Visiting Ings
Wild Flowers
Alan Gibson made a study of the flora of Ings during his stay as vicar of Ings from 1982-1988. His booklet, published privately in 1988, is available to download below. His account included ferns and flowering plants, including trees and shrubs, grasses, rushes and sedges.
He writes "The ecclesiastical parish of St Anne, Ings with Hugill, lies between Staveley and Windermere across the main A591 road. It is shaped rather like an irregular sausage lying North to South, about 4 miles long, a mile and a quarter wide at its widest but only a quarter of a mile at its narrowest. The A591 and the Kendal to Windermere railway cross the middle of the parish through the meadows beside the River Gowan, a tributary of the River Kent. The meadows give the village its name. The valley is at about 400 ft, but the parish rises in the North to the top of Capple Howe at 1415ft, and near the summit of Grandsire in the South to about 800ft.
The underlying rock, never far below the surface, is, like most of South Lakeland, silurian slate. There is no limestone within the parish, though the narrow strip of Coniston limestone lies along the northern boundary. Most of the area is agricultural land, devoted to grazing sheep and cattle. But the various kinds of grassland, streams and their valleys, marshes and bogs, woods and hedgerows, ponds and tarns, give a good variety of plants. I have recorded about 420 and each is mentioned in this account."
There is a challenge in his postscript. He lists a number of plants which he'd expected to find but didn’t and concludes: "Good hunting."
Click here for the full text of Alan Gibson's text in PDF format (12 MB).