Lowther

Church, Castle and the Lost Village

St Michael's Church stands next to a ruin, which is not the usual arrangement for a parish church. It was rebuilt in 1686, is Grade I listed, and has the Lowther family mausoleum attached to one side. The ruin beside it is Lowther Castle, and the reason the two sit so close is that most of the village that once separated them is no longer there.

In 1682 Sir John Lowther bought the original village, the one between the house and the church, and had it demolished. It was spoiling the view. This was a fairly standard thing for a landowner to do at the time, and the people were rehoused later in a row of almshouses built nearby. So the walk from the church takes you past the ground where a village used to be, which is a quieter kind of history than most places offer.

Castle Ruins and Restored Grounds

The castle is the thing you come to see. What's standing now was built between 1806 and 1814 for William Lowther, the 1st Earl of Lonsdale, and designed by Robert Smirke as his first major commission — he went on to do the church at Askham and then the British Museum. It had 365 rooms, one for every day of the year. It was abandoned in 1936 for being too expensive to run, and in 1957 the roof and floors were stripped out, leaving the shell you can walk around today. You can see it from the A6.

The grounds are 130 acres and have been restored since 2013 by the landscape designer Dan Pearson, on gardens that Capability Brown had worked on back around 1763. There's an adventure playground for children, treetop walkways, and the ruins themselves to wander through. The café and shop are seasonal, so check before you rely on them.

Estate Walks and Getting There

For walking, the River Lowther runs through the estate and there's a circular of about two miles that links Lowther with Askham, going through the deer park. Askham is roughly a mile south and is also where you'll find a pub, which Lowther itself does not have — the Punchbowl Inn or the Queen's Head, either one closer than anything in the village.

Getting here means driving. There's no railway and no regular bus. The A6 runs south from Penrith, about four miles up, and the B5320 heads off toward Ullswater, which is around three miles south. The setting is wooded parkland in the Eden Valley, rolling farmland with the castle ruins rising out of it.

The Lowthers and the Yellow Earl

The Lowthers were one of the great aristocratic families of northwest England, Earls of Lonsdale, holders of enormous stretches of Cumbria. The one worth knowing about is William, the 5th Earl, who lived from 1857 to 1944 and was obsessed with the colour yellow. His coaches were yellow, his livery was yellow, and his cars were painted yellow. People called him the Yellow Earl. He is the sort of man who builds a castle with a room for every day of the year and then can't afford to keep the lights on.