Some of the items secured in the auction. Photo: HH Auction Rooms
Unique notes by Lakeland author Alfred Wainwright will go on show to the public after aficionados of the late guidebook creator helped secure them in an auction today.
The Wainwright Society and a group of private sponsors were successful in the Carlisle auction.
The papers, along with annotated Ordnance Survey maps, will be housed at the Cumbria Archive Centre in Kendal, Wainwright’s adopted town.
Derek Cockell, press and publicity officer for the Wainwright Society, said: “The winning bid was secured by the Wainwright Society in partnership with a number of private sponsors, who all shared the society’s objective to make the material available for future generations by housing it with the official Wainwright Archive.”
The collection includes a notebook which the society believes may contain the first notes the reclusive writer made for his series of handwritten Lake District guides.
Mr Cockell said: “The notebook is an important addition to the archive as it could well be the first notes that Wainwright made before embarking on his 13-year project to map and describe 214 of Lakeland’s fells in his Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells.
Alan Hinkes will deliver the society's annual lecture
“The fells described in the notebook include Dove Crag, which was the first fell that Wainwright penned for Book One, The Eastern Fells, in 1952. The notes are far more detailed than appeared in the actual guide and should give researchers a valuable insight into the way that Wainwright planned out his iconic guides.
“Together with the notebook, are a number of Ordnance Survey maps, annotated by Wainwright for his Pennine Way Companion, the guide he wrote to walking the Pennine Way, published in 1968.”
Mr Cockell added it is planned a number of items from the archive will be on display at the society’s annual Wainwright Memorial Lecture to be held at Rheged, Penrith in November.
This year’s speaker will be mountaineer and hillwalker Alan Hinkes, the first Briton to climb all the world’s mountains 8,000m peaks.
