Behind Lakeland’s chocolate box exterior:
the excitement of Cumbria’s geology

Our base for the morning was the Blencathra Field Studies Centre, located at 300m above sea level with stunning views to the south. In the early 1900s this location was deemed an ideal spot for one of the first sanatoria in England – an isolation hospital for tuberculosis sufferers, which, when opened by the Countess of Lonsdale in 1904 boasted “perfect drainage, ample shelter, sufficient isolation and a stunning view.”

It’s also a perfect location to study the geology of the area, for it was here, in the Keswick area, that the story of Cumbria as we know it began 500 million years ago, with the formation of the Skiddaw Group rocks; to put that into perspective, dinosaurs first evolved about 230 million years ago, and the largest mountain range in Europe, the Alps, was formed about 65 million years ago.

The youngest of these three main bands are the rocks of the Southern Fells (“only” 420 million years old). If you picture England’s largest natural lake, Windermere, the head of the lake at Ambleside sits within the volcanic belt, and the southern reaches of the lake sit within a gentler landscape. Like the area around Keswick, the rock here is termed “sedimentary” – literally sediment laid down in shallow and deep seas.

Around the central Lakes is a limestone band: laid down on the sea bed 300 million years ago, this rock is made up of skeletons of sea creatures, which can be polished to give it an appearance similar to that of marble. And then there are the coal measures of the Carboniferous period and the red sandstone dating back to a time when desert conditions prevailed. All-in all, what a fine cocktail of different rocks we have here, which have also been affected by periods of mountain building and glaciation.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that two of the country’s pioneering 19th century geologists came from Cumbria: the “Father of Lakeland Geology,” Jonathan Otley (whose former clock- and watch- repair business was tucked down an alleyway in Keswick), and Adam Sedgwick, Professor of Geology at Cambridge University, commemorated with a fine memorial made from pink Shap Granite in the heart of the town in the Yorkshire Dales where his father was the local vicar.

It was Dent-born Adam Sedgwick who coined the name “Palaeozoic” in 1838 to denote the geological era between 570 million and 230 million years ago, during which period the Cumbrian rocks were formed, and fish, insects and reptiles first appeared. And that really is Greek: “Palaeozoic” is derived from Old Greek: palaiós and zōḗ combine to mean “ancient life.”