Tarn Hows
Encyclopedia
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...
, containing a picturesque 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...
, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of Coniston
Coniston, Cumbria
Coniston is a village and civil parish in the Furness region of Cumbria, England. It is located in the southern part of the Lake District National Park, between Coniston Water, the third longest lake in the Lake District, and Coniston Old Man; about north east of Barrow-in-Furness.-Geography and...
and about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northwest of Hawkshead
Hawkshead
Hawkshead is a village and civil parish in the Cumbria, England. It is one of the main tourist honeypots in the South Lakeland area, and is dependent on the local tourist trade...
. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations
Honeypot (geography)
In geography, a honeypot is a particularly popular visitor attraction which attracts tourists in large numbers. The term 'honeypot' originates from bees buzzing around a hive.-Tourism planning:...
in the area with over half a million visitors per year in the 1970s and is managed by the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
.
Tarn Hows is fed at its northern end by a series of valley and basin mire
Miré
Miré is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France....
s and is drained by Tom Gill which cascades down over several small waterfalls to Glen Mary bridge: named by John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
who felt that Tom Gill required a more picturesque name and so gave the area the title 'Glen Mary'.
History
The Tarn Hows area originally contained three much smaller tarns, Low Tarn, Middle Tarn and High Tarn.Wordsworth's
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
Guide Through the District of the Lakes (1835 edition) recommends walkers to come this way but passes the tarns without mention.
Until 1862 much of the Tarn Hows area was part of the open common grazing of Hawkshead parish. The remaining enclosed land and many of the local farms and quarries were owned by the Marshall family of Monk Coniston Hall (known as Waterhead House at the time). James Garth Marshall
James Garth Marshall
James Garth Marshall was an English Liberal Party politician, the Member of Parliament for Leeds . He was the third son of the wealthy industrialist John Marshall who introduced major innovations in flax spinning and built the celebrated Marshall's Mill and Temple Works in Leeds, West Yorkshire...
(1802–1873) who was the Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
(1847–1852) and third son of the industrialist John Marshall, gained full possession of all of the land after an enclosure act
Inclosure Act
The Inclosure or Enclosure Acts were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country. They removed previously existing rights of local people to carry out activities in these areas, such as cultivation, cutting hay, grazing animals or using...
of 1862 and embarked on a series of landscape improvements in the area including expanding the spruce
Spruce
A spruce is a tree of the genus Picea , a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the Family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal regions of the earth. Spruces are large trees, from tall when mature, and can be distinguished by their whorled branches and conical...
, larch
Larch
Larches are conifers in the genus Larix, in the family Pinaceae. Growing from 15 to 50m tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains further south...
and pine
Pine
Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...
plantations around the tarns; demolition of the Water Head Inn at Coniston; and the construction of a dam at Low Tarn that created the larger tarn that is there today.
By 1899 Tarn Hows was already an important beauty spot. H.S. Cowper mentions "Tarn Hows, beloved by skaters in winter and picnic parties in summer. Here comes every day at least one charabanc
Charabanc
A charabanc or "char-à-banc" is a type of horse-drawn vehicle or early motor coach, usually open-topped, common in Britain during the early part of the 20th century. It was especially popular for sight-seeing or "works outings" to the country or the seaside, organised by businesses once a year...
load of sightseers from Ambleside
Ambleside
Ambleside is a town in Cumbria, in North West England.Historically within the county of Westmorland, it is situated at the head of Windermere, England's largest lake...
or Windermere". A wooden boat house that was still standing in the 1950s at the south east corner of the tarn probably dated from this period. In 1913 G.D. Abraham said "Tarn Hows is set wildly among larches and heather slopes, more like a highland lake than the other waters in Lakeland... more suitable for pedestrians than motorists".
In 1930 the Marshall family sold 4000 acres (16.2 km²) of their land to Beatrix Heelis of Sawrey (better known as Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, natural scientist and conservationist best known for her imaginative children’s books featuring animals such as those in The Tale of Peter Rabbit which celebrated the British landscape and country life.Born into a privileged Unitarian...
) for £15000. She then sold the half of this land containing the tarn to the National Trust and bequeathed the other half to them in her will.
Tarn Hows was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest
Site of Special Scientific Interest
A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...
in 1965.
The National Trust have made a number of more recent changes to the area including moving the car parks to a less obtrusive place in the 1960s and general footpath and road improvements to minimize the damage caused by the visitors. In May 2008 a building designed to harmonise with the landscape was opened, providing toilets and an information display under a sedum roof.