Martindale

I’ve been off-grid in the Lakes for a few days, specifically in Martindale, perhaps the most secluded and certainly the least touristy of the dales.

Martindale drains into Ullswater. To get there you have to follow the east of the Lake from Pooley Bridge to Howtown then negotiate The Hause, a steep little pass with several tricky hairpin bends.

The Wordsworths passed through on 29 December 1801, Dorothy would write in her journal¹Lindop, Grevel. “A Literary Guide to the Lake District”. Page 328. 1993. Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0701136154.:

A sharp hail-shower gathered at the head of Martindale, and the view upwards was very grand – the wild cottages, seen through the hurrying hail-shower. The wind drove and eddied about and about, and the hills looked large and swelling through the storm … O! the bonny nooks and windings and curlings of the beck, down at the bottom of the steep green mossy banks. We dined at the public-house on porridge, with a second course of Christmas pies.

She recalls dining at a public house. Nowdays, Martindale is dry, the nearest pub is at Howtown. The ‘Star Inn‘ provided the victuals for the Wordsworths. This was located just over the pass at a farm which is now called Cotehow. They came again in 1805  and stayed in a room “built by Mr. Hazel at the yearly Chace of red deer in his forests at the head of these dales“.

“Mr. Hazel” would refer to the owner of the Dalemain Estate, originally purchased by Sir Edward Hasell in 1679 and still retained by the same family.

In 1910, the Earl of Lonsdale, Hugh Lowther, leased the estate from the Dalemain Estate and promptly built a ‘Bavarian’ style lodge high up the dale. It’s a wooden structure with a veranda and a red tin roof.

Two years before the start of the First World War, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor, was a guest of Lowther’s at the lodge.

But I’ve posted about ‘The Bungalow’ before. It’s a wonderful place, if you don’t mind a lack electicity, candlelights, a log fire, and the bellows of the rutting stags echoing around the valley.

In the featured image, the red roof of The Bungalow can be made out just right of centre.

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  Lindop, Grevel. “A Literary Guide to the Lake District”. Page 328. 1993. Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0701136154.