Swirl How
Encyclopedia
Swirl How is a fell
in the English
Lake District
. It stands between Coniston
and the Duddon Valley
in the southern part
of the District.
The Coniston (or Furness) Fells form the watershed between Coniston Water and the Duddon valley to the west. The range begins at Wrynose Pass
and runs south for around 10 miles before petering out at Broughton in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Alfred Wainwright
in his influential Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells
took only the northern half of the range as Lakeland proper, consigning the lower fells to the south to a supplementary work The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. Swirl How being the highest of the Coniston Fells therefore qualifies as one of the 214 Wainwrights. Later guidebook writers have chosen to include the whole range in their main volumes.
is within a few feet of parity. The Ordnance Survey
1:25,000 series has no spot height for Swirl How, which would perhaps decide the issue. Birkett and Wainwright quote 2,630 ft (802 m) whilst Richards and the British Mountaineering Council 1:40,000 map quote 2,637 ft (804 m)
The ridge northward to Great Carrs
is named Top of Broad Slack, Broad Slack being a ferociously steep grass slope climbing out of the Greenburn valley between neighbouring crags. The ridge is a grassy plateau with a pronounced downward tilt to the west. The eastern edge is precipitous, curving around the head of Greenburn. On the journey to Great Carrs the path passes a memorial. This is the site of a wartime
aircrash and bears the sad remains of a Royal Canadian Air Force
Handley Page Halifax
bomber. The undercarriage, together with a wooden cross and memorial cairn
is on the top of the ridge with the rest of the wreckage spread down Broad Slack. It would appear that the plane approached from the west, failed to clear the ridge and tumbled down the other side. Other parts of the aircraft are preserved in the Ruskin Museum at nearby Brantwood
. The tilted plateau of the north ridge is triangular in plan, narrowing to a point at Fairfield in the west. This is the col
between Swirl How and the ridge's western outlier, Grey Friar
. To the north of this ridge are long slopes leading down to the Duddon at Wrynose Bottom.
The main ridge continues southward, stepping down Great and Little How Crags to the depression of Levers Hawse. From here it rises again to Brim Fell
with Dow Crag
and The Old Man Of Coniston beyond. To the west of the Hawse is the valley of Tarn Head Beck, the main feeder of Seathwaite Tarn
, a reservoir in a side valley of the Duddon system. This was originally a much smaller waterbody, but was dammed early in the 20th century to provide drinking water for the Barrow in Furness area. The dam is almost 400 yards long and is concrete cored with slate buttresses, the resulting depth of the tarn
being around 80 ft. Water is not abstracted directly from the tarn, but flows some distance downriver to an off-take weir. To the east of Levers Hawse is Levers Water. This smaller tarn has also been raised by damming, but in this case the original user was the Coniston Copper Mines. Following the decline of mining in the late 19th century a water treatment plant was eventually built and the tarn now supplies drinking water for Coniston village.
The eastern arm of Swirl How leads down the stony slope of Prison Band to the depression at Swirl Hawse. From here it rises over the subsidiary top of Black Sails
to the main summit of Wetherlam
. Swirl Hawse Beck runs south from this ridge to feed Levers Water, whilst to the north of Wetherlam is Greenburn.
tuff
and lapilli
-tuff of the Long Top Member, interspersed with bands of andesitic
lapilli tuff of the Wetside Edge Member.
. The right of way shown up the western (Duddon) side of Levers Hawse does not exist as a path on the ground. Many walkers will arrive on Swirl How via one of the surrounding fells, all four ridges carrying fair paths.
dialect word svirle meaning to swirl or whirl around, suggests that there may have been an Old Norse
origin. How is believed to derive from the Old Norse word haugr meaning hill or mound.
Fell
“Fell” is a word used to refer to mountains, or certain types of mountainous landscape, in Scandinavia, the Isle of Man, and parts of northern England.- Etymology :...
in the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
. It stands between Coniston
Furness Fells
The Furness Fells are those hills and mountains in the Furness region of Cumbria, England. Historically part of Lancashire, the Furness Fells or High Furness is the name given to the upland part of Furness, that is, that part of Furness lying north of the line between Ulverston and Ireleth...
and the Duddon Valley
Duddon Valley
The Duddon Valley is a valley in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England. The River Duddon flows through the valley, rising in the mountains between Eskdale and Langdale, before flowing into the Irish Sea near Broughton in Furness...
in the southern part
Southern Fells
Image:Annotated Scafell range.jpg|thumb|300px|The Scafellsrect 23 372 252 419 Slight Side rect 173 794 560 834 Scafell East Buttressrect 707 787 893 861 Esk Pike or Crag rect 245 303 409 358 Sca Fell rect 408 238 637 280 Mickledore Image:Annotated Scafell range.jpg|thumb|300px|The Scafellsrect 23...
of the District.
The Coniston (or Furness) Fells form the watershed between Coniston Water and the Duddon valley to the west. The range begins at Wrynose Pass
Wrynose Pass
The Wrynose Pass is a mountain pass in the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, England between the Duddon Valley and Little Langdale.-Road:...
and runs south for around 10 miles before petering out at Broughton in Furness on the Duddon Estuary. Alfred Wainwright
Alfred Wainwright
Alfred Wainwright MBE was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the...
in his influential Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells
Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells
A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells is a series of seven books by A. Wainwright, detailing the fells of the Lake District in northwest England...
took only the northern half of the range as Lakeland proper, consigning the lower fells to the south to a supplementary work The Outlying Fells of Lakeland. Swirl How being the highest of the Coniston Fells therefore qualifies as one of the 214 Wainwrights. Later guidebook writers have chosen to include the whole range in their main volumes.
Doubt over Height
There is some doubt in the literature over the altitude of Swirl How. This takes on a greater significance since if it is the high point of the Coniston Fells, it is only so by a small margin. Its near neighbour, The Old Man of ConistonOld Man of Coniston
The Old Man of Coniston is a fell in the Furness Fells in the English Lake District. It is high, and lies to the west of the village of Coniston and the lake of the same name, Coniston Water. The fell is sometimes known by the alternate name of Coniston Old Man, or simply The Old Man...
is within a few feet of parity. The Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
1:25,000 series has no spot height for Swirl How, which would perhaps decide the issue. Birkett and Wainwright quote 2,630 ft (802 m) whilst Richards and the British Mountaineering Council 1:40,000 map quote 2,637 ft (804 m)
Topography
Befitting the high point of the range, Swirl How sends out ridges to the four points of the compass, each leading to further fells. Consequently it also feeds the headwaters of four valleys.The ridge northward to Great Carrs
Great Carrs
Great Carrs is a fell in the English Lake District. It stands above Wrynose Pass in the southern part of the District.-Topography:The Coniston Fells form the watershed between Coniston Water and the Duddon valley to the west. The range begins at Wrynose Pass and runs south for around 10 miles...
is named Top of Broad Slack, Broad Slack being a ferociously steep grass slope climbing out of the Greenburn valley between neighbouring crags. The ridge is a grassy plateau with a pronounced downward tilt to the west. The eastern edge is precipitous, curving around the head of Greenburn. On the journey to Great Carrs the path passes a memorial. This is the site of a wartime
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
aircrash and bears the sad remains of a Royal Canadian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
The history of the Royal Canadian Air Force begins in 1920, when the air force was created as the Canadian Air Force . In 1924 the CAF was renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force and granted royal sanction by King George V. The RCAF existed as an independent service until 1968...
Handley Page Halifax
Handley Page Halifax
The Handley Page Halifax was one of the British front-line, four-engined heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. A contemporary of the famous Avro Lancaster, the Halifax remained in service until the end of the war, performing a variety of duties in addition to bombing...
bomber. The undercarriage, together with a wooden cross and memorial cairn
Cairn
Cairn is a term used mainly in the English-speaking world for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the or . Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas...
is on the top of the ridge with the rest of the wreckage spread down Broad Slack. It would appear that the plane approached from the west, failed to clear the ridge and tumbled down the other side. Other parts of the aircraft are preserved in the Ruskin Museum at nearby Brantwood
Brantwood
Brantwood is a country house in Cumbria, England, overlooking Coniston Water. It has been the home of a number of prominent people, including John Ruskin. The house and grounds are administered by a charitable trust, the house being a museum dedicated to Ruskin...
. The tilted plateau of the north ridge is triangular in plan, narrowing to a point at Fairfield in the west. This is the col
Mountain pass
A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route...
between Swirl How and the ridge's western outlier, Grey Friar
Grey Friar
Grey Friar is a fell in the English Lake District, it is one of the Coniston Fells and is situated 13 kilometres west-south-west of Ambleside. It reaches a height of 770 metres and stands to the north west of the other Coniston Fells, a little off the beaten track and tends to be the least visited...
. To the north of this ridge are long slopes leading down to the Duddon at Wrynose Bottom.
The main ridge continues southward, stepping down Great and Little How Crags to the depression of Levers Hawse. From here it rises again to Brim Fell
Brim Fell
Brim Fell is a fell in the English Lake District. It stands to the west of Coniston village in the southern part of the District.-Topography:The Coniston Fells form the watershed between Coniston Water and the Duddon valley to the west...
with Dow Crag
Dow Crag
Dow Crag is a fell in the English Lake District near Coniston, Cumbria. The eastern face is one of the many rock faces in the Lake District used for rock climbing....
and The Old Man Of Coniston beyond. To the west of the Hawse is the valley of Tarn Head Beck, the main feeder of Seathwaite Tarn
Seathwaite Tarn
Seathwaite Tarn is a reservoir in the Furness Fells within the English Lake District. It is located to the south of Grey Friar and to the west of Brim Fell and north east of the village of Seathwaite on the east of the Duddon Valley.In order to create a source of drinking water the existing tarn...
, a reservoir in a side valley of the Duddon system. This was originally a much smaller waterbody, but was dammed early in the 20th century to provide drinking water for the Barrow in Furness area. The dam is almost 400 yards long and is concrete cored with slate buttresses, the resulting depth of the tarn
Tarn (lake)
A tarn is a mountain lake or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn. A corrie may be called a cirque.The word is derived from the Old Norse word tjörn meaning pond...
being around 80 ft. Water is not abstracted directly from the tarn, but flows some distance downriver to an off-take weir. To the east of Levers Hawse is Levers Water. This smaller tarn has also been raised by damming, but in this case the original user was the Coniston Copper Mines. Following the decline of mining in the late 19th century a water treatment plant was eventually built and the tarn now supplies drinking water for Coniston village.
The eastern arm of Swirl How leads down the stony slope of Prison Band to the depression at Swirl Hawse. From here it rises over the subsidiary top of Black Sails
Black Sails
Black Sails EP is an extended play by American rock band AFI. It was released on April 27, 1999 through Nitro Records. Only 5,000 copies were pressed. It is a sampler of the band's fourth studio album Black Sails in the Sunset.-Background:...
to the main summit of Wetherlam
Wetherlam
Wetherlam is a mountain in the English Lake District. It is the most northerly of the Coniston Fells, the range of fells to the north-west of Coniston village; its north-east slopes descend to Little Langdale.-Topography:...
. Swirl Hawse Beck runs south from this ridge to feed Levers Water, whilst to the north of Wetherlam is Greenburn.
Geology
The summit ridge exposes welded rhyoliticRhyolite
This page is about a volcanic rock. For the ghost town see Rhyolite, Nevada, and for the satellite system, see Rhyolite/Aquacade.Rhyolite is an igneous, volcanic rock, of felsic composition . It may have any texture from glassy to aphanitic to porphyritic...
tuff
Tuff
Tuff is a type of rock consisting of consolidated volcanic ash ejected from vents during a volcanic eruption. Tuff is sometimes called tufa, particularly when used as construction material, although tufa also refers to a quite different rock. Rock that contains greater than 50% tuff is considered...
and lapilli
Lapilli
Lapilli is a size classification term for tephra, which is material that falls out of the air during a volcanic eruption or during some meteorite impacts. Lapilli means "little stones" in Latin. They are in some senses similar to ooids or pisoids in calcareous sediments.By definition lapilli range...
-tuff of the Long Top Member, interspersed with bands of andesitic
Andesite
Andesite is an extrusive igneous, volcanic rock, of intermediate composition, with aphanitic to porphyritic texture. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between basalt and dacite. The mineral assemblage is typically dominated by plagioclase plus pyroxene and/or hornblende. Magnetite,...
lapilli tuff of the Wetside Edge Member.
Summit and view
The summit of Swirl How is marked by a fine cairn on a stony top, built close to the Greenburn edge of the ridge. The view to the north takes in massed ranks of fells while in other directions the Isle of Man, Morecambe Bay and Pennines can be seen.Ascents
Direct ascents can be made via Levers Hawse to the south or Swirl Hawse to the east. Both can be gained from Coniston and Swirl Hawse is also a practicable objective from Little LangdaleLittle Langdale
Little Langdale is a valley in the Lake District, England containing Little Langdale Tarn and a hamlet also called Little Langdale. A second tarn, Blea Tarn, is in a hanging valley between Little Langdale and the larger Great Langdale to the north...
. The right of way shown up the western (Duddon) side of Levers Hawse does not exist as a path on the ground. Many walkers will arrive on Swirl How via one of the surrounding fells, all four ridges carrying fair paths.
Name
The origin of the name Swirl How is obscure. A NorwegianNorwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
dialect word svirle meaning to swirl or whirl around, suggests that there may have been an Old Norse
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
origin. How is believed to derive from the Old Norse word haugr meaning hill or mound.