Peel Island (formerly known as Montague Island or the Gridiron) is one of the three islands of

Coniston Water Coniston Water is a lake in the Lake District in North West England. It is the third largest by volume, after Windermere and Ullswater, and the fifth-largest by area. The lake has a length of , a maximum width of , and a maximum depth of . Its ou ...

in the English

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...

. The two others are Fir Island (which is connected to the shore unless the water is particularly high) and Oak Island. It is most famous for being one of the inspirations for

Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome (18 January 1884 – 3 June 1967) was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing and illustrating the ''Swallows and Amazons'' series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of childre ...

's Wild Cat Island. Today, it is a popular tourist destination, and belongs to the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

History

The name ''Peel'' means a fortified site. In 1896 the antiquarian W. G. Collingwood conducted excavations on the island and discovered: the remains of fortifications and other stone buildings, chambers cut into rock, metal-working

slag The general term slag may be a by-product or co-product of smelting (pyrometallurgical) ores and recycled metals depending on the type of material being produced. Slag is mainly a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. Broadly, it can be c ...

, a fragment of a domestic mortar, and pottery. These he dated to the mediaeval period. Peel Island has belonged to the

since it was given to them by

John Montagu-Douglas-Scott, 7th Duke of Buccleuch John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Ep ...

, along with of woodland, in 1932.

Wild Cat Island

Peel Island is considered to be one of the origins of the fictional Wild Cat Island in the 1930 book ''

Swallows and Amazons ''Swallows and Amazons'' is a children's adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome first published on 21 July 1930 by Jonathan Cape. Set in the summer of 1929 in the Lake District, the book introduces the main characters of John, Sus ...

'' and its sequels, by

. Taqui Altounyan, sister of Roger Altounyan and inspiration for one of the characters in ''Swallows and Amazons'', described Peel Island in her

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

''In Aleppo Once'' as "like a green tuffet, sitting in the water, the trees covering the rocks". The island also features in W. G. Collingwood's novel ''Thorstein of the Mere, A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland''. Ransome, at the age of eight, first met the Collingwoods at a family picnic on Peel Island: a chance meeting that would prove to have important consequences in Ransome's later life, with Collingwood's grandchildren providing a model for significant characters in ''Swallows and Amazons''.

Accident

In 1967,

Donald Campbell Donald Malcolm Campbell, (23 March 1921 – 4 January 1967) was a British speed record breaker who broke eight absolute world speed records on water and on land in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains the only person to set both world land a ...

died near Peel Island while trying to set a world

water speed record The world unlimited water speed record is the officially recognised fastest speed achieved by a water-borne vehicle, irrespective of propulsion method. The current unlimited record is , achieved by Australian Ken Warby in the ''Spirit of Austra ...

with a speed in excess of .

References

{{coord, 54.3177, -3.0851, type:landmark_region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(SD295918), display=title Islands of the Lake District Uninhabited islands of England Colton, Cumbria Swallows and Amazons series