Lake District Records: The Biggest, Deepest, Highest and Wettest
For a small corner of England, the Lake District holds a remarkable number of the country's records. England's largest lake, its deepest lake, its highest mountain, its wettest inhabited place and one of its two steepest roads all lie within a few miles of each other. Here are the records, with the figures behind them.
A word on the numbers: different surveys give slightly different depths for the lakes, and where good sources disagree we have given the safe figure rather than the most dramatic one.
The largest lake in England: Windermere
Windermere is the largest natural lake in England by length, by area and by the volume of water it holds. It covers about 14.8 square kilometres and runs for about 17 kilometres, or 10.5 miles, from Waterhead near Ambleside to Newby Bridge in the south. That makes it the longest lake in England as well as the biggest. At its deepest it goes down more than 60 metres.
Even England's biggest reservoirs are smaller: Rutland Water and Kielder Water both cover less. Windermere paintings and prints.
The deepest lake in England: Wast Water
Wast Water is only about 4.8 kilometres long, but it is the deepest lake in England, at more than 70 metres. Its surface lies about 61 metres above sea level, so the deepest part of its bed is below sea level. The screes on its south-eastern side fall almost straight into the water from the top of Illgill Head, and they carry on down beneath the surface.
The view up Wast Water to Great Gable is the basis of the Lake District National Park's logo, and in 2007 ITV viewers voted it Britain's favourite view. Wast Water paintings and prints.
The deepest tarn: Blea Water
Among the small mountain tarns, the deepest is Blea Water, in its corrie under High Street above Haweswater. It is more than 60 metres deep, nearly as deep as Windermere, though it covers only a tiny fraction of the area. Our guide to the Lake District tarns has more on the tarns and how they were made.
The highest mountain in England: Scafell Pike
Scafell Pike, at 978 metres (3,209 feet), is the highest mountain in England. Its neighbour Scafell is second, at 964 metres, and Helvellyn third, at 950 metres, so the three highest mountains in England are all in the Lake District. Close to the summit of Scafell Pike lies Broad Crag Tarn, a pool at about 820 metres that has a claim to be the highest standing water in England.
Our article on the highest mountains in the Lake District lists the top twenty. Scafell Pike paintings and travel posters.
The wettest place in England: Seathwaite
The hamlet of Seathwaite, at the head of Borrowdale, is the wettest inhabited place in England, with about 3,550 millimetres of rain in an average year, more than twice what falls on Keswick only a few miles away. The fells above it are wetter still. In 1954 Sprinkling Tarn, high above Seathwaite, recorded 6,527 millimetres of rain, the most ever measured in a single calendar year in the United Kingdom.
The Lake District holds the UK's rainfall records for a single day too. In November 2009 Seathwaite took 316.4 millimetres in 24 hours, a national record at the time. In December 2015, during Storm Desmond, Honister Pass took 341.4 millimetres in 24 hours, the current UK record. Borrowdale paintings and prints.
Where the pencil began
The fells above Seathwaite once held a deposit of graphite, known locally as "wad", so pure and solid that it could be sawn into sticks. It gave rise to the pencil industry in Keswick, and the mine was worked on and off until about 1891.
The steepest road: Hardknott Pass
Hardknott Pass, the road between Eskdale and the Duddon Valley, climbs to 393 metres with stretches as steep as 1 in 3, or about 33 per cent. It shares the title of steepest road in England with Rosedale Chimney Bank in North Yorkshire. Just to the east, Wrynose Pass reaches gradients of 1 in 4. At the top of Wrynose stands the Three Shire Stone, which marks where the old counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire met.
Our guide to the Lake District passes covers every road and walking pass. Hardknott Pass paintings.
The highest road pass, and the third-highest pub
Kirkstone Pass, between Ambleside and Patterdale, is the highest pass in the Lake District crossed by a road, at 454 metres (1,489 feet). The steep road up from Ambleside is known as The Struggle. Near the top stands the Kirkstone Pass Inn, at around 1,500 feet, often described as the third-highest pub in England. Kirkstone Pass paintings.
The last slate mine: Honister
At the top of Honister Pass, at 356 metres, the Honister Slate Mine calls itself the only working slate mine in England, and the green slate is still cut and split there. It also built England's first via ferrata, a climbing route of fixed iron rungs and cables across the face of Fleetwith Pike. Honister Pass paintings and travel posters.
The only "Lake": Bassenthwaite Lake
The Lake District is famous for its lakes, but only one of them actually has the word "Lake" in its name. All the others are waters, meres or tarns: Wast Water, Windermere, Tarn Hows. The exception is Bassenthwaite Lake, at the northern edge of the fells. It is also, with Derwentwater, the only place in England where the vendace, the UK's rarest fish, lives naturally. Our article on how many lakes there are in the Lake District explains the naming in full.
The smallest Wainwright: Castle Crag
Of the 214 fells in Alfred Wainwright's guidebooks, the smallest is Castle Crag in Borrowdale, at 290 metres. It is the only one under 1,000 feet. Wainwright admitted it on character rather than height, and its summit gives one of the best views of Borrowdale. Castle Crag paintings.
An aeroplane on Helvellyn
On 22 December 1926, Bert Hinkler and John Leeming landed a small Avro biplane on the summit plateau of Helvellyn, England's third-highest mountain, and then took off again. A stone tablet on the summit plateau records the landing. Helvellyn paintings.
England's largest National Park
At 2,362 square kilometres, the Lake District is the largest National Park in England. In 2017 UNESCO made it a World Heritage Site, under the name "The English Lake District", recognising it as a landscape shaped as much by its farming, its writers and its conservation as by the ice that carved it.
The records on your wall
Most of the places on this page have their own collection of paintings and prints in the shop, and the lakes have their own watercolour map posters, showing the true shape of each water with the contours of the fells around it. The paintings are impressions of these places rather than photographs of them.
- Paintings as prints and canvases: 40cm, 70cm or 90cm, from £59.99 unframed to £209.99 for a 90cm framed canvas
- Panoramic framed canvases: £169.99 (30 x 91cm) or £259.99 (51 x 152cm)
- Lake map posters, framed: £89.99 (30 x 40cm), £119.99 (45 x 60cm), £129.99 (50 x 70cm)
Frames come in black, white or natural wood. Everything is made to order: printing takes 2-5 working days, then UK delivery takes 3-7 working days, and framed pieces arrive ready to hang.