Description
Wasdale, the vale of Wast Water, in Cumberland, extending 7 1/2 miles south-westward from the foot of Styhead Pass to a point 5 miles NE of Ravenglass. It forms a bare, gloomy, profound mountain trough, engirt by Yewbarrow, Kirk Fell, Great Gable, Lingmell, and the Screes, and as seen from Scafell or Scawfell is called by Wordsworth " a den," yet though the wildest of all the Cumberland lake basins it is the grandest. Wast Water occupies much of its bottom; is 3 miles long, and almost everywhere about half a mile broad; has a surface elevation of 160 feet above sea-level; is very deep, and contains plenty of trout and a few char.
Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5
