Yesterday I mentioned an excellent Winter Breaks deal at the Leeming House, overlooking Ullswater. (Later note added: This was a time-limited offer in late-2010, but click here for up-to-date details of this very nice hotel).

Today, though, I thought I’d put up a black and white photo of Ullswater from Purse Point – fifty-five years ago.  It’s from the Francis Frith collection which includes a remarkable range of photos of Lake District places, many going back into 19th century.  Click on the picture to look for more.

Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

Today I’m turning my attention back to the English Lake District and a book published earlier this year that would make an excellent gift for anyone who loves this most beautiful corner of England.

In “Lake District Mountain Landscape” Alastair Lee has produced a remarkable assembly of outstanding views of the Cumbrian fells and mountains. A Westmorland Gazette reviewer wrote, “No-one leafing through this collection of inspirational images can fail to be impressed by the mood and majesty of the mountains that Lee has managed to capture through his lens.”

In addition to his great skill as a photographer, Lee is a climber, and this shows through in his treatment of many of the high peaks.

Whether you’re already a lover of the Lake District, are planning to visit in the future, or simply know someone who’s a Lakeland fanatic, this is a failsafe gift book either for them or for yourself.

Usually when I recommend a Lake District book it’s one that I already own myself. I prefer to do this so that the blog does not degenerate into an undiscriminating commercialism.

Today, though, I’m making an exception. Although I’ve seen and admired Mark Denton’s The Lake District: The Panoramas on a number of occasions, for some unaccountable reason I’ve never actually bought a copy. However, I’ve seen this book of remarkably beautiful photographs praised so many times that I’m putting it up here anyway.

This would make a marvellous gift for a friend or family member who loves the English Lake District, or even to introduce someone for the first time to this wonderful part of the country.

There’s no doubting that Mark Denton is an outstanding landscape photographer. He has worked not only on rural but also on city landscapes including books on Edinburgh and London.  You might also like to take a look at his Yorkshire volumes: Yorkshire Moors & Wolds and The Yorkshire Coast.

On our main Lake District web site there is a picture, from a painting by Alfred Heaton Cooper, of Thirlmere before the forest. That views the lake from the western bank and looks toward Helvellyn and the southern end of the recently enlarged reservoir.  I’ve now found in my postcard collection a view in the opposite direction, pointing north.

The card, a tinted photograph, was posted in 1909 and so probably dates from the early years of the century, not long after the merger of the original two lakes, Leathes Water and Wyburn Water, to form the Thirlmere reservoir as we have it today. (For a note on the lake names in this area see the Thirlmere page on our main site).

I was trawling Twitter for Lake District tweets this morning, and came across this beautiful photograph of Derwentwater on a cloudy day by Will Downing.

It captures the atmosphere so well that it makes me regret that I’m sitting here in Nottinghamshire more than 200 miles away from Cumbria, and not able just to leave my desk and walk down to the lake from Keswick.

[Click on the photo to see a larger display on the Twitpic site]

“What is there for an eleven year old in the Lake District?” I heard that question a few days ago, and it set me thinking.

Firstly, I suppose one has to challenge the idea that there is such a thing as a standard model of eleven year old.  Of course not.  There are girls and boys, energetic, sporting, artistic, studious, inquisitive, imaginative, gregarious, solitary, pessimistic, optimistic,  quiet, talkative, … ,  all the variety of characteristics that will carry through into variety of adults.

Some will want to make their own enjoyment in walking, clambering up hillsides, mountain biking, swimming, rowing, and other active pursuits.  There are organised activity centres for the energetic outdoors.

The enthusiastic young photographer or painter will find no shortage of subjects to challenge their artistic abilities. Some may be interested in historical things. How about a visit to “ancient” Rheged near Penrith or the Museum of Lakeland Life in Kendal?  Did you know that pencils came from the Lake District? There’s even a pencil museum in Keswick for both the historically and the artistically inclined.

Old railways?  The Lake District has two.  There’s the “full size” version with steam trains running on the old, and now restored, branch line from Haverthwaite to Lakeside near the foot of Windermere.  Then there’s the “Ravenglass railway” that climbs up into the mountains from Ravenglass on the west coast, a great afternoon out for both children and adults.

Do you want to know how a nuclear power station works?  Just up the road from the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway is Sellafield with its excellent visitor centre (although at the time of writing this it was undergoing maintenance work; check their web site for details).

Interested in wildlife and nature?  How about the osprey viewing point by Bassenthwaite?  Or the freshwater aquarium at Lakeside? And talking of animals, for the imaginative among us, whether children or not, there are three Beatrix Potter attractions in the central lakes area.

Then again, the young poet might be fascinated by a visit to William Wordsworth’s cottage at Grasmere, or the recreation of eighteenth century life at his birthplace in Cockermouth.

This is just a start.  On our Lakes web site we include several lists of things to do and places to go around the main centres.  Check out also the range of National Trust locations in the Lakes. And whatever you do, don’t miss the national park visitor centre at Brockhole.

As for adults, so also for children, in addition to simply appreciating the beauty of the place there is no lack of things to do in the Lake District.

I’m old enough to remember when colour photographs, either Lake District photos or any others, were rare. Nearly all of us had black and white film in our cameras, and such colour photos as there were tended to have very poor colour quality.

Then along came affordable good quality colour film. Like many others I moved over from prints to 35mm slides. It saved printing cost and you could project them onto a screen or wall to show to family and friends. Only much later did I revert to printed photos, but somehow I never felt that my colour prints had quite the same character as the old black and white.

Recently I’ve been examining the Francis Frith archive and have been delighted to find some excellent photos. These are not only the street scenes of towns and villages for which the archive is possibly best known, but also lake and mountain views.

Ullswater, 1888.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

The above photograph of Ullswater, taken in 1888, is one example of the wealth of photographic Lake District beauty available on the Frith site. The Crummock Water scene below is another. I’m currently collecting a set of my favourites for display on a new lake district photos site. Meanwhile I’ve created a few pages of vintage photos at thelakedistrict.inoldphotos.com

Crummock Water, 1893.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

I think it will be clear by now that my own answer to the question in the title, “Must Lake District Photos be in Colour?” is a resounding “No!”

I came across a Lake District photograph this afternoon and felt I had to share it here. The site on which I saw it gave permission to use the photos it displays. Just in time I discovered that my latest “find” had in fact been stolen from someone’s portfolio, should not have been on the site where I found it, and to display it here would have been a breach of copyright. It was a stunning lake scene with snow-tipped mountains in the distance. I wish I could take photos like that!

To me it was yet another illustration of the variety of pursuits to which the English Lake District so wonderfully lends itself. Walking, climbing, boating, fishing, cycling, ….. . The list goes on and on, but whereas all of those can give much pleasure to the person directly engaged in the occupation Lake District photographs can bring pleasure to many others beside the photographer.

Well I can’t show that particular photo here just yet, but decided to post a modified version of what I’d written about it. If I can track down the photographer I’ll try to get permission.  I did think of putting an alternative here, but my mind was so full of the one I’d seen that to show another immediately now would almost inevitably be presenting it as second-best, however goood it might be.

Recently (early 2009) I travelled up to the Lake District in the north of England to visit an elderly maiden aunt.  I say, “elderly,” but that’s not really an adequate expression.  Approaching a hundred and two years old she still has a lively interest in the present-day doings of her large brood of nephews and nieces, and the even larger numbers of great- and great-greats as well.  But also she thinks a lot about the past.

Having been born in 1907 there’s a lot of past for her to think about, and her memory is still amazingly intact.  Old photographs fascinate her, and this made me think of how important it is to record in writing for future generations something about those people on the sepia tinted pictures of yesteryear before no-one any longer has a clue who they were.

Memories, of course, often involve places as well as people. In family collections it is often the snaps of people rather than places that have survived. Photos of fondly remembered places as they were many years ago are often limited to a few creased old postcards. Occasionally a treasure hoard of old photographs is discovered and what memories they bring flooding back as they appear in the local newspaper.

Windermere, Sunset 1926.
Reproduced courtesy of Francis Frith.

The English Lake District for a century and a half has been one of the most photographed areas of Britain.  How good it is to know that many photographs – of lakes, rivers, towns, villages and individual buildings – have survived and are available to massage the memories of generations of lovers of Lakeland.

Holidays past, childhood homes, honeymoons among the mountains, visits to grandparents, sunny afternoons rowing on Derwentwater, the “steamers” on Windermere, paddling in the Rothay and scrambles up Scafell; all these and more come back to life through an old photo on the wall.

Increasingly, as photos of distant places long ago become conveniently traceable over the Internet, people living even thousands of miles across the world’s oceans can find and acquire beautifully printed copies of these records of the past.  More and more homes around the world are displaying fondly a picture of England’s Lake District, a valued legacy from the photographers of generations past.

—
David Murray, a native of Cumbria now returned to the North, is owner of a growing portfolio of niche websites including some about the English Lake District.  The Lake District In Old Photos, Around-England and The Lake District in Books are three of his sites about which he is especially enthusiastic. [This paragraph updated, October 2011]

For many years I’ve admired the photographs of W A Poucher (1891-1988), showing the beauties of the Lake District from many different aspects – and of course, his many illustrated guides covered far more than the Lakeland mountains.  His was a lover of the high places of all the countries in our islands.

Now there’s a book devoted totally to his life and his photography which should make an excellent gift this year for anyone who’s a lover of the English (and Welsh, and Scottish) countryside and landscape photographer par excellence.

“A Camera in the Hills” by Roly Smith is published by Frances Lincoln (ISBN-10: 0711228981; ISBN-13: 978-0711228986). It is profusely illustrated with both colour and black and white photography from his long years of recording our hills and mountains.

If you click on the link above or on the photograph you can order this splendid book from Amazon.co.uk.