River Crake

The River Crake is a short river in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

Lake District. The name probably derives from the

Celtic languages The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edwar ...

(most likely

Brythonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic ...

; ie

Cumbric language Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the southe ...

) and means ''rocky stream''. The river drains

Coniston Water Coniston Water in the English county of Cumbria is the third-largest lake in the Lake District by volume (after Windermere and Ullswater), and the fifth-largest by area. It is five miles long by half a mile wide (8 km by 800 m), ha ...

from its southernmost point and flows for about 6 miles (9.5 km) in a southerly direction before joining the upper estuary of the River Leven at

Greenodd Greenodd is a village in the Furness area of the county of Cumbria, England, but within the historical county of Lancashire. For local government purposes the village is also within the area of South Lakeland District. It is located 3 miles (5& ...

. The river is in the historic county of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a Historic counties of England, historic county, Ceremonial County, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significa ...

, but in an area that formed part of the county Cumbria after the 1974 reorganisation of local government. The villages of Water Yeat, Blawith,

Lowick Bridge Lowick may refer to: * Lowick, Cumbria * Lowick, Northamptonshire *Lowick, Northumberland * Lowick, Germany, part of Bocholt, Germany Bocholt () is a city in the north-west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, part of the district Borken. It is ...

, Spark Bridge and Penny Bridge are located close to the river in the Crake Valley. As well as receiving the outflow from Coniston the river also drains Beacon Tarn in the Blawith Fells above the southern end of Coniston. In the 19th century numerous industries including a

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...

and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in ...

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals ...

flourished along the river, making use of the fast flowing water to drive machinery. A bobbin mill at Spark Bridge, which manufactured wooden bobbins for the

Lancashire cotton industry Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron found ...

, used water-powered lathes to turn the wood. The factory survived into the 1970s using Gilkes

water turbine A water turbine is a rotary machine that converts kinetic energy and potential energy of water into mechanical work. Water turbines were developed in the 19th century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now, th ...

s to generate electricity and turn the lathes. The factory was eventually forced to close by the punitive water usage charges levied by the North West Water Authority. Today there are no obvious signs of any of the riverside industries. The Crake is a noted

salmon Salmon () is the common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of ...

river. The River Crake is the model for the Amazon River in

Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childr ...

’s

Swallows and Amazons series The ''Swallows and Amazons'' series is a series of twelve children's adventure novels by English author Arthur Ransome. Set in the interwar period, the novels involve group adventures by children, mainly in the school holidays and mainly in E ...

of children's novels according to

Hugh Brogan Denis Hugh Vercingetorix Brogan (20 March 1936 – 26 July 2019) known as Hugh Brogan, was a British historian and biographer. Early life The son of Sir Denis Brogan and Olwen Phillis Francis (Lady Brogan), OBE, archaeologist and authority on R ...

, although the Crake flows out of

but the Amazon flows into the Lake. The Allan Tarn at the beginning of the river became the Octopus Lagoon. Rivers of Cumbria Furness 1Crake {{England-river-stub