Alfred Wainwright and the "Wainwright Walks"

It was in 1930 at the age of 23 that Alfred Wainwright, then a junior accounting staff member in the Borough Engineer's Department in Blackburn, Lancashire, went with his cousin for a holiday in the Lake District, and so began the "Wainwright walks". He had often enjoyed walking in the hills of East Lancashire but once he'd experienced Lakeland there was no turning back. From then on he took every possible opportunity to walk in the Lake District mountains.

In the early 1940s he applied for a job in the Borough Treasurer's office in Kendal. The pay was less than he'd been getting in Blackburn but it brought him close to his beloved mountains and made his Lake District walks so much easier to arrange without the journey up from East Lancashire.

His ideas for recording his walks appear to have developed slowly during the 1940s but it was in 1952 that he started to produce pages of maps and sketches systematically in a carefully planned format, initially for his own use. Having eventually decided to publish his work the first volume of "A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, by A. Wainwright" appeared in 1955, privately published.

There were seven volumes in all, each covering one of his seven divisions of the Lake District, the last reaching the bookshops in 1966 by which time the Westmorland Gazette newspaper of Kendal, from the beginning his printer, had also become his publisher.

The style was unique with his combination of carefully drawn maps showing his recommended routes, sketches of the countryside around the areas of the walks, compass diagrams to indicate what peaks can be seen from strategic points, and his notes describing the routes and full of "typical" Wainwright asides.

The Wainwright Guides became the standard source of information of hill walking in the Lake District, but by the early years of a new century they were beginning to date, and demand had fallen away. In 2003 the first editions, the oldest of which had now been on bookshelves for almost fifty years, ceased publication.

Alfred Wainwright had died in 1991, but the Wainwright Guides filled with his detailed instructions for the now famous "Wainwright walks" would not die. The publisher Frances Lincoln bought the rights and Chris Jesty took on the role of reviser, updating the maps and instructions whilst retaining the distinctive Wainwright style almost in its entirety. A 50th Anniversary edition of the first edition was produced and became very popular, and by 2009 all seven revised editions were available.

Other walks, in areas close to the Lake District and further afield, were described in other books and these will be covered in a later article. He also published volumes of his sketches, including one on his adopted town, "Kendal in the 19th Century", and a volume entitled "Westmorland Heritage" in 1975 as the historic Lakeland county was merged into the newly created Cumbria. Regardless, however, of his many other publications the name Alfred Wainwright will surely continue to be associated chiefly with the "Wainwright walks" described with meticulous care in his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells.

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