Bowness Knott & Ennerdale's hidden Medieval Settlements (The Lake District)

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Bowness Knott is a familiar site to anyone driving into Ennerdale, with its impressive western crags looming over the road that runs to the car park at its foot. From this angle the fell looks almost impossible to climb, but there are easy approaches from both west and east, and the view from the top is well worth the effort required to get there.
Although sparsely populated even today, there have been settlers in Ennerdale since prehistoric times, with a concentration of evidence around Stockdale Moor and Town Bank in the form of burial sites and farming settlements.
Cairns and hut circles can be found where the River Calder and Whoap Beck meet, and there are also remains of Romano-British farmsteads at Low Gillerthwaite and Tongue How.
Norse immigrants settled here in the 12th century. During medieval times, much of the land would have been under monastic influence and it was from this period that the mineral potential of the valley was realised, with the mining and smelting of iron ore.
The Smithy Beck medieval longhouses can be detected by following the Smithy Beck trail through Ennerdale Forest, to the north of Latterbarrow. The site is marked on the OS as "Settlement". There are 5 such longhouses, some better preserved than others. They were used as domiciles by medieval miners.
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