Hartside Cafe

Story

Hart Side is a subsidiary top on one of the east ridges of Stybarrow Dodd, which is a mountain in the English Lake District, west of Ullswater on the main Helvellyn ridge in the Eastern Fells. With a height of 2,480 feet Hart Side rises above the col separating it from Green Side by 75 feet .Some guide-book writers have treated Hart Side as a distinct fell, and have devoted a separate chapter to it. The same writers have treated the lower Watermillock Common as part of the fell. Other writers have simply focussed on routes to and between the many individual tops here and throughout Lakeland.Hart Side and Green Side are the two ends of a ridge which is composed of andesite rock, a sequence of lava flows from ancient volcanoes. A lead vein in the Green Side end of the ridge was exploited by the most successful lead mine in the Lake District until it closed in 1962.TopographyThe east ridge of Stybarrow Dodd falls about 262 feet to a broad col from which the ground rises again. From this point the combined Hart Side and Green Side ridge has a smooth, rounded, grassy top and winds for some 1½ miles to the north east. After rising 98 feet to White Stones, the summit of Green Side, it loses 203 feet of height before rising again from a broad, gentle col, but regains only 75 feet to the summit of Hart Side .At this point the ridge turns abruptly to the south of east and after losing roughly 66 feet again it rises to a broad, rounded, unnamed grassy swelling with a height of about 2,428 feet . A north-east shoulder of this swelling ends with steeper gradients on all sides and a scattering of broken crags ahead. This shoulder was named Birkett Fell in 1963, but it has just 6½ feet prominence above the ridge it terminates.