Several of the 17th-century cottages in Hartsop still have their spinning galleries — external wooden balconies, built onto the upper floor, where wool was once spun in the open air. Most Lake District villages that had them have lost them. Hartsop kept several, in their original form, which is part of why people who care about this sort of thing come here to look at the outside of houses.
There is no pub in the village, no shop, and no church. What Hartsop has is grey stone, a valley, and quiet. It sits in a side valley at the head of the Patterdale valley, just below Kirkstone Pass — at 454 metres the highest road pass in the Lake District — and it is one of the quietest, least altered hamlets in the eastern Lakes.
For a pint you walk. The White Lion Inn at Patterdale is about a mile north; the Brothers Water Inn sits at Sykeside Farm, at the foot of Kirkstone Pass to the south. Supplies mean a trip to Patterdale or Glenridding. The parish church, St Patrick's, is at Patterdale too.
Brothers Water lies just to the south, the fells of Hartsop Dodd and Caudale Moor rising steeply off its far shore.
The walking is the reason to stay. The Brothers Water circuit is three flat miles around the lake, past Hartsop Hall and along the western shore — one of the most accessible walks in the eastern Lake District, and a rare thing in this landscape, a route that doesn't go up. Brothers Water was originally called Broad Water. It was renamed in the 19th century after two brothers drowned there, and it is one of the smallest named lakes in the district.
For height, walk up Hayeswater Gill from the village to Hayeswater, a reservoir-tarn sitting in a high corrie, and carry on to High Street at 828 metres — the ridge the Romans ran a road along, over the tops rather than through the passes.
Hartsop Hall, the 16th-century farmhouse the circuit passes, belongs to the National Trust. It was the home of the de Lancasters, then in the 17th century passed to Sir John Lowther, whose family became the Earls of Lonsdale. Above it are the workings of the Hartsop Hall mine, dug for lead from the 18th century. This was a mining community once, which is easy to forget when you're looking at the balconies.
Getting here needs a car. There's no railway and no regular bus to the village; the seasonal 508 from Penrith stops at Patterdale. You come off the A592 south of Glenridding and turn at the Brothers Water car park.
Then the road runs out, more or less, and that's the appeal.
