Talk:List of lakes of the Lake District

These are not lakes
There is only 1 lake in the lake District. The other bodies of water are tarns, waters, etc., but the only lake is Bassenthwaite Lake. This is confirmed on the official Lake District pages:. I will delete all bodies of water except Bassenthwaite Lake from this page in 1 week. Dubbin (talk) 12:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The use of the word 'lakes' in the page name is due to common usage, not any official title for the bodies of water.
 * I suggest you read the pages on the site you refer to more closely. The page you refer to states that "There are over fourteen lakes and tarns" while going on to make clear that only one is officially titled a lake. The other pages on the site also refer to the existence of 'lakes' (eg. which talks about Wastwater as the 'deepest lake' and Windermere as the 'longest lake') as a generic term for a larger body of inland water, even while they acknowledge that only one is officially titled a lake.
 * Meanwhile this article begins "This list contains the lakes, tarns and reservoirs...". It is not intended to define every body of water on the list as a lake; the page name is merely a convenient description. (The titling of many of the lakes, waters, meres and tarns etc. is largely arbitrary in any case.)
 * Your intention to delete large contents of the page is unhelpful and I disagree with it. I will, however, add a sentence to the beginning of the article to point out this issue. --David Edgar (talk) 16:29, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

hey man — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.151.7.244 (talk) 17:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I am born and bred in the Lakes, locals get fed up with people smugly pronouncing that "there is only one Lake in the Lake District"

It is perfectly acceptable to use "Lake Windermere" as it avoids confusion with the town of Windermere. "Can you give me directions to Windermere...." " Can I swim in Windermere...... " "Do you live in Windermere......." 90.249.28.33 (talk) 17:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090628092540/http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk:80/commondata/103196/1118608 to http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/commondata/103196/1118608

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Rationale behind chosen "20 major lakes"?
What's the rationale behind the lakes chosen as the "20 major lakes"? In particular, Loughrigg Tarn, Elter Water and Blelham Tarn are likely smaller than Seathwaite Tarn, Devoke Water and Burnmoor Tarn. If there's no good reason to pick these 20, should we instead pick lakes meeting a certain minimum criteria (eg. surface area or volume), with an aim of making a useful list of approximately 16-25 entries? --David Edgar (talk) 00:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No idea. It was added by who still seems active. I like the map, which I think is useful to readers but would be happy to have a list generated by surface area or volume, and then those lakes marked on the map.  JMiall  ₰  12:52, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, the map is useful, I agree. The lake labels are all in markup so it's easy to change.
 * Other lists of lakes (for example lakes in the UK, Ireland, Canada or New Zealand) tend to use area as the defining measure, so I suggest we use that too. Good choices for minimum area would probably be either 0.1km² (which would include most of the current ones, plus (I estimate) up to 10 more) or 0.2km² (which would be the largest 16 currently mentioned, plus a few others).
 * To avoid overwhelming the map, I'm inclined towards 0.2km², even though that would exclude Brothers Water and Elter Water. But I suppose the list could use a different limit, including those down to 0.1km².
 * We may be short on some of the area data for the smaller ones, which could be a complication. --David Edgar (talk) 22:36, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I see the marker size is not generated from the volume, presumable some conversion has been done. If we went for 0.1 km² lakes then I think smaller markers and text would be useful. Comparing a couple of lakes - Blelham Tarn at 0.1 km² seems quite minor to me (apart from being highly monitored over the years), Tarn Hows at 0.15 km² seems still not major but quite a bit less minor. I'd also be happy with a higher cutoff, Buttermere seems like a reasonable breakpoint, so this could be the smallest of the 'major' lakes. JMiall  ₰  01:26, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The marker size is proportional to the cube root of the lake volume (as explained in the comment in the article's text). When I added the map I merely included the lakes included in the table without considering whether these were appropriate. If it helps I could update the map's annotation in line with any consensus. Is the annotated text too large? Note: the map cannot be satisfactorily displayed by a reader at a larger size than it has been defined in the article because the annotation then disappears. Thincat (talk) 18:38, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I limited the lakes shown on the map to 4x106 m3 - otherwise the centre of the map becomes completely empty, and this at least includes Grasmere, which is more well known than its small size would suggest. Any thoughts?
 * Personally I think we should keep more lakes in the table, but using an area limit instead of volume. --David Edgar (talk) 15:56, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like I used a long-deleted table of lake data from the Environment Agency as the original source for selecting these 20 lakes and not others. I'm not sure what their rationale was — maybe they just listed the lakes they had data for. I'm fine with using some different criteria now. I'd guess that for the average reader it would be helpful for the table to include all the larger lakes and any smaller ones that are particularly notable. Surface area is probably the easiest criterion, and I would err on the side of a lower size cutoff, even if that means data is missing for some small lakes. Rupert Clayton (talk) 00:42, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for your response.
 * If we were to follow this approach and stick with a round number, 0.1km² would seem the most likely choice.
 * I haven't done an exhaustive search, and lots of values for surface area are not readily available. But I suspect that in addition to the current lakes, we would also have to include (or at least investigate further, for possible inclusion):
 * Blea Water
 * Burnmoor Tarn
 * Cogra Moss?
 * Devoke Water
 * Grisedale Tarn
 * Hayeswater
 * Kentmere Reservoir?
 * Levers Water?
 * Over Water
 * Seathwaite Tarn
 * Tarn Hows
 * Wet Sleddale Reservoir
 * Does it sound reasonable if we found we needed to add all of these (to the list, but not to the map)? --David Edgar (talk) 00:52, 6 February 2017 (UTC)


 * This Lakes, Meres, Tarns &amp; Waters page gives surface area values for all the bodies of water in the Lake District. But I'm uncertain as to its reliability, or as to where the numbers came from. Can anyone suggest a better source? --David Edgar (talk) 12:06, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The various values can be looked up at https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/index.html and I think it is good for reliability. I've checked one of two of "your" lakes and they are included but others may be missing. Some people object to database lookups but I don't see the problem because every web access is a database lookup. Thincat (talk) 16:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Brilliant, thank you. That's just what I wanted. The result pages have linkable URLs (eg. Kentmere Reservoir - Water Body ID 29173) so that should be fine for references. --David Edgar (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I hadn't realised you could link there. Excellent. Thincat (talk) 19:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)


 * The article has been updated. If anyone can locate reliable figures for the empty table cells for the newly-added entries, that would be useful. --David Edgar (talk) 14:39, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I find it frustratingly fiddly updating tables. The same database has "fetch" which my dictionary says is "the distance travelled by a wind or wave without obstruction". For sinuous Ullswater, where the "length" is 11.8 km in our article, the CEH database gives 7.14 km for fetch so the two measurements are a lot different. OR: using distance measuring in Google maps the longest straight line I can draw within the lake seems to me about 7 km and the shortest distance end-to-end a fish could swim is about 11.8 km. Of course for ribbon lakes and tarns there will not be this problem and "fetch" may be OK. It's a pity the maximum depth isn't there but catchment area looks good and could be included maybe. Thincat (talk) 16:58, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did wonder about the 'fetch' numbers. So it's probably acceptable to use them for the lengths of most of the smaller lakes listed above, excepting Tarn Hows perhaps. --David Edgar (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
 * No, it wouldn't be any good for Tarn Hows. It is now looking to me that generally fetch isn't a good measure at all. Thincat (talk) 15:52, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160611204850/https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html to https://eip.ceh.ac.uk/apps/lakes/detail.html
 * Added tag to http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/dam-busters-will-put-part-of-cumbria-back-together-1.812084?referrerPath=home

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