Qualla: Buttermere

Buttermere: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Buttermere is small. At roughly two kilometres long and barely half a kilometre wide, it would scarcely register among the lakes of larger countries. Yet it sits in one of the most concentrated landscapes in Britain - cradled by High Stile, Robinson, Fleetwith Pike, Haystacks, and Grasmoor, each fell pressing close to the water as if leaning in to listen. The footpath around the lake runs through a rock tunnel beneath Hassness. The water flows out through a short stream called Buttermere Dubs and into Crummock Water, then onward as the River Cocker to meet the Derwent at Cockermouth and finally the Irish Sea at Workington. Geographers measure all of this. What they cannot measure is how much human story has gathered on this two-kilometre shore.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Buttermere: Lake by the Dairy Pastures

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Andy V Byers, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name has two plausible origins. The first, favoured by modern place-name scholars, traces it to Old English: butere mere, the lake by the dairy pastures. The fertile alluvial flats at both ends of the water would have made fine grazing, and 'butter lake' fits a working agricu...

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Image: User:Andy V Byers | CC BY-SA 3.0

Buttermere: The Last Stand of Jarl Buthar

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Leete, CC BY-SA 2.0. Local tradition turns the second etymology into a story. After William the Conqueror's Harrying of the North in 1069, a Norse-Cumbrian chieftain called Jarl Buthar - sometimes Boethar - is said to have retreated to the hidden valley of Buttermere and waged a guerrilla war against...

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Image: Tim Leete | CC BY-SA 2.0

Buttermere: Mary at the Fish Inn

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Strider52, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the small village of Buttermere stood the Fish Inn, and within it grew up a young woman named Mary Robinson, born in 1778. Travellers passing through the Lakes began to write about her beauty in their guidebooks, and 'the Maid of Buttermere' became a kind of celebrity before s...

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Image: Strider52 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Buttermere: What Came After

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. It is easy to remember the scandal and forget the woman. Mary Robinson lived another thirty-five years after Hatfield's exposure. The public raised subscriptions for her. In 1807 she married a local farmer, Richard Harrison, and had four children. She lived until 1837, an ordinar...

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Image: Andrew Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Buttermere: Walking the Shore

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Knapton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The lake belongs to the National Trust as part of its Buttermere and Ennerdale property. The shoreline path is about six and a half kilometres - flat by Lake District standards, dramatic by anyone else's. Access by road comes from three directions: from Cockermouth in the north-w...

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Image: Mick Knapton | CC BY-SA 3.0