Old Cumbria Gazetteer - viewpoint, Orrest Head


	viewpoint, Orrest Head
site name:-	Orrest Head
civil parish:-	Windermere (formerly Westmorland)
county:-	Cumbria
locality type:-	viewpoint
locality type:-	outline view
coordinates:-	SD41429935
1Km square:-	SD4199
10Km square:-	SD49
altitude:-	781 feet
altitude:-	238m

	Click to enlarge BTH68.jpg Panorama from Orrest Head. (taken 5.8.2010)

evidence:-	old text:- Clarke 1787
source data:-	Guide book, A Survey of the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, written and published by James Clarke, Penrith, Cumberland, and in London etc, 1787; published 1787-93. goto source Page 141:- "" "It would be doing injustice to the memory of Mr Young and this Lake not to give his description of a view, (though it may be rather partial,) from the mountain behind this village: he says, "Thus having viewed the most pleasing objects from these points, let me next conduct you to a spot, where, at one glance, you command them all in fresh situations, and all assuming a new appearance. For this purpose, you return to the village, and taking the by-road to the turnpike, mount the hill without turning your head, till you almost gain the top, when you will be struck with astonishment at the prospect spread at your feet, which if not the most superlative view that Nature can exhibit, she is more fertile in beauties than the reach of my imagination will allow me to conceive. It would be mere vanity to attempt to describe a scene which beggars all description; but that you may have some faint idea of the outlines of this wonderful picture, I will just give you the particulars of which it consists." ""The point at which you stand is the side of a large ridge of hills, that form the eastern boundary of the Lake, and the situation high enough to look down upon all the objects; a circumstance of great importance, which painting cannot imitate. In landscapes you are either on a level with the objects, or look up to them; the painter gives the declivity at your feet, which lessens the objects as much in the perpendicular line as in the horizontal one. You look down upon a noble winding valley of about twelve miles long, every where inclosed with grounds, which rise in a very bold and various manner; in some places bulging into mountains, abrupt, wild, and uncultivated; in others breaking into rocks, craggy, pointed, and irregular; here rising into hills, covered with the noblest woods, preventing a gloomy brownness of shade, almost from the clouds to the reflection of the trees in the lim-"
source data:-	goto source Page 142:- ""[lim]pid water of the Lake they so beautifully skirt; there waving in glorious slopes of cultivated inclosures, adorned in the sweetest manner with every object that variety to art, or elegance to nature, trees, woods, villages, houses, farms scattered with picturesque confusion, and waving to the eye in the most romantic landscapes that nature can exhibit." ""This valley, so beautifully inclosed, is floated by the Lake, which spreads forth to the right and left, in one vast, but irregular expanse of transparent water: its immediate shore is traced in every variety of line that fancy can imagine; sometime contracting the Lake into the appearance of a noble, winding river; at others, retiring from it, and opening into large bays, as if for navies to anchor in: promontories spread with woods, or scattered with trees and inclosures, projecting into the water in the most picturesque stile imaginable; rocky points breaking the shore, and rearing their bold heads above the water: in a word, a variety that amazes the beholder. But what finishes the scene with an elegance too delicious to be imagined, is, this beautiful sheet of water being dotted with no less than ten islands, distinctly comprehended by the eye; all of the most bewitching beauty. The large one presents a waving various line, which rises from the water in the most picturesque inequalities of surface; high land in one place, low in another; clumps of trees in this spot, scattered ones in that; adorned by a farm-house on the water's edge, and backed with a little wood, vying in simple elegance with Baromean palaces: some of the small isles rising from the Lake, like little hills of wood; some only scattered with trees, and others of grass of the finest verdure: a more beautiful variety is no where to be seen." ""Strain your imagination to command the idea of so noble an expanse of water, thus gloriously environed, spotted with islands more beautiful than would have issued from the happiest painter. Picture the mountains rearing their majestic heads with native sublimity; the vast rocks boldly projecting their terrible craggy points; and in the path of beauty, the variegated inclosures of the most charming verdure hanging to the eye in every picturesque form that can grace landscape, with the most exquisite touches of la belle nature. If you raise your fancy to something in infinitely beyond this assemblage of rural elegancies, you may have a faint notion of the unexampled beauties of this ravishing landscape."" "This extract may likewise shew us what stile has been adopted by our modern authors, and called by them, Bold, Picturesque, and Figurative: I shall only remark in it, that the loads of epithets here introduced are generally useless, and often tautological; that the easy unaffected stile of Mr Gray is at once both more pleasing and more intelligible, and that whoever would wish his readers to comprehend his subject, ought by no means to perplex them with obscurity of diction."

evidence:-	old photograph:- Bell 1880s-1940s
source data:-	Photograph, black and white, Windermere lake from Orrest Head, Windermere, Westmorland, by Herbert Bell, photographer, Ambleside, Westmorland, 1890s. click to enlarge HB0802.jpg item:- Armitt Library : ALPS465 Image © see bottom of page

evidence:-	old photograph:- Bell 1880s-1940s
source data:-	Photograph, black and white, Windermere lake from Orrest Head, Windermere, Westmorland, by Herbert Bell, photographer, Ambleside, Westmorland, 1890s. click to enlarge HB0803.jpg stamped at reverse:- "HERBERT BELL / Photographer / AMBLESIDE" item:- Armitt Library : ALPS466 Image © see bottom of page

	BTH57.jpg Outline view on Orrest Head. (taken 5.8.2010) BTH58.jpg Outline view on Orrest Head. (taken 5.8.2010) BTH59.jpg Outline view on Orrest Head, detail of the Langdale PIkes. BUT ... The summit labelled Pike of Stickle is Harrison Stickle with Dungeon Ghyll to its left, the slightly drawn summit to the left of that is Loft Crag. The Harrison Stickle label is a nothing. This removes our confidence in the other labels on this peely-waly watercolour sketch. (taken 5.8.2010) BTH63.jpg View of Langdale Pikes as on the outline view. The right half has Loft Crag, then Dungeon Ghyll, and Harrison Stickel and its ridge towards Pavey Ark. (taken 5.8.2010)

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