Bowness-on-Windermere is a town in the South Lakeland district of

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. C ...

, England. It lies next to

Windermere Windermere (sometimes tautologically called Windermere Lake to distinguish it from the nearby town of Windermere) is the largest natural lake in England. More than 11 miles (18 km) in length, and almost 1 mile (1.5 km) at its wides ...

lake and the town of

to the north east with which it forms the civil parish of Windermere and Bowness. The town was historically part of the county of

Westmorland Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...

and is also forms an urban area with Windermere. The town had a population of 3,814 in the 2011 Census.

Etymology

'Bowness' (originally 'Bulnes') means " 'the headland where the bull grazes', from OE 'bula', 'bull' and OE 'næss' 'headland', perhaps referring to the keeping of the parish bull." The 'on-Windermere' part was added later (found on the Ordnance Survey map of 1899), presumably to distinguish this 'Bowness' from other Cumbrian ones. ('OE' =

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

History

The town's ancient parish church of St Martin was built in 1483 but of an older foundation. The former rectory is said to have been built in 1415. A

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

was founded in about 1600. A new building was opened in 1836, funded by local landowner John Bolton of Storrs Hall. The foundation stone was laid by

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

. During the 19th century, Bowness grew from a small fishing village to a town living almost entirely off tourism and holiday homes. It was the centre of the boat-building industry that provided the sailing yachts, rowing boats and steam launches used on the lake. A large number of hotels and boarding houses gave employment to the permanent population of the town.

Queen Adelaide , house = Saxe-Meiningen , father = Georg I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen , mother = Princess Louise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg , birth_date = , birth_place = Meiningen, Saxe-Meiningen, Holy ...

visited Bowness in 1840, staying at the Royal Hotel. The arrival of the railway in 1847 in

(the residents of Bowness had opposed a station in their own town) provided much of the momentum for the growth. Bowness-on-Windermere became a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in 1894 and an urban district council was formed for the town at the same time. In 1905, the council merged with that of Windermere, and the two civil parishes merged on 1 April 1974 under the name of Windermere. The civil parish of Windermere is governed by a

town council A town council, city council or municipal council is a form of local government for small municipalities. Usage of the term varies under different jurisdictions. Republic of Ireland Town Councils in the Republic of Ireland were the second t ...

, Windermere and Bowness Town Council.

Transport

Windermere railway station offers

train In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often ...

and

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

connections to the surrounding areas,

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, Manchester Airport and the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

, and is about from the lakefront. Both Stagecoach and the local council provide frequent connecting buses from Bowness Pier; Stagecoach's open-top

double-decker bus A double-decker bus or double-deck bus is a bus that has two storeys or decks. They are used for mass transport in the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Europe, Asia and also in cities such as Sydney; the best-known example is the ...

es travel through the centre of town and continue to

Ambleside Ambleside is a town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Lakes, in Cumbria, in North West England. Historically in Westmorland, it marks the head (and sits on the east side of the northern headwater) of Windermere, England's larges ...

and Grasmere, while the council's

wheelchair A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, used when walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury, problems related to old age, or disability. These can include spinal cord injuries ( paraplegia, hemiplegia, and quadriplegia), cerebr ...

-accessible

minibus A minibus, microbus, minicoach, or commuter (in Zimbabwe) is a passenger-carrying motor vehicle that is designed to carry more people than a multi-purpose vehicle or minivan, but fewer people than a full-size bus. In the United Kingdom, ...

es run around the edge of town. The

Windermere Ferry The Windermere Ferry is a vehicular cable ferry which crosses Windermere, a lake in the English county of Cumbria. The ferry route forms part of the B5285 road and crosses the lake at about its midpoint, from Ferry Nab in Bowness-on-Windermere to ...

, a car carrying

cable ferry A cable ferry (including the terms chain ferry, swing ferry, floating bridge, or punt) is a ferry that is guided (and in many cases propelled) across a river or large body of water by cables connected to both shores. Early cable ferries often ...

, connects Bowness at Ferry Nab on the eastern side of the lake with Ferry House Far Sawrey on the western side of the lake, a trip of approximately 10 minutes. For those looking for a more leisurely way to travel,

Windermere Lake Cruises Windermere Lake Cruises is a boat company which provides leisure trips on Windermere in the central part of the English Lake District. It is based in Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria. History Windermere is the largest natural lake in England, ...

operate regular lake cruises running from Bowness Bay to the north end of the lake at Ambleside and south end at Fell Foot.

Media

Readers of 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 books will recognise Bowness as the lakeside town of 'Rio'. The collection at the Windermere Steamboat Museum on Rayrigg Road includes TSSY ''Esperance'', 1869; one of the iron steamboats on which Ransome modelled Captain Flint's houseboat. Bowness-on-Windermere is also home to The World of

Beatrix Potter Helen Beatrix Potter (, 28 July 186622 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as '' The Tale of Peter Rabbit'', which was ...

attraction, opened in July 1991 by Victoria Wood. Windermere0

References

External links