Our part in the future of the Lake District

View of a jetty on Derwentwater, the Lake District, Cumbria.

This is about the Lake District; its dramatically beautiful valleys and fells, its people and culture, its wildlife, and what it means to us as a Nation, and to people from even further afield. And it’s about the National Trust’s part in helping look after the Lake District for everyone, for now and for the future.

The National Trust has been looking after special places in the Lake District on behalf of the nation for the past 120 years. It’s our birthplace, our spiritual home, somewhere we care deeply about. 

A changing landscape

The landscapes of the Lake District have constantly changed to meet the needs of society and will continue to do so. The National Trust is at the forefront of thinking about how to best manage and adapt to this change. We’ve been making the case for support for land management that brings public benefits such as access, clean water, healthy soil, and high quality food; and which in the process secures the natural and cultural fabric of the Lake District so that it can continue to enrich society for generations to come. 

At the heart of our work will be our ongoing commitment to our conservation purpose; to recognise and protect the special places and ways of working that are important to the Lake District. We know that we don’t have all the answers. And we can’t, and have no wish to, work in isolation. We want to have conversations with people, from those who live and work here, to the much wider community who love the Lake District and visit for its beauty. And from these conversations we want to work together to create a shared future for this special place.


" A sort of national property, in which every man has a right and an interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy "
- William Wordsworth
Herdwick Hogg sheep at West Lakes, Duddon Vallley

Nature and culture as two sides of the same coin 

This is a defining feature of the Lake District; you don’t get one without the other. People have been here, cutting trees, digging holes, building bridges, hefting flocks, writing poems for most of the years since the ice crept back up to the North Pole, 12,000 years ago. It’s not just that we have shaped and been shaped by nature. When we get the balance right, we’re part of nature in the Lakes. It’s why people have got together behind the Lakes’ World Heritage Site nomination. And it sits at the heart of what we imagine for the future.

Our six principles for the Lakes

Buttermere Valley, Cumbria
Seathwaite Valley in Borrowdale, Lake District

Protecting the natural and cultural fabric of the Lakes 

This is our first responsibility, because it’s the combined heritage of people, landform, and wildlife that underpins everything that is important and loved about the Lakes. It’s about looking after the basic stock-take of rocks, soils, walls, fields, farms, trees, woods, wildflowers, fells, commons, tarns, becks, lakes, quarries, ruins, cairns, crags, screes, pikes, gills, paths, stiles, tracks, pubs, campsites, villages, businesses, skills, memories, and more. Valuable in their own right, these are our indispensible raw materials. Everything we do now, or might want to do in the future, has to be fashioned out of them.

Principle 2: Working with the grain of nature 

The Lake District isn’t just one landscape. The sprit of one valley might be quiet and remote, and another vibrant and full of day-trippers. We’ll work with natural processes, and balance our practical objectives according to the particularities of each place; the pattern and potential of the fells, fields, woods and streams, and the people who live and work there.

Rangers from the upland team on site on a Lake District fell Play Video
Video

Case study: Path rangers in the Fells

Watch our Fell Rangers hard at work building and repairing paths in the Lake District. The National Trust has repaired more over 200km of paths damaged by erosion in the past ten years - but we need to complete another 2,000m at a cost of £300,000 to keep the Lake District in good condition for years to come.