Kirkstone Pass is a

mountain pass A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since mountain ranges can present formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both Human migration, human and animal migration t ...

in the English

Lake District 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 ...

, in the county of

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 ...

. It is at an altitude of . It is the District's highest pass traversed by road; the A592 between Ambleside in Rothay Valley and Patterdale in

Ullswater Ullswater is a glacial lake in Cumbria, England and part of the Lake District National Park. It is the second largest lake in the region by both area and volume, after Windermere. The lake is about long, wide, and has a maximum depth of . I ...

Valley. The road gradient approaches 1 in 4. The picturesque view down into Patterdale has Brothers Water as its focal point. The Kirkstone Pass Inn stands close to the summit. Once a vital coaching inn, it now caters primarily for tourists. It is the third-highest

public house A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...

in England.

Slate quarrying

Lead and copper ore mining and

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

mining has spanned centuries. Petts Quarry worked by Kirkstone Green Slate Company is just to the Ambleside side of the summit. Nearby is Hartsop Hall lead mine. Caudale slate mine is a few miles further down, on the Ullswater side, and was last worked at the beginning of the 20th century; all its adits are now blocked.

Name

The name of the pass comes from a prominent stone, the Kirkstone, which stands a few yards from the A592 on the Patterdale side of the inn. Its shadow resembles a steeple; 'kirk' means church in old Norse and was a variant in related

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

. In local names, the climb from Ambleside is known as ''The Struggle''.

Cultural references

In '' Cue for Treason'', best-known novel of children's writer Geoffrey Trease, much of it set in Cumbria, the narrator's friend long uses the name "Kit Kirkstone", taken from the pass. "Witch of the Westmorland" by musician Archie Fisher includes the lyric ''"weary by Ullswater, and the misty brake fern way, down through the cleft of the Kirkstone Pass, the winding water lay"''.

Gallery

File:Kirkstone Pass to Brothers.jpg, Kirkstone Pass descending to Brothers Water File:Kirkstone Pass Inn (Close Up) 2014.jpg, The Kirkstone Pass Inn File:The Kirk Stone - geograph.org.uk - 1054199.jpg, The church-like Kirk Stone at right, and nearby a nearly cuboid stone File:The Struggle Road Sign Bottom.jpg, The bottom of The Struggle in Ambleside

Notes

References

External links

*{{commons category inline, Kirkstone Pass Roads in Cumbria Mountain passes of the Lake District Westmorland Westmorland and Furness