The Glacier-Lakes of Eskdale, Miterdale, and Wasdale, Cumberland; and the retreat of the Ice during the Main Glaciation

Abstract

I. Introduction The occurrence in former times of glacier-lakes in this country, due to the impounding of drainage from a locally-glaciated mountain group by an impinging ice-sheet, is nowadays accepted as an undeniable fact, and the discovery of one or more fresh cases would not in itself excite much interest or justify more than a brief notice. The lakes, however, which are the subject of this communication, take their place in a larger story, and furnish links in a chain of evidence leading to definite conclusions about the mode of withdrawal of the great Irish Sea ice-sheet from the Cumberland and North Lancashire coastline towards the close of one great episode in the glacial history of the north of England. Their deposits, also, exhibit features of a somewhat novel type. Enough details, it is hoped, will be presented to establish the existence, situation, and place in the sequence, of the former glacier-lakes in Eskdale, Miterdale, and Wasdale. In the past, brief references have been made to the glaciation of this district by D. Mackintosh (1871, 1872, 1879), J. Clifton Ward (1875), C. E. de Ranee (1871 [I & II]), and the late J. D. Kendall (1879-80, 1881-82); but it was left to T. Mellard Reade (1893), in his description of the Eskdale drift, to discuss the local glacial geology in particular detail. Although his conclusion cannot be accepted that all the drifts up to at least 400 feet above sea-level are marine, his observations are of great value and interest.