake to differentiate it from the small town of the same name. This grammatical construct typifies the redundancy of the word, which is not needed due to mere already being present. Although the Lake District has only one body of water with lake in the title, the remaining 16 of the big "lakes" are named with mere or water. These words are synonymous with the lakes born in this wide open land, either by glacial withdrawal or by human intervention.

Etymology

Before we move on, let's have a quick look at where these words are derived. Lake District place names take a lot of influence from Old Norse as well as Old English. Words prefixed with a * are reconstructed words. This means they have not been directly attested, but instead are hypothesized to have existed based on comparative evidence.

Origin of the word "lake"

The word lake has a complicated and, in part, an uncertain history due to a merging of inherited Middle English lake, ("small stream of running water, pool, lake"), with Middle English lac ("lake"), which comes from Old French lac ("lake") or Latin lacus ("lake, pond, basin, reservoir").

The Middle English lake ("stream, pool, lake") is related to Dutch laak ("stream, drainage ditch, pond"), Low German Lake, Laak ("drainage, marshland"), German Lache ("puddle, pool"), Icelandic lækur ("stream"), and comes from the original reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root word *leg-, which means ("to leak"). The descendants of this word follow more than one lineage. However, below shows the progression through the Germanic/English lineage. Words in bold shows the merging period:

• Proto-Germanic *lakō → leak, drain, puddle, pool, lake (+ others)
  • Proto-West Germanic *laku → stream, pool or lake
    • Old English: lacu → pool, pond, expanse of water, or lake
      • Middle English: lāke, lac → expanse of water, lake, pond, pool, reservoir (+ others)
        • English: lake → a large, landlocked stretch of water or similar liquid

From the original reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root word lókus, which means ("pond, pool"), the descendants of this word follow the progression through the Italic/French lineage:

• Proto-Italic lakus → lake
  • Latin lacus → lake, pond, basin, reservoir
    • Old French lai → pond, lake (displaced)
    • Old French lac^? → lake
      • Middle French lac → lake
        • French lac → lake
        • Norman lac → lake (from Jersey)

The displacement of Old French lai could have been assisted by influence from the early Middle English words lac, lace, and the Old English word lacu (“pool, pond, lake”), as a result of lac's sudden spread in Old French. This was brought about following the annexation of English controlled Normandy into the kingdom of France in 1204. A full-out borrowing of the term from Middle English rather than from the Latin is also not an impossibility, as the earliest attestations of Old French lac are in the Eadwine Psalter (written by Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman scribes in England) and Erec and Enide (an Arthurian romance, whose author was heavily influenced by English, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic writings).

Lake in the present instance is simply a large body of water that is completely surrounded by land, which easily describes all of the big lakes in the Lake District regardless of location.

Origin of the word "mere"

The word mere comes from Old English mere, meaning a ("lake") or ("pool"). In compound words it could also mean "sea". It is interesting to note how the word, from its earliest root through to present day, has very similar meanings, not only through time but also across a broad spectrum of European countries.

From the original reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root word *móri, which means ("sea") or ("standing water"), the descendants of this word follow the English lineage:

• Proto-Germanic *mari → sea, ocean, lake, body of water
  • Proto-West-Germanic *mari → sea or lake
    • Old English mere → lake, pool or (compound) sea
      • Middle English mere → lake, pond, pool; also, a sea or an ocean
        • English mere → A body of standing water, such as a lake or a pond. More specifically, it can refer to a lake that is broad in relation to its depth.

It should be noted that Old English mere also corresponds with Old Frisian mere, Old Saxon meri, Old Dutch *meri and Old High German meri. It is cognate with West Frisian mar, Dutch meer, and German Meer. Like the English lineage above, they also derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic *mari.

The Proto-Indo-European root *móri spawned similar words in other European languages too:

• From Latin mare: Italian mare, Spanish mar, French mer, Portuguese mar;
• From Old Celtic *mori: Irish muir, Welsh môr, Breton mor, Cornish mor, Manx mooir and Scottish Gaelic muir, all of which mean "sea" in various forms. However, in the English lineage, the larger sense of "sea" has been obsolete since Middle English.

Mere in the present instance refers to the names Buttermere, Grasmere, Kentmere, Thirlmere and Windermere, which are recorded from the late 12th or 13th century and would generally mean lake. The term "water" is used more often for the larger of the lakes although this is not strictly so as Blea Water is a tarn and smaller than all of the big lakes, with the exception of Elter Water.

The origin of "water"

The word water comes from ...

Glacial origins

The term "ice age" can be somewhat ambiguous. The earth is in an ice age called the Quaternary glaciation, which began around 2.58 million years ago and has had many periods of glacial advance and retreat. We are still in this ice age, as suggested by the ice caps present at the poles. However, we are currently experiencing an interglacial or warmer period. In the UK this period is called the Flandrian interglacial. This led to retreating ice that left us with glacially "plucked" and eroded valleys that formed the lake district we see today.

List of the main lakes

Not only the ice, but people too, are responsible for changing the landscape. Haweswater and Thirlmere are reservoirs, although the former was once a natural lake. It was dammed to raise the water level in a bid to supply fresh water for the people of Manchester, at a price that flooded two Cumbrian villages, now lost to the murky darkness. The once ebb and flow of ice and, in much more recent times, people, continue to have an effect on the natural backdrop of the second oldest national park in England after the Peak District.

The lakes have been immortalised in text and image by the very people, past and present, with a passion for this rugged landscape. The big lakes are the quintessence of Lakeland, and listed below are 17 bodies of water that give this National Park its name. How these are classified, one could rightly surmise, is by size. Whilst the humble tarn is usually reserved for the smaller bodies of water, size alone is not the only trait for the lakes. Some tarns bigger than the smallest of the big lakes, for example, Burnmoor Tarn near Wast Water, and Seathwaite Tarn near the Old Man of Coniston, both of which are bigger than Elter Water and Brothers Water. One could easily say that each of the lakes have their own distinctive character, companioned by the landscape in which they sit. Size, depth, inflows, outflows, location, and human intervention all play a vital role in our understanding of these expanses of water, which, seen from above, appear to radiate outwards from a central point near the fell of High Raise in Langdale.

Each lake below is the subject of a compendious listing, with a link to the lake's main article (when these have been written).

Bassenthwaite Lake

Main article: Bassenthwaite Lake

Brothers Water

Main article: Brothers Water

Buttermere

Main article: Buttermere

Coniston Water

Main article: Coniston Water

Crummock Water

Main article: Crummock Water

Derwentwater

Main article: Derwentwater

Elter Water

Main article: Elter Water – The smallest of the lakes

Ennerdale Water

Main article: Ennerdale Water

Esthwaite Water

Main article: Esthwaite Water

Grasmere

Main article: Grasmere'

Haweswater

Main article: Haweswater (Reservoir)

Haweswater was once a much smaller natural lake, sitting against a backdrop of farmland and a diverse habitat for flora and fauna. A natural promontory called an arcuate delta, formed by sedimentary deposits from Measand Beck, almost divided the lake in two with only a narrow section called the straits separating the smaller basins of High Water and Low Water, evident in the old OS maps.

Due to Manchester’s increasing demand for drinking water, parliament granted the Manchester Corporation permission to dam the northern end of the lake, and create a water supply reservoir. This came at a cost to the long-time residents of the valley. The original water level of the lake was raised by 29 metres, the damming resulted in the relocation of the residents who lived in the villages of Mardale, Measand and a scattering of other farmsteads. Abandoned buildings were demolished by the Royal Engineers, including the Dun Bull Inn and Holy Trinity Church, but the drystone field boundary walls and the old chapel bridge still survive, seen when the water levels are unusually low.

Nature finds a way to recover and today, Haweswater is a haven for wildlife including red squirrels and small mountain ringlet butterflies. It is the highest lake in the National Park and the landowners, United Utilities, working in partnership with the RSPB to ensure the area is protected for the future – see Wild Haweswater There is a circular walking route around the reservoir along with various trails through ancient woodland.

Loweswater

Main article: Loweswater

Rydal Water

Main article: Rydal Water

Thirlmere

Main article: Thirlmere (Reservoir)

Ullswater

Main article: Ullswater – The 2nd largest of the lakes

Wast Water

Main article: Wast Water – The deepest of the lakes

Windermere

Main article: Windermere – The largest of the lakes

Further reading

• Smith, Alan (2012). The Big Lakes of Lakeland. The Landscapes of Cumbria No.5. Keswick: Rigg Side Publications
• Smith, Alan (2014). The Smaller Lakes and Tarns of Lakeland. The Landscapes of Cumbria No.6. Keswick: Rigg Side Publications
• Whaley, Diana (2006). A Dictionary of Lake District Place-Names. English Place-Name Society. School of English Studies, University of Nottingham