The Book of Coniston

by W. G. Collingwood

Coniston Water it is called by the public now-a-days, but its proper name is Thurston Water. So it is written in all old documents, maps, and books up to the modern tourist period. In the deed of 1196 setting forth the boundaries of Furness Fells it is called Thorstanes Watter, and in lawyer's Latin Turstini Watra, which proves that the lake got its title from some early owner whose Norse name was Thorstein; in Latin, Turstinus; in English, Thurston. In the same way Ullswater was Ulf's water, and Thirlmere was Thorolf's mere, renamed in later times from a new owner Leathes water—though in the end the older title finally prevailed.

As a first rough survey it will be convenient to take the steam gondola, and check off the landmarks seen on her trip, an all too short half-hour, down to the waterfoot.

The start is from the pier near the head of the lake, at the quaint boathouse built seventy years ago, in what was then called the Gothic style, for the late Mr. John Beever of the Thwaite—the house on the slope of the Guards Wood above the Waterhead Hotel. The boathouse stands on a promontory made by Yewdale Beck, which falls into the lake close at hand, and brings down with every flood fresh material to build its embankment farther and farther into the lake. So rapidly is its work done that a boulder is pointed out, twenty yards inland, which was always surrounded by water twenty or thirty years ago.

Another cause helps to hasten their work, for it is in this part that the waves under the prevailing south-west winds attain their greatest size and strength. The steamer captain who lives here says that he has measured waves 65 feet long from crest to crest, five feet high from trough to crest. These great waves dash back the stones and gravel brought down by the becks and spread it northwards, embanking it in a ridge under the water from this point to Fir Point opposite. Dr. H. R. Mill, by his soundings in 1893, found the deepest part of the little northern reach to be hardly more than 25 feet; this was close to the actual head of the water, showing that it is the débris brought down by the Yewdale and Church Becks which is silting up the bed.

Looking round this northern reach, which the gondola does not traverse in her voyage, opposite is Fir Point, with the boathouse of Low Bank; a little higher up in a bay, the twin boathouses of Lanehead and Bank Ground; then the landings for Tent Lodge and Tent Cottage, and the bathing house and boathouse belonging to Victor Marshall, Esq., of Monk Coniston Hall, in the woods at the head of the lake. At the true waterhead, where the road from Hawkshead joins the road round the lake, used to stand the Old Waterhead Inn. Nearer us are the boathouses at Kirkby Quay, and the pier of the (new) Waterhead Hotel.

Leaving the steamer pier we are at once in deep water. The soundings increase rapidly off the mouth of Church Beck, just below Mason and Thwaites' boathouse; the bottom, gently shelving for a few yards out, suddenly goes over a bank, and down at a steep angle to a depth of 125 feet. On the evening of August 5th, 1896, a boy named George Gill sank there out of reach of his companion, and was drowned before help could be got. At the very moment the Parish Council in the village was discussing regulations for boating and bathing. The sad news brought the members down to the waterside for a painful object-lesson in the necessity of life-saving apparatus. By private effort, in the absence of public authority, life buoys and lines have now been provided at the boathouses and piers, and it is hoped that all will co-operate in the proper use of such means in case of need.

We have now passed the boathouse of Coniston Bank on the left, and Coniston Hall on the right. Between the two the lake is at its broadest—nearly half-a-mile. Land's Point on the right narrows the lake to a third of a mile. Looking back, Yewdale Crag stands finely over the waterhead; Brantwood is opposite. Between Coniston Bank and Brantwood (fishermen and boat sailors may note) there is a shoal nearly rising to the surface in low water—a bank of stiff clay, about 50 yards off the east shore. On the right hand, in the second field below Land's Point, the dark-looking bank just above the foreshore is a mass of slag, the remains of an ancient bloomery or smelting furnace; and in the next field called the "Springs," half a mile below Land Point, there is another bloomery site, marked by a tree-grown hillock. Behind these, plantations cover the site of the ancient deer park of Coniston Hall. Exactly opposite the "Springs" bloomery is a promontory formed by Beck Leven, on which Ruskin's seat marks a favourite point of view embracing the whole of the waterhead and the crags around. Across the road from this seat and close to the beck are the slag mounds of another bloomery.

We are now crossing the deepest part of the northern basin of the lake, where Dr. Mill found over 150 feet of water. The bottom rises, when we pass Hoathwaite boathouse on the right, to little more than 125 feet, and off Fir Island deepens again, attaining 184 feet half a mile farther down—making this the deepest of the lakes after Wastwater, Windermere, and Ullswater, as its 5-1/2 miles of length makes it the longest except Windermere and Ullswater. Its normal level is 143 feet above the sea, though it rises and falls in drought and damp weather as much as six feet. Of the form of its bed Dr. Mill says:—"If the water were reduced to sea level, there would remain two small lakes, the southern measuring one mile and a half in length, and a quarter of a mile in breadth, and having a maximum depth of 42 feet; the northern one, separated by a quarter of a mile, being only 9 feet deep, three-quarters of a mile long, and perhaps 200 yards wide at the most. Quite possibly the two might be connected by a channel, and give a long shallow lake of two and a half miles" (Bathymetrical Survey of the English Lakes, p. 39). This bank or dam between the two deeps is not caused by filling up from any stream like that at the steamer pier; it points to the fact, more strikingly seen in Windermere, that these long lakes, like most of the long valleys, are not mere troughs or grooves ploughed in the rock, but a series of basins, partly filled up with glacial débris, and partly joined together by glacial erosion, which broke and planed away the dividing barriers.

Fir Island (formerly from its owner called Knott Island, now the property of Arthur Severn, Esq., R.I., J.P.) is low and close to the water's edge, hardly distinguishable except by its grove of Scotch firs from the rest of the coast. In very dry weather it becomes a peninsula, but usually a boat can make the circumnavigation, though there is risk of shipwreck on the sharp rocks to the landward side. Near it, beyond the road which winds prettily along the uneven and craggy shore, are the ruins of Copland's Barn; and above it the great larch woods of the Heald, on a noble slope of nearly 700 feet from the brow of the fell to the lake. The western shore is formed by the long and varied slope of Torver Common, down which runs the Moor Gill. At its foot, exactly opposite Copland's Barn, is the most extensive of the bloomeries, with the ruins of an old hearth still to be found.