Drawing 137: Stone circle, Kinniside
Direction of view: E
Notes: This feature is adjacent to the Cold Fell road, at grid reference NY060140. A couple of the stones are leaning over. This picture does not occur in any of Wainwright’s other published works, but the photograph from which this sketch was drawn is in the County Archives at Kendal, reference WDAW/4/1/1/2/21. It is a small, square photograph taken from the road – and it doesn’t contain any sheep.
Comments: My picture was taken on 9th September 2015. Anne Setright and I were travelling from our holiday cottage in Boot to Ennerdale, in order to walk to Black Sail youth hostel. A five minute stop was enough to visit this roadside circle, which was the subject of an unlikely story (which Wainwright initially believed) regarding its restoration. He recounts this story both on page Grike 2 in The Western Fells, and in A Second Lakeland Sketchbook.
Peter Messenger’s moody photo from the late 1970s provides a contrast.
In the Spring of 2023, the BBC broadcast a series of TV programmes under the title Great British Coastal Railway Journeys, presented by Michael Portillo. One of the episodes featured a meeting between Michael Portillo and I, at Kinniside stone circle; this was broadcast on 26th May 2023, and is available on iPlayer. Filming had taken place way back in the autumn of 2021, hence the various Covid social distancing measures apparent in the programme.
