River Crake

The River Crake is a short river in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

. The name probably derives from the

Celtic languages The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...

(most likely

Brythonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. ...

; ie

Cumbric language Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...

) and means ''rocky stream''. The river drains

Coniston Water Coniston Water in the English county of Cumbria is the third-largest lake in the Lake District by volume (after Windermere and Ullswater), and the fifth-largest by area. It is five miles long by half a mile wide (8 km by 800 m), has ...

from its southernmost point and flows for about 6 miles (9.5 km) in a southerly direction before joining the upper estuary of the River Leven at

Greenodd Greenodd is a village in the Furness area of the county of Cumbria, England, but within the historical county of Lancashire. For local government purposes the village is also within the area of South Lakeland District. It is located 3 miles (5& ...

. The river is in the historic county of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

, but in an area that formed part of the county Cumbria after the 1974 reorganisation of local government. The villages of Water Yeat, Blawith, Lowick Bridge,

Spark Bridge Spark Bridge is a former mill village in Cumbria, England, within the Lake District National Park, and within the historic boundaries of Lancashire. The village is situated away from the main road on the river Crake which flows from Coniston ...

and Penny Bridge are located close to the river in the Crake Valley. As well as receiving the outflow from Coniston the river also drains Beacon Tarn in the Blawith Fells above the southern end of Coniston. In the 19th century numerous industries including a

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven b ...

and

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

flourished along the river, making use of the fast flowing water to drive machinery. A bobbin mill at Spark Bridge, which manufactured wooden bobbins for the

Lancashire cotton industry Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron foun ...

, used water-powered lathes to turn the wood. The factory survived into the 1970s using Gilkes

water turbine A water turbine is a rotary machine that converts kinetic energy and potential energy of water into mechanical work. Water turbines were developed in the 19th century and were widely used for industrial power prior to electrical grids. Now, t ...

s to generate electricity and turn the lathes. The factory was eventually forced to close by the punitive water usage charges levied by the North West Water Authority. Today there are no obvious signs of any of the riverside industries. The Crake is a noted

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...

river. The River Crake is the model for the Amazon River in Arthur Ransome’s

Swallows and Amazons series The ''Swallows and Amazons'' series is a series of twelve children's adventure novels by English author Arthur Ransome. Set in the interwar period, the novels involve group adventures by children, mainly in the school holidays and mainly in Eng ...

of children's novels according to

Hugh Brogan Denis Hugh Vercingetorix Brogan (20 March 1936 – 26 July 2019) known as Hugh Brogan, was a British historian and biographer. Early life The son of Sir Denis Brogan and Olwen Phillis Francis (Lady Brogan), OBE, archaeologist and authority on R ...

, although the Crake flows out of

but the Amazon flows into the Lake. The Allan Tarn at the beginning of the river became the Octopus Lagoon. Rivers of Cumbria Furness 1Crake {{England-river-stub