Stonethwaite Beck Restoration, Borrowdale, Cumbria Walkover Survey and Watching Brief Report

The river restoration project will undo historic straightening of Stonethwaite Beck to restores the course to a more natural form, with the aim of ameliorating flooding further downstream. An historic floods documentary and riparian walkover survey was undertaken by OA North in 2019, which identified numerous flood embankments, revetments and other features along the course of the beck. Following this, the National Trust prepared a Heritage Impact Assessment, for a planning application pertaining to the present survey area in 2022, which included proposals for archaeological mitigation. The National Trust then invited OA North to tender for a rapid walkover survey to record the affected sites in more detail, and subsequently to undertake a watching brief during river restoration works. These were undertaken by Ebsford Environmental and affected a 2.2km stretch of Stonethwaite Beck to the south of Rosthwaite Bridge. The works included the lowering and removal of flood embankments to widen the current beck course to enable the establishment of seepage ponds in palaeochannels blocked by historic revetments. Whilst no finds were encountered during archaeological monitoring of the works, analysis of the available historic mapping indicates that the becks of Borrowdale underwent two broad periods of straightening during the later eighteenth and mid-to-late nineteenth centuries, and flood defences have continued to be constructed into the later twentieth century.