Ullswater's northern gateway
Pooley Bridge
A village shaped by the River Eamont, a remarkable new bridge and the lake journeys that begin at its pier.
- Best for
- Lake journeys, short walks and village hospitality
- Give it
- A village stop or a longer outing on foot
- Don't miss
- The single-span stainless-steel bridge
Photo: Rude Health · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
A small Ullswater gateway with a bridge worth noticing
This Ullswater gateway combines lake access, village hospitality and several ways to set out on foot.
The River Eamont and Ullswater give the village its setting, but the replacement bridge gives it a story of its own. Pair the crossing with a steamer journey, the wooded climb of Dunmallet or a stretch of the Ullswater Way, then return to the village for food and drink.
Where to go
Places in Pooley Bridge
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesDunmallet
A short climb through woodland to an ancient British hill-fort site with panoramic views of Ullswater.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes for the climb, view and return
- Locality
- directly above the village
Ullswater Way
A long-distance route with a flatter lakeside option running south towards Howtown and Glenridding.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 120 minutes for a short out-and-back section
- Locality
- along the northern Ullswater shore
- Access
- This is a long-distance route; choose a suitable turning point before setting out.
The Crown Inn
A village inn serving freshly prepared food and offering rooms.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- in the heart of the village
Walks & outdoors
1 place
Pooley Bridge Pier
The village departure point for Ullswater Steamers travelling south towards Howtown and Glenridding.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 120 minutes
- Locality
- at the northern foot of Ullswater
- Access
- Check the operator's current sailing information before travel.
History & heritage
1 place
St Paul's Church, Pooley Bridge
St Paul's is Pooley Bridge's nineteenth-century village church.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 20 minutes for a short visit
- Locality
- in Pooley Bridge village
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Three ways to explore Pooley Bridge
Signature outings
See St Paul's in Pooley Bridge
St Paul's is Pooley Bridge's village church and dates from the nineteenth century.
Begin a Journey Across Ullswater
Start a lake journey south from the village towards Howtown or Glenridding.
See Ullswater from Dunmallet
Follow the short wooded climb to the hill-fort site and its panoramic lake view.
The village story
Northern Ullswater Village Guide
A bridge story, a lake departure point and a village made for setting out on foot.
The bridge that remade the village
The bridge that gives the village its name is made of stainless steel, which is not a sentence you get to write about many Cumbrian villages. It opened on 23 October 2020: a single span of 80 tonnes of steel, 2,000 tonnes of concrete and 650 square metres of local stone, designed by Knight Architects and, as far as anyone can establish, the first stainless steel road bridge in the country. The village produced a commemorative beer, jigsaws and fridge magnets to mark it, which tells you how much the bridge matters here.
It matters because the last one didn't survive. The original stone bridge had stood since 1764, long enough that the village took its name from it — Pooley became Pooley Bridge around 1800. Then at two o'clock on the afternoon of 5 December 2015, Storm Desmond pushed the River Eamont up and over its banks and swept the bridge away. It was one of the defining images of that year's Cumbrian floods. The replacement has no piers in the water, so the river has nothing to catch on next time.
Lake departures
The village sits at the northern foot of Ullswater, the second-largest lake in the Lake District, seven and a half miles of it running south from here. The Eamont drains the lake northward through the village. This is the gateway to the eastern shore, and the pier is where you catch an Ullswater Steamer down to Howtown and Glenridding. The Lady of the Lake has been running that route since 1877.
Village inn and walks
The Crown Inn is a village inn serving freshly prepared food and offering rooms.
For a walk, Dunmallet is the obvious one — a wooded hill directly above the village, the site of an ancient British hill fort, with panoramic views over Ullswater. If you'd rather stay flat, the Ullswater Way shorepath runs south along the lake toward Howtown and Glenridding. Barton Fell, above the east shore, is the moderate middle option.
Reaching the Northern Ullswater Shore
There's no railway; Penrith is the nearest station, and you reach the village by car on the B5320 or, in season, on the 508 bus from Penrith. St Paul's, the village church, dates from the nineteenth century.
The community's final word
The whole community was involved in building the new bridge. Then they made jigsaws 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 Paul's Church, Pooley Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 4127727.jpg — photograph by Rude Health; St Paul's Church, Pooley Bridge by Rude Health. 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.
- File:Pooley Bridge Pier - geograph.org.uk - 2403703.jpg — photograph by Trevor Rickard; Pooley Bridge Pier by Trevor Rickard. 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.
- Pooley Bridge Pier — visiteden.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Dunmallet — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Ullswater Way — lakedistrict.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- The Crown Inn — crownpooleybridge.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- St Paul's Church, Pooley Bridge — facultyonline.churchofengland.org other published source