London - Writers from Wordsworth to Wainwright have been inspired by its brooding majesty. One of England’s top ten highest peaks, it commands magisterial views across the Lake District to north Wales, southern Scotland and (on a very clear day) the Isle of Man, too.
Now up for grabs for the first time in 400 years, courtesy of a cash-strapped earl with a hefty tax bill, Blencathra mountain is also a spectacular symbol of the lunacy of the property market.
Just over three hours from London by train, it is centuries away in terms of common sense. At 1.5p per square foot, this land is almost a million times cheaper than the Knightsbridge flat snapped up by a mystery plutocrat earlier this month for £140-million. What’s more, whoever ends up buying Blencathra will also acquire a title. While it’s unlikely to impress any of the villagers, the new owner can call himself (or herself) Lord of the Manor of Threlkeld.
True, you won’t get any bricks and mortar for the £1.75-million asking price. It has no buildings. And because Blencathra is in a National Park, you won’t even get planning permission for a potting shed.
You can’t shut out the public — or the 6 000-odd sheep that graze there.
You can’t drill for oil or gas because the vendor is hanging on to the mineral rights. Even Gary Barlow’s accountants would be pushed to squeeze cash out of this thing.
The vendor, the 8th Earl of Lonsdale, can hardly be accused of talking it up. “It couldn’t matter less who owns it — you, me or the King of Siam — because it’s not going anywhere and there’s nothing you can do with it,” says the former long-distance lorry driver who was at prep school with the Prince of Wales.
His family, the Lowthers, have owned much of Cumbria since Norman times. And while Blencathra — or Saddleback, as many know it — may be one of the family’s more prominent possessions, its 2 676 acres of grass, bog and rock amount to a fraction of the 72 000 acres still in Lowther hands.
As far as Lord Lonsdale, 64, is concerned, it’s one of the less painful ways of meeting the £9-million bill for death duties that landed after the death of his father, the 7thEarl, in 2006.
He’s already flogged his best picture, a Turner painting of the old family seat, for a little over £2-million. And selling a mountain, unlike selling a farm, does not involve evicting tenants.
“What would you sell?” he asks, lighting another cigarette. “An income-producing asset with someone living in it or a chunk of rock that doesn’t make a penny?”
Yet many people are interested in his rock, according to the peer’s agent, John Robson of H&H Land.
They include an alliance of local community groups, called the Friends of Blencathra, who want to buy it for the nation and have already secured pledges of £600 000. As I soon discover, they may be about to enjoy a significant boost.
Britain’s foremost mountaineer, Sir Chris Bonington, has agreed to be their honorary patron.
The man who knows the Himalayas better than the Yeti happens to live nearby and says Blencathra is no ordinary mountain.
“It’s a magnificent gateway to the Lake District with so many routes to the top,” he says, adding that he has climbed it “at least 500 times”.
And he has good news. “I can’t say much, but I have been in touch with two corporate backers who are very interested in helping.”
Sir Chris points out there are many things a new owner could do to improve the landscape.
“It would be a wonderful opportunity to reforest parts of the mountain and return it to the way it was before we covered it with sheep.”
Every Boxing Day, Sir Chris makes a point of climbing to the top — “to work off Christmas lunch” — before adjourning to Threlkeld’s Horse & Farrier Inn.
Which route? “Oh, the best route — Sharp Edge. That’s a proper scramble.” So it is. A few weeks back, one guest at the inn set off up the infamous Sharp Edge and never returned. Blencathra has claimed several lives.
Scots might argue that at 2 848 ft, this is just an uppity foothill alongside Ben Nevis (4 408 ft). Yet it’s still a very serious peak. “On stern Blencathra’s perilous height,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “the winds are tyrannous and strong.”
The late Alfred Wainwright, latter-day laureate of the Fells, called it “a mountaineer’s mountain’” which can “make a beholder forget all other worries, even a raging toothache”.
Blessed with a cloudless dawn, I set off to inspect the Eiger of Lakeland.
A round trip to the top would take me half a day and I don’t have the time (or clobber), so I shin up a lesser slope on the other side of the valley to get a good view of the thing.
The treeline and buildings stop abruptly at a line of dry stone walling from which Blencathra shoots up like the knuckle of a clenched fist, gnarled on the sides and smooth on top with a gentle dip. It really is a saddleback waiting for some gargantuan posterior to land upon it.
It’s no wonder the famous Blencathra Hunt has always hunted on foot. If you took a horse up there, it would fall off. Barry Todhunter, huntsman of the Blencathra, has worked hereabouts for 42 of his 57 years. ‘”e just want to keep it as it is for all the pastimes — mountain bikers, hang gliders and everyone else,” he says. “If some tycoon wants to buy it for his wife, fine. But it would be very nice if it was owned by people who understand the place.”
Opinions are the same in the beer garden of the Horse & Farrier.
Pub manager Mike Alston, 38, who has a ‘Mountain For Sale’ sign outside the front door, says one diner recently offered him £1 000 for the community fighting fund.
No one I meet blames Lord Lonsdale for selling up to satisfy the taxman. But they all hope he looks kindly on the community buyout idea. When I find Hugh Lonsdale, he is test-driving a mobile sawmill for his forestry business. Trees are a passion. We get on to the subject of Blencathra and I ask if he would offer special terms to the locals.
“They’re just wasting their money,” he says firmly. “It’s totally pointless. Why have a whip-round to protect this mountain when it’s completely protected already?”
His agent, John Robson, laughs and raises his eyes in mock despair. It is his job to maximise interest in the sale, even if his vendor is veering off-message like a mountain biker clattering down Blease Fell without brakes. “We’ve had plenty of interest from people who see this as a long-term investment,’ he says. ‘Who knows how the situation might change in the future?”
The earl points out that the Revenue charges him £150 a day in interest on outstanding death duties. He just needs to get the best price he can to reduce his debts. The deadline for offers is fixed: July 2.
“If we’ve got two equal bids on the table and one is from the community, then we’ll go with that,” says Mr Robson diplomatically.
We adjourn to Lord Lonsdale’s home for coffee — a roomy old farmhouse he shares with the countess, his third wife, and 11 fierce dogs.
The nearby family seat, Lowther Castle, a stunning Harry Potter-style colossus, has been uninhabitable since 1957.
‘My father had to pay £4-million of death duties — a huge sum then — and offered the castle to the National Trust and three local authorities. None of them wanted it, so he took the roof off and sold it for scrap.’
After half a century of decay, a trust set up by the family has propped up the ruins and turned the gardens into such a popular tourist attraction that the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow will descend on it next month.
Lord Lonsdale produces a book of photographs of the castle at its imperial zenith in the days of the 5th Earl. Known as the Yellow Earl, because he had everything painted in the family livery, he was one of the richest men in Britain. He founded boxing’s Lonsdale belt and the Automobile Association (hence the AA’s yellow badge) and toured the land in a fleet of yellow Rolls-Royces and a yellow train.
“The Yellow Earl had 50 staff in the garden and 100 in the house,” says the 8th Earl. ‘”e was spending £500 a week on cigars. You read the accounts and weep!”
The current earl’s parents split when he was a boy and he was never reconciled with his father.
Before succeeding to the earldom eight years ago, he spent several years as a lorry driver. “I had two former wives to deal with,” he laughs.
His father’s death precipitated such a bitter legal battle that he says he won’t speak to most of his family ever again. But with no children, his estate will pass on to a younger brother or a nephew, as will his titles.
So will he miss being Lord of Threlkeld? He chuckles and produces a map of his other lordships. It reads like a cricket team: “Bolton, Bampton, Crackenthorpe, Thornthwaite . . .”
What about Blencathra? “I can’t miss that,” he says. “I can still see it from my doorstep.” - Daily Mail