The Market Square
The heart of Keswick is the Market Square, ringed with shops and hotels. There are no cars in the pedestrianised area, which makes for a very pleasant hour’s shopping.
The building in the centre is the Moot Hall, an ancient foundation now housing the Lake District National Park tourist information centre — and an excellent place to start planning what to do. It was built in 1813 on the site of an earlier building, and has been used in its time as a covered market, a courthouse, a town hall, a place of worship, a museum and a prison. Its one-handed clock strikes the hour only.
Cheese farm, and a charter
The name Keswick is said to mean "cheese farm", and the place is first recorded as a settlement in 1240. Its origins as a market town date to 1276, when Edward I granted Thomas, Lord of the Manor of Derwentwater, a charter to hold a Saturday market.
It is still held, over seven hundred years later, and there is rather more than cheese on it — fruit and vegetables, meat and cakes, pet beds, second-hand books, plants and clothing. A local produce market runs on Thursdays for much of the year.
Two parks, both a short walk
A short walk from the Market Square are two large public parks with games facilities including pitch and putt and crazy golf.
Hope Park sits between the town and Derwentwater, with beautifully tended gardens, and is one of Keswick’s major attractions in its own right. Fitz Park has a superb children’s play area, a BMX track, room to run about and play ball games, and riverside picnic tables.
More shops than the size suggests
Though only a small town, Keswick has a range of shops and services far larger than you would expect — in the Market Square and down every alley and side street, including shops you will not find in any other town.
Most of the art galleries are off the main square, selling photographs, paintings, pottery and jewellery by local artists and makers. For outdoor gear there is a wide range of specialist retailers, and a good choice of fashion shops besides. Don’t miss Packhorse Court just off the Market Square, Lake Road and St John’s Street, or Station Street and Tithebarn Street.
Fifteen minutes to the water
Few visitors come to Keswick without making the short walk down to the lakeshore and the boat landings, where rowing boats and small motor boats can be hired and the launch service around the lake starts. It is about fifteen minutes at a stroll, by way of Lake Road and Hope Park.
Another five minutes brings you to Friars Crag, and its tremendous view across the lake into Borrowdale.
The town has a long history and most of it is still here
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History of Keswick
Neolithic clearings, Norse place names, Elizabethan copper miners brought over from Germany, and the railway that turned a market town into a resort.
Read moreThe long view
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Five hundred million years
The green slate in the walls is volcanic ash. The red-brown paving in the Market Square came out of a different volcano, in Italy. How to read the town off its own buildings.
Read moreUnder your feet
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A literary wonderland
Coleridge and Southey lived at Greta Hall; Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Ruskin came to visit. Beatrix Potter spent twenty-two summers on the far shore.
Read moreStreet names give it away
A producing theatre on the lake shore, a century-old cinema, five museums and historic houses within half an hour, and galleries down most of the side streets.
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And in the evening
There is a wide choice of attractions and adventurous pursuits, plus the century-old Alhambra cinema and the all-year-round Theatre by the Lake — both on the Cultural Keswick page.
Keswick and the surrounding villages have a comprehensive choice of accommodation and a wide range of places to eat — restaurants, pubs, cafes and takeaways, for a snack, a leisurely lunch or dinner.