Brothers Water is a small lake in the Hartsop valley, in the eastern region of the

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 ...

in England. Once called Broad Water, it lies at the northern end of

Kirkstone Pass Kirkstone Pass is a mountain pass in the English Lake District, in the county of Cumbria. It is at an altitude of . It is the District's highest pass traversed by road, the A592 road between Ambleside in Rothay Valley and Patterdale in Ulls ...

, affording views on the descent towards

Patterdale Patterdale (Saint Patrick's Dale) is a small village and civil parish in the eastern part of the English Lake District in the Eden District of Cumbria, in the traditional county of Westmorland, and the long valley in which they are found, also ...

. The name was changed in the 19th century after two brothers drowned there. BrothersWater20090103

Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives. Dorothy Wordsworth had no a ...

, having left

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 ' ...

sitting on Cow Bridge, walked beside the lake on 16 April 1802, commented on: The lake is not among the most popular in the

national park A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual ...

, being shallow and full of reeds. Water lilies bloom in July, providing colour. To the north-east of Brothers Water is the village of Hartsop, which has several 17th-century stone farm buildings and cottages. Some of the buildings still contain spinning-rooms where villagers would have made their own clothing, selling any surplus in the local market towns. The word Hartsop means "valley of the deer", which would have lived in the woodlands of the lower areas of the surrounding fells. A walk through woodland skirts the western shore. From its northern end the walk leads to Patterdale. Southward it heads over Kirkstone Pass 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 lar ...

. On the western side of Brothers Water is Hartsop Hall. The 16th-century building passed to Sir John Lowther in the 17th century and is now owned by the National Trust. The village of Hartsop lies near the northeast corner of the lake. Brothers Water may be classified in either of two ways: as one of the Lake District's smallest lakes or one of its largest tarns. The lake is home to a

trout Trout are species of freshwater fish belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', '' Salmo'' and '' Salvelinus'', all of the subfamily Salmoninae of the family Salmonidae. The word ''trout'' is also used as part of the name of some non-salm ...

population and harbours a rare species of fish, the

schelly The schelly (''Coregonus stigmaticus'') is a living fresh water fish of the salmon family, endemic to four lakes in the Lake District, England. Its taxonomy is disputed with some recognizing it as a distinct species and others as a variant of t ...

References

Lakes of the Lake District Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cumbria Westmorland Patterdale {{Cumbria-geo-stub