The Lake District: Romance and War in England's Greatest Wilderness
today's video is sponsored by ren discover what your carbon footprint is and how you can offset it with wren's environmental explanations more on them in a bit it's probably one of the most romantic locations in the entire world in the far northwest of england just below the scottish border lies a breathtaking landscape carved out by ancient glaciers the lake district is today home to both england's largest lake and tallest mountains a sublime world of jagged peaks still waters and ancient farbsteads both say national park and a unesco world heritage site it's also one of the uk's biggest tourist draws bringing in some 18 million visitors a year but there's far far more to the lakes than just some pretty scenery for centuries wild and remote the lake district in the 19th century found itself a laboratory for social movements that would soon transform the world it was here amid these deep valleys that william wordsworth and other poets helped forge british romanticism hear that early attempts at landscape protection birthed modern ideas of conservation here too that some of the greatest ever children's stories would be written both a physical landscape and a geography of world-changing ideas this is the lake district england's greatest national park out on england's northwest coast amid the mountains of cumbria lies one of europe's most storied landscapes sprawling some 2 362 square kilometers the lake district is both england's largest national park and its most famous recognized as a unesco world heritage site in 2017 it's home to england's tallest mountain scaffold pike and lake windermere its largest lake it's also home to a metric heck ton of tourists who flock in their millions every year to see the landscape that inspired everyone from william wordsworth to jmw turner and beatrix potter but what caused this region to form in such a perfect way and how did it come to be so storied the answer lies in a tale eons in the making the first rocks that make up today's lake district began to form some 500 million years ago in an era officially known as the cambrian period but which could just as easily be called the really really really ridiculously old period at that time the area that would become northwest england was utterly different not only was it located south of the equator it was also underwater over millennia mud settling on the ocean floor hardened into what would become the parks of skidor group this was followed by a whole load of volcanic activity that gave birth to the borrowdale group and then yet more underwater shenanigans that would eventually form the slate-rich environment of windermere yet it wouldn't be until 100 million years had passed that these rocks saw the light of day the caledonian orogeny was the geological equivalent of dillon going electrics a moment when everything changed suddenly all these deep sea rocks were just thrust out of the ocean not just above the surface but way way up into the air the resulting mountain range was so vast it would make mount everest look puny since this video isn't titled the lake district bigger the mount everest you already know that this didn't last the mighty mountains eventually got so worn away by erosion that they wound up under water again at the bottom of a shallow sea yet this was just a brief return below the waves one last quick check-in with the aquatic world to pick up some cool looking marine fossils before returning to the surface at the very end of the carboniferous period the mountains emerged from the water once more over the next 200 million years they would slowly drift north becoming part of what is today britain and settling into their current position finally two million years ago the glaciers moved in landscape altering monsters the glaciers tore through these mountains carving deep channels as they advanced and retreated when they finally vanished they would leave behind deep lakes of melt water lakes that would one day inspire a handful of bipedal apes to write some of the most sublime poems known to man but first those hairless apes would have to settle this harsh and unforgiving world the first humans to live in the lake district are thought to have arrived around 10 000 bc during a brief period of warming since this period was so brief though they were quickly driven away as the ice returned it wasn't until some 7 000 years had passed that people had settled here permanently in that era the lakes looked little like they do today instead this was a wild realm of deep bogs and dense forests a kind of claustrophobic primeval nightmare yet somehow humans got a toehold in the landscape they began carving stone axes from the mountain rocks axes that have been uncovered at prehistoric sites all over britain they began assembling great stone circles the greatest of all still stands a castle rig slowly under our influence this world began to change it began to reshape itself yet it would take the arrival of an infamous people to give the lakes their current appearance a people whose name is synonymous with both terror and beardy manliness we're of course talking about the vikings for a region of the world best known today for stuff like ikea it's almost surprising that scandinavia produced the vikings yet produce them it did and starting in the 8th century they launched a series of raids in england that would culminate in a wave of settlement among those regions settled was the lake district the lake district vikings originated in norway only slowly colonizing the region after establishing various settlements on the coasts of scotland and ireland nor did they completely overrun the lakes instead they began with the base of operations in the region's southwest before gradually moving inland yet it would be their habits more than those of any previous settlers like the romans or celts that created the lake district we know today despite their reputations as manly conquerors the norse were mostly farmers and it was performing that they began clearing large swaths of the lakes of trees and building dry stone walls to divide up their holdings walls just like those which is still used today it was also the norse who introduced the region's most influential residents its sheep herdwick sheep are one of the lake district's famous icons fairy-faced gray-walled creatures they always seem to be smiling politely like they can't wait to meet you though a local breed they're descended from these original norse sheep herdwick is a corruption of the norse word for sheep pasture and their effect on the landscape is incalculable the stark beautiful mountainsides that come up when you google late districts well they're only so bare because of the constant presence of these genial fluff balls constantly grazing the landscape trotting over it leaving a mark unlike any other animal beyond the physical the viking mark on the lakes was also social including many local words fell comes from the old norse for hill tarn the word for a small lake has a norse origin as does the local term for stream beck in fact it's thought that a local dialect mixing norse in english was spoken here until the 12th century but perhaps the most impressive legacy that the vikings left behind was the system of communal roaming over a quarter of the lake district is common land meaning the herdwick sheep can graze any part of it in centuries past this ensured that shepherds had a freedom unthinkable in other parts of england where land was often enclosed by retaining the ancient right to graze a certain number of sheep people were able to move around the lakes almost at will this is all the more impressive when you realize the viking era only lasted a short period of time before the second millennium a d had even begun the scottish had conquered the region they in turn would lose it following the norman conquest sparking off what would become the defining feature of the lakes the scots and english slugging it out to take the place for themselves but even as the politics of the area entered this depressing tug of war phase the landscape continued to be formed by other forces there was mining and quarrying industries that left visible traces that could still be seen today there was increased sheep farming for wool production continuing the deforestation started by the vikings by the time the region became peaceful in the 17th century it looked a lot like it does today but that doesn't mean anyone appreciated it as late as the 18th century people tended not to see the lake district as a place of raw beauty but rather as a horrible ugly place stuffed with sheep and weirdos the wildest and most frightful region of any country daniel defoe wrote of it the poet and libertas john dalton called the landscape alarming so what changed what made the general public go all the way from whoa regarding the lakes for that we can thank one of the most influential poets of all time now just before we continue with today's video a quick word from our fantastic sponsor ren ren is a website focused on the effects of climate change and how we can all individually combat it so you can head over to the website and go through a quick free questionnaire about what your consumption habits are we're talking questions like how often do you shop online how many times a week do we eat red meat it takes about five minutes and when you're done they've got lots of handy information and graphs that can put your carbon footprint into context but ren doesn't just stop there they're constantly scouring the globe for reforestation efforts and carbon capture projects that they want to help and if you're so inclined you can opt to after you've determined your carb of footprint you can choose to donate a monthly sum that will offset your own footprint by helping to fund some of these environmental projects for instance ren recently partnered with a california-based biochar project that removes flowable biomass from high-risk fire areas and pyrolyzes it they mix the resulting biochar with compost and sell it to local farmers helping to reduce the risk of wildfires and climate change once you've made a financial commitment you can begin receiving a monthly update centered around rainforest protection tree planting initiatives and carbon capture projects brent knows that it's going to take a lot of work to address climate change but it's easier when we all contribute a little bit so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in checking out you can head to ren.com or you can use my referral link in the description box below and there's a special partnership between ren and this channel they're going to plant 10 extra trees for each of the first hundred people who sign up using my link and now back to today's video the interesting thing about beauty is that despite seeming so universal it is in reality incredibly influenced by cultural cues for instance wilderness in the 18th century was regarded as scary inhospitable horrible and lots of other adjectives you never want to use on a dating profile on the continent james howell declared the pyrenees uncouth huge monstrous excretences of nature an attitude that was common while today a mountain landscape might be considered the epitome of beauty for old timey folk it was about as enticing as a old crap sandwich yet as the century dragged on there were signs that this was changing in the german-speaking lands the stormon drang movement was beginning to exalt a rugged nature in britain the picturesque movement was extolling the virtues of harmoniously balanced vistas it was actually one of their writers the scottish jesuit thomas west who would produce the first travel guide to the lake district in 1772 pointing readers to ideal spots for sketching but it would be the movement that grew out of these earlier ones that really upended how we think of the natural world the movement that emphasized sublime beauty and saw wonder in the wildest parts of nature romanticism and its greatest british exponent would also become the lake district's greatest advertiser born just outside the boundaries of the modern national park in the delightfully named cockermouth william wordsworth was a native son of the lakes but while clear cumbrian water practically ran through his veins it wasn't until he moved to the grasmere area in 1799 that his association with the district really began settling into dove cottage with his sister dorothy and with frequent visits from samuel taylor coleridge wordsworth embarked on a series of poems that would cement not just his reputation but that of an entire region let's see if you recognize this opening i wandered lonely as a cloud that floats high uh vales and hills when all at once i saw a crowd a host of golden daffodils written in 1804 the poem is arguably the most famous in the english language inspired by a walk wordsworth took in the lakes it immortalizes the region in a verse that almost everyone knows by heart not that it was just this one poem wordsworth lived in the lake district until 1850 pending endless odes to the world around him coleridge although moved away in 1804 was likewise inspired by the region as was the guy who was basically the ringo of the lake's poets robert southie even the great artist jmw turner repeatedly visited the lakes around this time painting the hypnotic sights he saw but it was wordsworth who really brought the area to wider attention with the publication of a guide to the lakes originally written in 1810 as an anonymous accompaniment for some engravings wordsworth republished the guide under his own name in 1835. in that instant he managed to do for the lake district what the 1992 olympics did for barcelona transformed it almost overnight into an unmanageable tourist trap written in beautiful prose guide to the lake struck a chord with a public both primed by romanticism to see nature as beautiful and utterly fed up of life in britain's squalid cities so they did as wordsworth suggested setting out for this magical area setting out to become as inspired as the guy who'd written about daffodils sadly for wordsworth he'd live long enough to regret the effect that his guide had although wordsworth was ahead of the curve when he declared the lakes should become some sort of national property he was incredibly unhappy with the idea that other people might want to see it the trouble was the arrival of the railways which the poet considered so unsightly that ruined the area when the lake's first railway line was proposed in 1844 wordsworth even wrote a poem against it opening with the words and is no nook of english ground secure from rash assault sadly of him it turned out that the answer was a resounding no the line was laid in 1847 a bitter experience wordsworth would live to see still it would have been even more bitter had he lived beyond 1850 right through that decade and then on into the 1870s railway tracks spread out across the lakes like metal rods being laid by some great iron tree as those lines spread people began to use them pouring into a region that only a few decades earlier had been viewed as dangerously remote now this was far from a unique experience all up and down britain the lowering price of rail travel was combining with the emergence of a new middle class and it turned weekend and seasonal travel into a national pastime still the impact on the lake district was dramatic around windermere industrialists began to build mansions to project their wealth elsewhere ordinary people flocked to the towns to enjoy the countryside but while bringing travel to the masses was great and all there were people who were worried about the side effects people like john ruskin like wordsworth ruskin had rejected the first rail line arriving in the lakes with all the enthusiasm of someone opening up the door to find a tax inspector just like wordsworth he decided to use his pen to protest writing and campaigning against the exploitation of this landscape and the thing is exploitation was the key word at this point in world history the idea of a protected landscape was almost as alien as a dalek invasion while the u.s would pass a law preserving yellowstone in 1872 it would take 18 years to create another permanent national park while in britain even stuff like stonehenge was available to buy and sell but ruskin envisioned a word where societies might preserve their greatest landscapes and as he wrote on the subject more more people started to agree ultimately this would become the seed for the 1895 creation of the national trust one of the biggest landowners in the lake district and one dedicated to its protection but the effects would be felt beyond the lakes along with people like cannon hardwick rawnsley and octavia hill ruskin was key in developing the modern concept of conservation as unesco put it when awarding the region world heritage status in 2017 a key development in the lake district was the idea that landscape has a value and that everyone has a right to appreciate and enjoy it as ideas go there are certainly worse and perhaps fittingly for an idea that grew out of literature it would in turn help influence some of the greatest children's books of all time beatrix potter was a writer who grew up in london but fell in love with the lake district while visiting and made the place her home it was these now protected beasters that helped inspire some of the most beloved tales from peter rabbit to jemima puddle-duck but rather than just benefiting from it potter made conservation part of her life adding rhetorical ammunition to the growing fight to preserve the lakes and even learning how to breed herdwick's sheep she did such a good job on this last point that she's now credited with being one of the key figures to saving the smiling herdwick from extinction a pleasing trivia fact if there ever was one yet the history of the lake district wasn't always one of poetry and progress in the mid-20th century the region would play a supporting role in one of the darkest events of all time the holocaust in august 1945 europe lane ruins from france's atlantic coast all the way to russia's western flank entire cities had been wiped out the whole countries had gone up in flames millions of people had vanished inside death camps never to return on the outskirts of war damaged prague a small group of homeless children huddled jewish survivors of one of history's worst genocides liberated from nazi camps in occupied czechoslovakia these children had nowhere to go no community to return to no hope until the people of the lake district threw them a lifeline the brainchild of british jewish philanthropist leonard montefiore the commission for the care of children from concentration camps would take in these children and re-house them near windermere in the end some 730 would make it to britain not exactly helped by a government that shockingly demanded the uk's jewish community from the costs still for the hundreds of children that made it to the lakes the experience would be life-changing known as the windermere children they stayed only temporarily some as little as four months others as long as six the idea was that they'd be given space to recover learn a bit of english and then sent out to live new lives around the uk in the short time that they were there though many developed deep connections with the region the first place in far too long to show them any kindness survivors such as eric hirsch later recalled swimming in the lake's chilly waters playing football in the shadow of the mountains and just basically learning to live again from a modern perspective the program was maybe somewhat lacking with no emphasis on counseling or therapy despite the horrors that these kids had seen nonetheless it seems to have worked here in the clear air of the lake district so far from the ghettos and camps of central europe some 730 orphans were able to find peace to start a new chapter in their lives as hersh later said of the lakes we felt alive again here i was liberated i will always love this place perhaps the most beautiful part is that locals seem to have largely welcomed them in other interviews herschel talked to feeling safe in windermere a feeling welcomed despite his poor grasp of english as a postscript to one of the darkest chapters in european history the story of the windermere children certainly offers a ray of hope a short poignant tale that locals should be proud of and it really was short in no time at all the project was wound down the kids sent off to new foster families or into job apprenticeships for the older ones and into new lives as british citizens and so the story of the lake district carried on by this time as the end of the 1940s approached the conservation ideas of raskin and wordsworth were starting to seem less radical and more like common sense back in 1932 the mass trespass of kinder scouter hill and the peak districts had awoken britain's the fact that they lived in a country where the rights of a few rich birks shoot grass were held higher than those of the masses to enjoy the countryside come 1949 the clamor for change was so great that the government finally passed the national parks and access to the countryside act allowing the creation of britain's first national parks and while the peak district home of kinder scout would symbolically become the first park the lakes wouldn't be far behind on may 9 1951 the lake district officially became britain's second national park originally covering 2 292 square kilometers its boundaries would be extended in 2016 to its current size today the lake's easternmost extremity directly borders another national park the yorkshire dales together the two marked the largest stretch of protected wilderness in the whole of britain so that's the story of the lake district from how it formed to the effect it had on the world of literature and conservation but it's not quite the end as we march into the third decade of the 21st century parts of this landscape are under pressure like never before when we look at an ancient landscape it's tempting to think that it will be around forever that there's no way anything could ever change it sadly this view is about as misguided as that of the first sailors chowing down on dodo meat and laughing about how they could wipe out an entire species of bird i mean go on how could that ever happen the problem is that changing economics and tourist habits are piling new pressures on the lake district pressures that taken individually might be survivable but together could spell the end of the region as we know it perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the world of sheep farming the upland grazing that from viking times helped shape this romantic world is currently described as being in crisis thanks to cheap imports from new zealand and elsewhere the average shepherd in the lakes now has an annual income equivalent to just thirteen thousand dollars a poor wage even for a teenager working the tiller mcdonald's because of this fewer and fewer young people are taking up the reins of this profession as hill farms then begin to fade and go bust over the coming years a vital part of the fabric of this region could be lost forever with no herdwick sheep to keep the hillsides bare and no one to repair the dry stone walls the national park stands to lose a great deal of what makes it so charming add in a surge in house prices forcing locals to move out of the area and you begin to see the acute challenges that the region faces now it's important to note that not everyone agrees that things are at crisis point the last few years have seen a real boom in rewilding the lake district the practice of returning tracts of land to something like their original state before humans came along on the one hand that's great for biodiversity proponents say it will transform the lakes into a place where long vanished species can thrive on the other hand rewilding necessarily means removing traces of human intervention and for sheep farmers or just people who want to preserve the version of the lakes that once inspired wordsworth this process is akin to destruction we don't have any easy answers for these challenges and since no one lives in the region it seems unfair to come down on either side of this really local argument still what we can say is that it would be a real shame if the future of this landscape was one of division or collapse instead of appreciation for its role in history here after all is a place that has inspired people for centuries that still bears the traces of long dead civilizations that remains perhaps above all else a place of unparalleled beauty while we can't know for sure what the future will bring we do know one thing that the lake district has a special place in the history of england and the uk as a whole a place that's deserving of recognition so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching you
2022-02-03 01:12
