button to main menu  Martineau's Complete Guide to the English Lakes, 1855

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Page 74:-

Keswick excursions
EXCURSIONS FROM KESWICK.

  Derwent Water
  St Herbert
  Derwentwater Family

DERWENT WATER.
The first object of attention will be the lake itself; and it will probably be viewed by boat. The uppermost thought at all points about the foot of the lake is of the Derwentwater family. They had once a castle on the hill called Castlehead, where they built upon the site of a Druidical circle. This hill should be visited for the view. The Ratcliffes also possessed Lord's Island, the largest on the lake, where their mansion is said to have been built, from the stones of the old one on Castlehead. Ramps Holme, another of the islands, was their's also; and the hermit, the dear friend of St. Cuthbert, who lived in St. Herbert's Isle in the seventh century, is somehow mixed up in legends, in local imaginations which are careless of dates, with the same family. All that is known of St. Herbert is, that he really had a hermitage in that island, and that St. Cuthbert and he used to meet, either at Lindisfarn or Derwentwater, once a-year. The legend about their deaths is well known; that, according to their prayer, they died on the same day. There is beauty in the tradition that the man of action and the man of meditation, the propagandist and the recluse, were so dear to each other, and so congenial. Vicar's, or
gazetteer links
button -- "Castlehead" -- Castle Head
button -- Derwent Water
button -- Lord's Island
button -- "Ramps Holme" -- Rampsholme Island
button -- "St Herbert's Isle" -- St Herbert's Island
button -- (stone circle, Castle Head)
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