High Street

High Street and Riggindale from Harter Fell

Height: 828m (2,717ft)
Prominence: 373m (1,224ft)
Region: Far Wastern Fells
Classifications: Nuttall, Hewitt, Wainwright, Marilyn, Birkett
Summit feature: Trig pillar
Times climbed: 4
Related trip reports:
High Street via Riggindale & Kidsty Pike - 22/07/2018
Mardale Head - 12/11/2016
The Kentmere Round - 18/07/2013
A Tour of Hayeswater - 11/01/2014

The summit pillar overlooking the Eastern Fells

What Wainwright said:

"Most high places in Lakeland have no mention in history books, and, until comparatively recent times, it was fashionable to regard them as objects of awe and terror, their summits rarely visited. Not so High Street, which has been known and trodden, down through the ages by a miscellany of travellers on an odd variety of missions."

High Street is the highest part of the Far Eastern Fells and gets it's name from the Roman road that ran over the summit plateau. The road linked the forts at Brougham (Brocavum) and Ambleside (Galava). The High Street range has quite gentle slopes with a flat summit plateau. It was these characteristics which persuaded Roman surveyors to build their road over the fell tops rather than through the valleys which, at the time, were densely forested and marshy.

The flat fell summit was used as a venue for summer fairs during the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the events was a horse race which is where the summit of High Street gets it's name; Racecourse Hill. Fell ponies can occasionally be found grazing on the summit.

A wall follows the ridge over the flat summit, the highest point marked by an Ordnance Survey trig pillar. The view stretches from the Pennines in the east to a great arc of Lakeland hills filling the western horizon. The Helvellyn range and Southern Fells are particularly striking.

Return to Lake District – Far Eastern Fells