Buttermere, Cumberland
Historical Description
Buttermere, a village, a township, a chapelry, and a lake in Brigham parish, Cumberland. The village stands about midway between Buttermere Lake and Crummock Water, 8½ miles SW of Keswick railway station, and 10 SSE of Cockermouth, and consists of only a church, two good inns, and a few scattered houses. The church is a neat building on the site of a previous one, which was said to be the smallest in England, and one of the inns supplies boats for the neighbouring lakes, and is notable for the pathetic story of " Mary of Buttermere." The chapelry includes the village, which has a post office under Cockermouth; money order office, High Lorton; telegraph office, Portinscale. Acreage of the township, 6851; population, 97; of the chapelry, 121. The general surface is a grand vale, engirt with mountains, and much occupied with lakes. A steep mountain pass, called Buttermere-Haws, goes from the village to an elevation of about 1600 feet, on the road to Keswick. Blue slate is quarried. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Carlisle; net value, £73 with residence. Patron, the Earl of Lonsdale. The lake extends from the head of the vale to within a mile of Crummock Water, is 1½ mile long, 1 of a mile broad, and 90 feet deep, and has a surface elevation of 247 feet above the level of the sea. Its face looks gloomy, but its skirts are magnificent, being immediately overhung by Honister Crag, with a precipitous front about 1500 feet high, and by the Hay-Stacks, High-Crag, High-Stile, Red-Pike, Buttermere-Moss, and Great-Robinson Mountains.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Cumberland | |
Civil parish | Brigham | |
Poor Law union | Cockermouth | |
Ward | Allerdale above Derwent |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The registers of baptisms date only from 1801, previous to which date entries, and also of marriages and burials, were made at Lorton.
Churches
Church of England
Buttermere Chapel (parish church)
The church, or chapel, rebuilt in 1841 at a cost of £300, by the Rev. Vaughan Thomas M.A. chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, is a small and plain building of stone, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an open western turret containing 2 bells: in the chapel is a memorial window, erected in June, 1893, by the friends and parishioners, to the late Mrs. Attlee, and another placed in 1904 to the late Mrs. Knight: there are 78 sittings.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Buttermere from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Buttermere)
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Cumberland is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Buttermere are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)