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Drawn by the Light: a Lakeland Experience
Jan Wiltshire
Introduction
Kentdale. The River Kent, with Jumb Quarry and Lingmell End. 6 November 2010
Heading north, through the broad, glaciated valley of the River Kent, I saw waterfalls ahead. A
channel of the river ran swift beneath alder trees and over the falls. And a rock terrace reached out
into the riverbed and dammed a slow flow of the braided river. Water eddied between shoal and
shore where floating islands, soft clouds of bubbles, swirled round and round and dissolved in the
reflected colours of fell and sky. What a brilliant November day! I was caught in the enchantment,
mesmerised by floating clouds, lost in the river, falling in love with the place all over again. I made a
date to return to see the river in a different season, a different mood. The more I come here, the
more discovery changes my way of seeing.
Somewhere out of sight, the river is swallowed up in quarry spoil to emerge and fan out wide before
it reaches the waterfall. East of the river lies Jumb Quarry, a green slate quarry long silent. When
first I came to live in the Lakes I was dismissive of its legacy of industrial archaeology. Look
elsewhere for beauty and the aesthetic. But with time comes regeneration, and now I sometimes
see differently. Imagine the noise, the impact on the environment when quarries on either side of
the river were active! Jumb Quarry is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its geology, and in a
certain light the architecture of its conical spoil heaps and terraces is stunning. Scree caused
naturally by frost-erosion can resemble quarry spoil. So can moraines, glacial debris dumped on the
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river’s flood plain - islands of bracken rising above the soft gold rushes of boggy ground. The
disturbance of quarrying brings new minerals to the surface and for a botanist there can be
unexpected finds. And the seclusion of these disused quarries, with rock face hewn by quarrymen
and a scatter of boulders, makes a nest site for wheatear, a hunting ground for peregrine.
Jumb Quarry, below Kentmere Pike.
I love to explore, to make discoveries, and I delve deeper when I’m writing a book so I tend to go
alone on these ventures. Looking and listening is exclusive, a solitary occupation. I lose and find
myself in an intense looking. Words take shape in my thoughts along the way.
Word and image complement each other in a closely integrated read in ‘Drawn by the Light: a
Lakeland Experience.’ This is season-watch, a study through a sequence of years at a particular time,
a natural history and a chronology that will never be repeated. Mine is a story of fell and dale with
themes and motifs that recur and develop, so it’s shaped to read as a whole. I know readers enjoy
dipping in, afterwards. The vision is whole catchment: Derwent, Langdale, Ullswater, and Kentdale.
With summer grazing up on the fells and lambing down in the dale by the farmstead, it’s a vision hill
farmers share. And Natural England and the Environment Agency base management plans on whole
catchment. Hand-drawn maps show watershed and catchment. ‘Derwent’ and the floods of
November 2009 highlight this approach.
I’m rarely outdoors without binoculars and a camera, and I like to explore all that makes up a
particular habitat. Roseroot is a plant of sea-cliff and ghyll, of inaccessible places, so when I spied
plants on a rock shelf in a disused Kentdale quarry I scrambled up to investigate the botanical mix.
Water dripped and trickled. Last summer’s long, withered flower-stems trailed down the rock but
new life would soon invigorate the plant. In 2011 spring came fast with weeks of hot, dry weather.
Timing is unpredictable, so I had to go back and back for the moment the roseroot buds began to
open. As I photographed the flowers I was struck by the niche habitat and way those new stems
began to reach for the sun, stretching and arching out from the rock. That’s the essence and quiddity
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of roseroot, and to show it I had to be there on a day when light worked well in a quarry full of
shadows. In a season of roseroot, I made diverse discoveries in the vicinity of Rainsborrow Crag and
along the course of the River Kent. Day after day, I stopped to listen to a redstart singing in a
sycamore, to watch a pair of kestrels busy about their nest in the crags, and once a peregrine flew
over my head with its prey clutched beneath it and shrieking in horror. Whenever I might, I talked
with the farmers of Kentdale – it was mid-April and the first lambs had been born and I was making
the place mine.
Regeneration. Ash tree and Roseroot, Sedum roseum, in a disused Kentdale quarry
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the National Trust (including research material on historic farmsteads) Natural
England, Cumbria Wildlife, the Lake District Mountain Rescue Dogs Association.
To friends whose support and encouragement is invaluable.
Copyright. “Drawn by the Light: a Lakeland Experience” is available for personal use only. Please
respect copyright
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