Newlands Valley

The Newlands Valley is regarded one of the most picturesque and quiet valleys in the Lake District National Park, although it is very close to Keswick's renowned tourist town and the busy A66 road.

You can get to Newlands via the village of Braithwaite from the A66. The Newlands Valley is separated from Derwentwater by a single set of hills. By highway, at the start of the valley, the small village of Stair is about 3 miles away. A narrow winding road, Newlands Pass, with frequent glimpses of Newlands Beck, leads you to Littletown, another small village, and then to Buttermere.

Newlands Valley Grid Ref: NY 235204 The Newlands Valley is regarded one of the most picturesque and quiet valleys in the Lake District National Park, although it is very close to Keswick's renowned tourist town and busy highway A66.

Derwentwater, Newlands Catbells and Valley. You can get to Newlands from the A66 through Braithwaite town. The Newlands Valley is separated from Derwentwater by a single set of hills. By highway, at the start of the valley, the small village of Stair is about 3 miles away. A narrow winding road, Newlands Pass, with frequent glimpses of Newlands Beck, leads you to Littletown, another small village, and then to Buttermere.

Newlands Church is situated at the foot of the hills near Littletown, a lovely whitewashed building.

The Newlands Valley is an excellent base for a walking holiday and provides a broad variety of walking trails including low-level valley walks, ridge walks and downhill walks such as Causey Pike, Barrow, Robinson, Hindscarth, Catbells, Maiden Moor and Dale Head.

The links between the Newlands Valley and Beatrix Potter are well established. Ms Tiggywinkle's Tale uses the Newlands Valley as its context. Everybody can acknowledge Catbells, Skelgill and Little Town from their sketches. She also knew the Church of the Newlands, getting to understand her Vicar and his sister, Lucie Carr.

Newlands Valley is a 3-mile-long highway running from Braithwaite village near Keswick to Buttermere along a cliff above the Newlands Valley. Newlands Hause is the biggest point, 333 meters (1093 feet), with a parking lot and a short walk to Moss Beck's waterfalls.

The Newlands Valley is made up of densely populated farms and tourist housing. Stair is the valley's primary settlement, including the Newlands Adventure Center and the Swinside Inn, the only pub in the valley a kilometer south of Stair. The Newlands Valley, with lead, copper, silver and even gold extracted over the years, has been widely mined and quarried for many centuries. The most famous mine in the Lake District is situated in Newlands. This is the Goldscope mine that has been operating on the reduced Hindscarth slopes near the Low Snab Farm since the 1500s. It yielded such large amounts of lead and copper that it was called' Gottesgab' (Gift of God) by the German miners who were brought over to develop the mine in their early days. At the end of the 19th century, the mine closed, not because it was exhausted, but because the mine's main shaft had gone so deep that it had become cheap to pump water.

Other well-known mines in the valley are the Barrow lead mine, located on the slopes of Barrow, which closed in 1888; the Yewthwaite lead mine, which occupies a small valley between the Catbells and Maiden Moor fells and stopped production in 1893; and the long-closed Dale Head copper mine, which was started by German miners in the Elizabethan period.