Helm cragg ctxt

Text 21Understanding of

context

• Grasmere (looking North)

• Grasmere (looking South)

The Lion and the Lamb

Alfred Wainwright “AW”(1907-1991)

• Wainwright was born into poverty in the Lancashire town of Blackburn in 1907.

• The son of a stonemason, he left school when he was 13 and became an office boy in Blackburn Borough Engineer's Department.

• At the age of 23 he managed a holiday away from home, to the Lake District.

• It was love at first sight.

• In his book “Fellwanderer” Wainwright described his first visit there:

• "I was utterly enslaved by all I saw. Here were no huge factories, but mountains; no stagnant canals, but sparkling crystal-clear rivers; no cinder paths, but beckoning tracks that clamber through bracken and heather to the silent fastnesses of the hills. That week changed my life."

• He qualified as an accountant and moved to Kendal in 1941, rising to become Borough Treasurer seven years later. He spent every spare moment walking the fells that he loved so deeply.

• In 1941 he was appointed to a position in the Borough Treasurer’s Office in Kendal. He started doing pen and ink drawings of the fells. He started exploring and drawing and made a start on what was to become his Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells.

Wainwright’s Pictoral Guides to the Lakeland Fells

The Pictorial Guides were and are still distinctive. Fearing that printers would misspell words, his

handwritten work was reproduced directly on to the

page; the Westmorland Gazette of Kendal published

them all

• The first Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells was published in 1955 and in his introduction he wrote:

• ‘This book is one man’s way of expressing his devotion to Lakeland’s friendly hills. It was conceived, and is born, after many years of inarticulate worshipping at their shrines. It is, in very truth, a love-letter.’

• He spent 13 years compiling the seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, tramping the fells in all weathers at weekends, with raincoat, map and camera.

• Most of his fine, individual drawings were taken from his photographs.