Furness between fell and water
Lowick
A two-pub parish between Coniston Water and the coast, with open fell, forest and shore within reach.
- Best for
- Quiet walks and characterful village pubs
- Give it
- A relaxed half day, or longer with a forest or fell walk
- Don't miss
- The contrast between Lowick Green and Lowick Bridge
Photo: David Purchase · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
A small village with room to breathe
Lowick pairs an unusually strong pub tradition with access to lakeshore, fell and forest.
The appeal is in the contrast: a community inn at Lowick Green, a traditional independent pub at Lowick Bridge, then flat water-edge walking or the open ground of the Blawith Fells. Grizedale Forest adds a larger network of walking and cycling trails; its main car park is about 5.6 miles from Lowick Bridge in a straight line, and the road journey is longer.
Where to go
Places in Lowick
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesThe Farmer's Arms
A 17th-century community inn serving wood-fired pizza and home-cooked bar meals, with a beer garden, creative classes and talks.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Lowick Green
- Access
- Food and activities run on selected days; check the official site before travel.
Western Shore of Coniston Water
Flat walking beside Coniston Water, offering a gentler alternative to the surrounding fells.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- southern end of Coniston Water
Grizedale Forest
A Forestry England forest threaded with mountain-bike and walking trails, starting at the main visitor centre car park.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 120 minutes
- Locality
- Grizedale, northeast of Lowick Bridge
Food & drink
1 placeRed Lion Inn
A long-established independent pub keeping two regular ales and one changing ale.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Lowick Bridge
- Access
- Check the official site for current food service and access details.
Walks & outdoors
1 placeBlawith Fells
Open fell walking on the uplands that rise above Lowick, for visitors seeking height rather than a flat shorepath.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 120 minutes
- Locality
- fells above Lowick
- Access
- Open and unfenced fell terrain.
History & heritage
1 place
St Luke's Church
Lowick's parish church, medieval in origin, and a quiet historical counterpoint to the pubs and open landscape.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Lowick Bridge
- Access
- Check parish details before travelling specifically for interior access.
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Three ways to explore Lowick
Signature outings
Ales at the Red Lion
Call at Lowick Bridge for an independent pub keeping two regular ales and one that changes.
Walk the Blawith Fells
Choose the open, unfenced Blawith Fells when the flat shorepath is not enough height.
St Luke's Quiet Continuity
Pause by Lowick's church, medieval in origin, for a quiet historical counterpoint to the pubs and open landscape.
The village story
Lowick Village Guide
Two pubs, one bridge and a pocket of Furness where lake, fell and forest meet.
Lowick's Two Pubs
Lowick is a two-pub parish, one at Lowick Green and one down at Lowick Bridge. This is a lot of pub for a village this small, and both have held on.
The Farmer's Arms is the one at Lowick Green, a 17th-century inn that CAMRA lists and the parish registered as an asset of community value in May 2020. It fires wood-fired pizza on Thursdays and cooks proper bar meals on Fridays and Saturdays — lamb stew with chips, roast beef with all the trimmings, cakes and desserts to follow. There is a beer garden, dogs are welcome, and the alcohol-free ales are, by local account, unusually good. The pub also runs classes and talks, which is not something most village inns bother with.
Bridge, River and Open Country
Down at Lowick Bridge, the Red Lion is the plainer of the two — an independent house keeping two regular ales and one that changes. It has been serving the bridge for a long time, back when a parish having two pubs was simply how things were.
The River Crake runs out of Coniston Water and passes under the bridge here on its way to the sea. Lowick sits near the southern tip of the lake, so the shorepath gives you flat lakeside walking, which is a rarer thing in this part of the world than you might expect. If you want height, the Blawith Fells rise open and unfenced nearby. Grizedale Forest has Forestry England bike and walking trails; its main car park is about 5.6 miles from Lowick Bridge in a straight line, with a longer road journey.
A Sparse Village, a Long History
There are no shops to speak of. A village hall, the community pub, and that is the amenities list. You do the weekly shop in Coniston or Ulverston.
The manor house is Lowick Hall, over at Lowick Bridge. The first lord of the manor was Ivo de Taillebois, a Norman baron who took the place in 1087, which makes this one of the older Norman holdings on the Furness peninsula. The village name turns up as "Lofwic" in 1202, and the roots of it are Norse — this was Viking country before it was Norman.
Church and Furness
The church is St Luke's, medieval in origin, sitting quietly among all this.
The geography is worth understanding, because it explains why Lowick feels the way it does. This is the Furness peninsula — historic Lancashire, the part they called "north of the Sands," because for centuries the only way in was to walk across Morecambe Bay at low tide and hope your timing was right. Lowick lies between Coniston Water and the coast, tucked into that quieter corner.
Arriving, Then Slowing Down
Getting here now is easier but not effortless. There is no railway and no regular bus, so you arrive by car — the A5084 from Coniston or Ulverston, or the minor roads up from Haverthwaite.
On a Thursday evening the smell of wood-fired pizza drifts across Lowick Green, and the fell behind it goes dark, and that is about the size of it.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:St Luke's church, Lowick - geograph.org.uk - 5937884.jpg — photograph by David Purchase; St Luke's church, Lowick by David Purchase. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- The Farmer's Arms — lakedistrictfarmersarms.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Red Lion Inn — redlion-lowick.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Luke's Church — carlislediocese.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Western Shore of Coniston Water — visitlakedistrict.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Blawith Fells — visitlakedistrict.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Grizedale Forest — forestryengland.uk national body or asset manager