The slate toposcope located on Orrest Head was installed by Windermere Town Council and the Wainwright Society. It replaces an earlier indicator damaged by vandals and is positioned at the site where author Alfred Wainwright first glimpsed the Lakeland panorama that would inspire him to write his celebrated guidebooks.
The toposcope, created from slate quarried at Coniston, is situated on a plinth constructed of stone blocks. It shows the principal fells from Coniston Old Man in the west to Red Screes in the north and other features. The design is based Wainwright’s own drawing of the view from the hill from his book 'The Outlying Fells of Lakeland'.
The toposcope unveiled on Saturday 28th July 2012, by Wainwright’s wife Betty’s two daughters Jane King and Annie Sellar, presidents of the society, the town’s deputy mayor, town council members and more than 30 Wainwright Society members.
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Alfred Wainwright first visited the Lake District in 1930 when he was 23 years old. He had travelled by train from his home in Blackburn to Windermere.
Having alighted from the train at Windermere he climbed the path that starts just outside the station and goes to the viewpoint of Orrest Head. He was so enchanted by the views of the fells and lakes that they changed his life and inspired him to write his celebrated guidebooks.
Many years later he wrote in his autobiographical Ex-Fellwanderer:
"...quite suddenly, we emerged from the trees and were on a bare headland, and, as though a curtain had dramatically been torn aside, beheld a truly magnificent view. ..."
The slate toposcope is inscribed as follows;
'WINDERMERE AND THE HIGHFELLS
'Those few hours on Orrest Head cast a spell that changed my life'
(A. Wainwright)
ORREST HEAD 1930
'... quite suddenly, we emerged from the trees and were on a bare headland, and, as though a curtain had dramatically been torn aside, beheld a truly magnificent view. … This was truth. God was in heaven that day and I a humble worshipper.'
Alfred Wainwright's description of his first view of the Lakeland mountains, from Ex-Fellwanderer.
It was a view that transformed his life and the lives of tens f thousand of his readers.
At the bottom right of the slate in a rectangle - aw The Wainwright Society and underneath their website - www.wainwright.org.uk
At the bottom left in a circle WINDERMERE TOWN COUNCIL and coat of Arms.
Locations mentioned are;
CONISTON OLD MAN 5
BRIM FELL 9
SWIRL HOW 9
WETHERLAM 8
COLD PIKE 9 3/4
CRINKLE CRAGS 10 3/4
SCARFELL PIKE 13 1/3
BOWFELL 11 1/3
GREAT END 13
ALLEN GRAGS 12 1/2
GREAT GABLE 14 1/2
PIKE OSTICKLE 10
HARRISON STICKLE 9 3/4
PAVEY ARK 9 1/3
HIGH RISE 19 1/3
ULLSCARF 11
STEEL FELL 9 1/4
HERON PIKE 6 1/2
GREAT RIGG 7 2/3
FAIRFIELD 8 1/3
WANSFELL PIKE 3
RED SCREES 4 '
Orrest Head is situated on the northern edge of Windermere not far from the railway station and the town centre. Its accessibility and position looking over Windermere with views into the heart of the fells makes this a popular location for walkers. (
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"Alfred Wainwright ("A.W.") MBE (17 January 1907 – 20 January 1991) was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the English Lake District. Among his 40-odd other books is the first guide to the Coast to Coast Walk, a 192-mile long-distance footpath devised by Wainwright which remains popular today." Source: (
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