Bowderstone Cottage and Hermitage

Geology and History

The Bowder Stone is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Lake District. It is approximately 18 metres long, over 8 metres high and weighs around 1,253 tons and is the biggest freestanding piece of rock in the Lake District. More impressive than its enormous bulk is the way it seems to balance on one corner, appearing from the southern end like a diamond resting on one point.

What’s in a Name?

The most likely explanation for the name Bowder Stone is that it’s local dialect for "Boulder Stone", although some have suggested that it’s derived from Balder, one of Odin’s sons. Old accounts contain many spellings of the word Bowder, including Boother, Bowdar, Powder, Bounder and Bowdore.

Origins of the Stone

The Bowder Stone is a large piece of fine-grained, dark greenish grey andesite lava from the Ordovician age. It belongs to the Borrowdale Volcanic Group of rocks, which are around 452 million years old.

There are no legends attached to how the Bowder Stone came to be where it is. Debate has focussed on the geological reasons for its location. Two possible origins have been considered: it was transported by ice i.e. it is a glacial erratic boulder, or it fell from the crags above. The theory that it is a glacial erratic does not stack up. Some have suggested it came from Scotland but there is no evidence that ice from Scotland ever penetrated the Lake District and the stone itself is clearly a piece of Lake District volcanic rock. Ice travelling down Borrowdale from the high fells could have brought the boulder but the Bowder Stone shows no signs of abrasion typical of glacial transport. Also, it is located in the Jaws of Borrowdale, where the valley narrows. Glacier movement speeds up in constricted areas and under such conditions glaciers are more likely to transport boulders rather than deposit them.

There is strong evidence that the Stone came to be at its present location because of a massive rock fall. The rock of the Stone and the material in the Hells Wall section of Bowder Crag are identical and its diamond cross-section reflects the pattern of joints in the rocks of Bowder Crag. Also, the rocks on part of Hells Wall have cleavage structures that mirror those on the two large standing stones, which at some time broke away from the Bowder Stone and now lie on its western side. The Stone is just one of many boulders lying on the slope below Bowder Crag and its position at the bottom of this slope is exactly where you would expect to find the largest boulder from a rock fall.

There is no record of this massive rockfall occurring in historic times. The debris is completely stable and surrounded by dense scrubby woodland. Probably the fall occurred at the end of the last period of glaciation in the valley, between 13,500 and 10,000 years ago, when Bowder Crag, weakened by ice action, was subject to constant freeze thaw activity.

Bowderstone Cottage and Hermitage

In 1778 Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes was published. This was a practical guide as distinct from books dedicated to fashionably tasteful appreciation. By 1821 the guide had gone to a further 10 editions. Its success was due to its straightforward approach, providing visitors with a tour from viewpoint to viewpoint. This saved them a great deal of time and trouble and West’s guide was ritualistically followed.

In the same year as West’s guide was first published, Joseph Pocklington came to the Lake District, an early pioneer who settled in the area because of the beauty of the landscape. He was a wealthy eccentric gentleman from Newark in Nottinghamshire where, on his estate, he had built all kinds of picturesque extravaganzas. Estate records tell of oriental style stables, obelisks galore and an "ornamental hovel".

Pocklington bought Vicar’s Island in Derwentwater, renamed it Pocklington’s Isle, and built a mansion to his own design. The basic cost of this mansion, excluding the more fanciful items of furniture and fittings, was £1,395, a lavish sum in those days. He embellished the island itself with follies. He built a druid’s temple and an artillery battery, for procuring echoes. He built a second large house in Portinscale near Keswick and then, in 1787, he bought land at Barrow, near Ashness. Here he built himself a new home with a number of ornamental features including a cascade to rival the neighbouring Lodore Falls. He named it Barrow Cascade House. The house is now Derwentwater Youth Hostel. Pocklington’s antics earned him the name "King Pocky" amongst Keswickians.

In 1798, Pocklington bought the land around the Bowder Stone and started work, intent on capitalising on its "must see" status on the tourist trail. He cleared the area at the foot of the Stone, erected a fence around it to emphasise its "precarious" nature and erected a ladder against it. He built a mock hermitage or chapel, set up a druid stone and built Bowderstone Cottage in which he installed a lady resident to show visitors around. Pocklington enlarged a hole at the base of the stone so that his guide, for a small fee, could shake hands with visitors lying down on the other side. This gimmick was said "to improve their luck". After shaking hands, visitors were taken into the cottage to have a glass of lemonade and sign the visitors’ book. Records of the cottage residents are scant. It seems that in 1819 one John Raven lived at the house and that he may have had two women assistants who visited during business hours. The most publicised guides were Mary Caradus in the 1830s and Mary Thompson whose tenure lasted for some 25 years from the 1850s. By 1900 William Weightman, the road foreman in Borrowdale, was running the cottage.

Not everyone appreciated Pocklington’s efforts to "improve" the landscape. In 1807 the poet, Robert Southey, friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, wrote:

"Another mile of broken ground, the most interesting which I ever traversed, brought us to a single rock called the Bowder Stone, a fragment of great size which has fallen from the heights. The same person who formerly disfigured the island in Keswick Lake with so many abominations, has been at work here also; has built a little mock hermitage, set up a new druidical stone, erected an ugly house for an old woman to live in who is to show the rock, for fear travellers should pass under it without seeing it, cleared away all the fragments round it, and as it rests upon a narrow base, like a ship upon its keel, dug a hole underneath through which the curious may gratify themselves by shaking hands with the old woman. The oddity of this amused us greatly, provoking as it was to meet with such hideous buildings in such a place - for the place is as beautiful as eyes can behold or imagination conceive".

The Bowder Stone remained firmly established as a must see attraction on the tourist circuit well into the 20th Century. In the 1920s and 1930s the Cottage still functioned as a tea room and souvenir shop and all the guidebooks featured this natural wonder. The Bowder Stone continues to be a popular place for visitors to the Lake District to this day.

The land and buildings are now owned by the National Trust, which maintains the ladder. The cottage and hermitage are leased to the Northumbrian Mountaineering Club, which maintains them as climbing huts for its members and other climbing clubs.

Source Material:
The Story of the Bowder Stone by Alan Smith (Rigg Side Publications)
The Illustrated Lake Poets by Molly Lefebure (Toppan Printing Co. Limited)