Seatoller

The story of Seatoller begins with the last Ice Age when a stream of ice from Honister joined the main glacier, forming a shelf, above any flood waters and sheltered from prevailing winds.

It has always been cut off from the east, south and west. And the trip north to Keswick even today requires navigation past potholes, floods, the occasional tree or fallen rock.

For most of the last millennium, Borrowdale has been a secret valley, originally managed by the church and then by a monarchy, merely interested in what minerals could be extracted.

In seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, landlords, especially for Seatoller, were notable for their absence (but manorial court records are very limited).

The families were Cumberland statesmen, independent and proud of it. Volume two follows their story through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.