Where is Gray's Seat?

Q. PLEASE can anyone tell me where Gray's Seat is? I believe it to be beneath the Scarthwaite Hotel, Caton, Lancashire. Many thanks.

Sandra Dainty, Halton

A. I'll second Graham Glenn's answer. I walked up on 9.12.2018 and all you can now see from Gray's Seat is Ingleborough, and that's in winter when the trees have mostly lost their leaves. There are four stone steps along the way which are very dodgy to go up and down in wet conditions, especially with fallen leaves and mud on them.

Berenice Baynham, Lancaster

A. Do not bother going out of your way to visit Gray's seat. The path is narrow and overgrown, although that would not deter me if the view was good at the end. It isn't! All there is to see are the trees that block what might once have been a magnificent view. My advice is to keep to the banks of the river Lune, which is a beautiful area.

Graham Glenn, Wakefield

A. Gray's Seat refers to a viewpoint that is now part of the River Lune Millenium Park project in Caton, NE of Lancaster, Lancashire on the A683. (Grid Reference for the centre of Caton is SD542645).

The correct maps are either OS Explorer Map OL41 and Landranger 97 though it does not seemed to marked on either or our copies.

The official reopening of Gray's Seat took place on Friday 28th September 2001. There is an official walk up to Gray's Seat which can be accessed from either Bull Beck Car Park or the Crook O' Lune Car Park, or the Scarthwaite Hotel Car Park.

We will see if we can get hold of some more details.

As a popular tourist spot in the 16th and 17th Century, many artists were amongst the visitors to paint the view.

Perhaps most famous amongst these is J M W Turner who came on a sketching tour in 1816.

The Vale of Lonsdale from the Crook O'Lune, around 1810.
Painting by George Cuitt in the collections of Lancaster City Museums

The site - sometimes called 'Turner's View' was lost once the road was altered in 1835 and trees grew up to block the view. Major work has been needed to clear a path up to the viewpoint and reinstate a place for visitors to marvel, once more, at the landscape.

We don't know who Gray was but he described the view to a friend in a letter, of 1769, which was later published:-

'This scene opens just three miles from Lancaster, on what is called the Queen's Road

... Here Ingleborough behind a variety of lesser mountains, makes the background of the prospect; on each hand of the middle distance, rise two sloping hills; the left clothed with thick woods, the right with variegated rock and herbage: between them in the richest of vallies, the Lune serpentizes for many a mile, and comes forth ample and clear, through a well wooded and richly pastured foreground. Every feature which constitutes a perfect landscape of the extensive sort, is here not only boldly marked, but also in its best position.'

Sounds nice.

With thanks to Phil Goodman and the River Lune Millenium Park Project

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