Ennerdale Water is the most westerly lake in the

Lake District National Park The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

, England. It is a

glacial lake A glacial lake is a body of water with origins from glacier activity. They are formed when a glacier erodes the land and then melts, filling the depression created by the glacier. Formation Near the end of the last glacial period, roughly 10,0 ...

, with a maximum depth of , and is wide and long. The lake lies in the eponymous valley of Ennerdale, surrounded by some of the highest and best-known fells in Cumbria including: Great Gable (899 m), Green Gable, Brandreth, High Crag, Steeple and Pillar. To the west of the lake lies the hamlet of Ennerdale Bridge, consisting of two pubs and a few houses. It is close to the port of

Whitehaven Whitehaven is a town and civil parish in the Cumberland (unitary authority), Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. It is a port on the north-west coast, and lies outside the Lake District National parks of England and Wales, National Park. ...

Etymology

" 'Anund's valley'. The name Ennerdale seems originally to have derived from 'Anundar',

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

sing. larof the ON personal name 'Anundr'/'Ǫnundr', and ON 'dalr' 'valley', but there has been cross-influence between this p.n. and 'Ehen', the name of the river which flows through the valley." (ON is

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

.) The lake has been referred to in guidebooks and maps variously as "Brodewater" (1576), "Brodwater" (1695), "Broad Water" (1760), "Ennerdale Water" (1784) and "Ennerdale Lake" in Otley's Guide (1823). It is now the

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

convention to name it "Ennerdale Water".

Geography

Ennerdale Water is fed by the River Liza and other streams, and in turn feeds the River Ehen, which runs to the

Irish Sea The Irish Sea is a body of water that separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is linked to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel and to the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland in the north by the North Ch ...

Water abstraction

Although the lake is natural, in 1902 a shallow weir was added to what is probably a

glacial moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris ( regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice s ...

to maintain the level. The lake is owned by

United Utilities United Utilities Group plc (UU) is the United Kingdom's largest listed water company. It was founded in 1995 as a result of the merger of North West Water and NORWEB. The group manages the regulated water and waste water network in North West En ...

, which abstracts water to serve customers in the Whitehaven area. In 2013, United Utilities was informed by the

Environment Agency The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body, established in 1996 and sponsored by the United Kingdom government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with responsibilities relating to the protection and enha ...

that the abstraction licence was being revoked to protect the environment of Ennerdale and the River Ehen. This meant that United Utilities had to find an alternative water source for customers in West Cumbria. After public consultation, a preferred option to provide water to West Cumbria via a new pipeline from Thirlmere was selected. After a public inquiry in 2014, the independent Planning Inspectors report ruled that the Thirlmere transfer was the right solution and that abstraction from Ennerdale Water would cease by 2022. The construction of the pipeline commenced in 2017. At the same time, United Utilities started to blend water from Ennerdale Water with groundwater from boreholes near Egremont.

Environmental protection measures

Ennerdale has been designated a biological

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

(SSSI). Species of interest include the

Arctic char The Arctic char or Arctic charr (''Salvelinus alpinus'') is a cold-water fish in the family Salmonidae, native to alpine lakes, as well as Arctic and subarctic coastal waters in the Holarctic realm, Holarctic. Distribution and habitat It Spaw ...

. The site contains a variety of habitats apart from the open water of the lake itself.

Tourism

Despite being sited on Wainwright's coast-to-coast walk, the valley is not much visited by tourists. Due to the remote location, the lack of a public road up the valley, and its management by the

Forestry Commission The Forestry Commission is a non-ministerial government department responsible for the management of publicly owned forests and the regulation of both public and private forestry in England. The Forestry Commission was previously also respons ...

, the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

and

, Ennerdale Water has not been as spoiled as other lakes in the National Park by construction, activity on the lake or the effects of tourism.

Notable facts

Though the Lake District is a popular UK location for film shoots, Ennerdale has been left relatively in the shadow, with only a few brief exceptions. The closing sequences of the film ''

28 Days Later ''28 Days Later'' (sometimes stylised with ellipsis as ''28 Days Later...'') is a 2002 post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. It stars Cillian Murphy as a bicycle courier who awakens from a coma to d ...

'' (2002), directed by

Danny Boyle Daniel Francis Boyle (born 20 October 1956) is an English director and producer. He is known for his work on the films ''Shallow Grave (1994 film), Shallow Grave'' (1994), ''Trainspotting (film), Trainspotting'' (1996) and its sequel ''T2 Tra ...

, were filmed around the Ennerdale area, and include a sweeping, panoramic view of the lake. In 1810 a large carnivore killed hundreds of sheep in and around Ennerdale before it was hunted down and killed. The locals dubbed it the Girt (''dialect'': "great") Dog of Ennerdale, though it was said to have had the traits of both a dog and a large cat. Once a year, during the last week in August, the Ennerdale Show brings local people together with agricultural displays, competitions, arts and crafts. Former US President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...

first proposed to his wife Hillary on the banks of Ennerdale Water in 1973.

References

External links

Wild Ennerdale website
{{authority control Cumberland Reservoirs in Cumbria Lakes of the Lake District Cumberland (unitary authority) Drinking water reservoirs in England Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cumbria LEnnerdale Oligotrophic lakes