button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 136:-
Buttermere
themselves at the foot of the glen, disturb the solemn solitude with which the eye and mind have been entertained, and point out your return to society; for now you approach the village of Buttermere, which is situated between the lakes and consists of sixteen houses. The chapel here is very small, the stipend not large, for though twice augmented with the queen's bounty, it exceeds not twenty pounds per annum. This is one of the cures Mr. Pennant mentions; but the perquisites of the clog-shoes, harden-sark, whittle-gate, and goose-gate, have no better support than in some ancient, and probably idle tale.
The life of the inhabitants is purely pastoral. A few hands are employed in the slate quarries; the women spin woollen yarn, and drink tea. Above the village, you have a view of the upper lake, two miles in length, and short of one in breadth. It is terminated on the western side by the ferruginous mountain already mentioned. A stripe of cultivated ground adorns the eastern shore. A group of houses, called Gatesgarth, is seated on the southern extremity, under the most extraordinary amphitheatre of mountainous rocks that ever eye beheld. Here we see Honister-crag rise to an immense height, flanked by two conic mountains, Fleetwith to
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