Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership

The Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Scheme finished in early 2024 with projects successfully delivered by a wide range of project partners, community groups and individuals. Over the coming months, we’ll be updating this site to highlight what’s been achieved, so please keep checking back.

Welcome …

… to the Westmorland Dales website.

The Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership Scheme aimed to unlock and reveal the hidden heritage of the Westmorland Dales, enabling more people to connect with, enjoy and benefit from this inspirational landscape. Specifically, its objectives were to:

Reveal the area’s hidden heritage.
Conserve what makes the area special.
Engage people in enjoying and benefitting from their heritage.
Sustain the benefits of the scheme in the long-term.

This was achieved through a programme of projects developed and delivered through the Westmorland Dales Landscape Partnership, led by Friends of the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, and mainly funded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It ran over a five-year period from March 2019 to February 2024.

Here you can discover what makes the area so special, find out about the scheme’s projects, and view and download resources produced.

The Westmorland Dales

The Westmorland Dales is a beautiful area of Cumbria lying north of the Howgill Fells and within the north-west corner of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It stretches from Tebay in the south-west to Kirkby Stephen in the east and to Maulds Meaburn in the north-west. At its heart are the limestone fells above Orton and Asby, rich in natural and cultural heritage, and with magnificent views to the Pennines, the Howgills and the Lakeland fells. It drains into the Lune river catchment to the south and the Eden river catchment to the north. Relatively overlooked compared with its better-known neighbours, our projects have aimed to reveal its heritage for more to enjoy without detracting from its unique qualities. (Click on map for larger image)

Contact information

Friends of the Lake District

Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal, Cumbria LA9 7SS

Main Telephone: 01539 720788

Email: [email protected]

Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority
Yoredale, Bainbridge, Leyburn, North Yorkshire DL8 3EL

Main Telephone: 01969 652300

Email: [email protected]

3.1 Love Your Landscape

Grants were distributed to a wide range of local groups in the area to implement their own projects which met our objectives including tree planting, the restoration of heritage features, interpretation and engagement projects.

A small grants scheme for voluntary and community groups, landowners, farmers, schools and local councils to reveal, conserve, enhance, celebrate and raise awareness of the unique landscape of the Westmorland Dales.

Project lead: Friends of the Lake District

Local communities often have little money to develop small projects or restore and celebrate features. They may have small community groups which are beginning to fail and need reinvigorating with a new project. Some community members may feel isolated both within the community or within the wider area.

This grant scheme will help communities do something they wish to do and something which is important to them. The scheme will therefore potentially address a whole series of threats and opportunities, and ones that they have directly identified. The grant scheme prioritises local distinctiveness and sense of place. It is anticipated that the wide range of volunteering and training opportunities offered by the Landscape Partnership Scheme, plus the ongoing community engagement will catalyse project proposals and community action. It will create a sense of pride and ownership for communities and leave a lasting legacy.

The scheme has 3 main themes of Natural Heritage, Cultural Heritage and Connecting Heritage. Love your Landscape grants will fund projects that fall into one of these themes.

Purpose

Survey, protection, restoration and enhancement of historical built features and archaeological remains.
Habitat surveys, restoration and creation- hedges, woodlands, meadows.
New events, activities and celebrations - landscape, flora and fauna, land management, culture and training.
Cultural Heritage projects- Local histories, place names, folklore, oral history, photographic records
Enhanced public access and paths - new links/walks.
Interpretation of hidden and special landscape features and heritage.
Educational activities and materials on historical or ecological themes.
Local food initiative
Town and village green projects - management plans, restoration, new things (seats, meadows, bulbs,), access to information (Re management, legal).

Latest

23 April 2024: The Helm, paths to summer adventures

We were joined by a big group of volunteers with clippers, loppers and saws this week for bramble, bracken, and gorse management, to keep paths clear and create fire breaks.
Leaders' Landscape Training: The Westmorland Dales: its natural and cultural heritage

The Westmorland Dales has been described as one of the best preserved prehistoric archaeological landscapes north of Salisbury Plain. The landscape has been hugely influenced by the way people have exploited and managed it for thousands of years. The walk will explore this, attempting to decipher the layers in the landscape.
Leaders' Landscape Training: Understanding Tranquillity

Tranquillity is one of many components that come together to create the overall character of a landscape, and it is something that many visitors to the Lake District and Cumbria come to enjoy but it is often misunderstood or not fully understood even by those tasked with protecting it.
Leaders' Landscape Training: The Thirlmere Resilience Project

The Thirlmere catchment, characterised by steep sided, wooded slopes, is an iconic part of the Lake District. A new style of progressive land management around Thirlmere, is balancing the pressures of recreation, farming, and conservation in hostile upland environments.

3.2 Skills for the Future – Apprentices

Eight countryside worker apprentices were employed by YDNPA, and one cultural heritage trainee, who developed their skills and experience in undertaking a variety of projects with a wide range of partners, acting as great ambassadors for the Scheme and the organisation. Most have gone on to work in the conservation sector.
3.3 Discovering the Westmorland Dales

The project saw extensive work on the rights of way network, bringing it up to a similar standard to the rest of the national park, as well as linking it to the Pennine Bridleway and with an extension of the Yorkshire Dales Cycleway. The improved network has been promoted through a series of walking, cycling and horse-riding leaflets.
3.4 Distinctly Westmorland Dales

This project worked with local tourism businesses to promote the area’s heritage and to use that heritage to maximise the benefits to their businesses, mindful of the area’s distinct qualities, its Sense of Place, and sensitivities about attracting too many visitors.
3.5 Interpreting the Westmorland Dales

Interpretation was a key theme underpinning all our projects with new welcome panels and interpretive boards sensitively installed, leaflets and booklets produced, sounds recorded and stories retold, many of them engaging local people in the process and helping them and visitors enjoy and understand the area’s rich heritage.
3.6 Celebrating and Engaging

Engaging people was at the heart of the Scheme and most of its projects to celebrate the area’s heritage. A programme of general public engagement events was held from online webinars to annual landscape forums; volunteers were recruited, trained and engaged; projects delivered with local primary and secondary schools, and other training events held; art, including sound sculptures, land art, theatre and music was imaginatively used to engage a board cross-section of people.

Volunteering

Learn new skills and join our army of volunteers helping us to make a practical difference to the Lake District all year round.
Join Today

Play your part in protecting the Lake District by becoming a member today.
Our Purpose

We are an independent charity and the only membership organisation dedicated to protecting and enhancing Cumbria's landscapes for future generations
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